Koh Samui

We arrived in Koh Samui late Thursday evening and spent our first night on the island in a place called Bophut, which is in the north of the island. As we pulled up to our bungalow we weren't too sure what to make of it as it was fairly rustic and much quieter than we were hoping for. Nevertheless we were stuck here whether we liked it or not and compared to Bangkok, this was paradise!

The coconut calm bungalows

We walked up and down the beach looking for a good place to drink but everywhere was so quiet we headed back to our place, the coconut calm bungalows. We met a very chilled out and hospitable bar tender called Joe. We sat drinking beer and chilling out with Joe for a fair few hours (we were his only customers) and by the early hours of the morning all of us were completely inebriated to the point of hysterics. Drew kept freaking out that something was on his foot but in fact it was just air; no spiders, no snakes, just air!

The next day we woke up fairly early to a nice sunny day and headed straight to the beach. Due to the high tides, the beach was quite narrow but stretched along the coastline for quite a long way, and dotted along the entire length of the shoreline were overweight Germans in ill-fitting, multi-coloured speedos. However, due to Matt previously saying the night before "tomorrow's going to be a scorcher of a day", we were cursed and the weather soon changed, the wind got up and soon after that the rain came in. The rain was intense and much like the rain in Gloucester when it floods.

Chaweng

The next day we had enough of Bophut and headed down the road to Chaweng aka Thaibiza. Chaweng is very much a young, clubbers town. All there is bars, clubs and tacky stalls. Our room was OK but full of bugs so in the evening we decided to spray the room with bug spray and head out for 'half an hour'. A few hours later spent traversing the local nightspots, we found ourselves in a random club drinking with a Swedish couple. A few beers later we needed no encouragement to get up on the bar and start pole dancing for the paying customers. It was such fun and we don't know how many clubs in England will allow two pissed up boys on their bar gyrating in front of customers?!

We changed accommodation the next morning to a place across the road that was half the price. At first we thought we'd hit the jackpot but it wasn't until we went to have an early night that we realised we right next door to a ladyboy cabaret nightclub. You could have had a disco in our room the music was that loud! The next couple of days we were hideously lazy and tried our hardest to get our tans started. We think they're now starting to take shape.

Road trip

We hired a couple of scooters one morning to go off and explore the island instead of wasting the day away lying on the beach, burning our already frazzled skin. We found a shop that hired them out and after a fairly precarious start e.g. Drew almost crashing into a wall before we'd even left the shop, we headed off. Our first stop was the Grandfather and Grandmother rocks. The Grandfather rock is a rude shaped rock that looks like massive penis. Unfortunately the tide was in so we didn't see the grandmother rock but you can use your imaginations to figure out what that one looks like.

Puncture

After about an hour on the road, Drew kept experiencing 'speed wobble' where the back end of his bike kept careering out of control and making him fear for his life. On closer inspection, he had flat tire and needed a new one ASAP. Luckily enough - even though we were in the middle of nowhere - there was a scooter garage that seemed to know exactly what they were doing. After a quick tire change, we were back on the road and ready for some more action.

Waterfall

We saw a sign for a waterfall and decided to investigate further. The trek down to the waterfall was pretty dodgy and the trek up was absolutely exhausting! We were also quite disappointed in the waterfall we found as it wasn't so much a waterfall, more water meandering down some rocks into a small pool below. However, we did find some spectacular views across the island, so it wasn't a complete waste of a trip. We skipped the subsequent waterfalls on our trip across Samui, later to find out that we had in fact visited the worst one and missed a breathtaking one.

Big Buddha

En route to the Big Buddha, we found the most picturesque beach so far. Small huts lined the beach front with palm fringed white sand and beautiful blue sea. There were also no tourists here, only a few fishermen throwing a net out to sea. It was absolutely stunning and a great find! Big Buddha is a huge gold statue sat on a cliff face. It's really nice but there's not much else to say about it apart from that it lights up like a Blackpool attraction when it gets dark. Classy!

Angthong National Marine Park

For our last day in Samui we went on a boat trip to the Angthong National Marine Park, we were very lucky with the weather as it was one of the hottest days we've had so far. Angthong is a group of approximately 40 islands about an hour and a half boat ride from Samui. They are protected from development and are absolutely stunning. In the morning we got in our canoes and paddled around some of the islands, going in and out of caves; some so tight that you have to lie flat on your back and pull yourself along. We landed on a beach and climbed up a huge rock face (with the help of some steps) to see a salt water lagoon in the mountain. After this we climbed a little higher to see the most spectacular view across the islands. After climbing back down, we got in our canoes and paddled back to the boat for some well earned lunch.

The afternoon session was spent on a beautiful island where we played volleyball, snorkelled and generally took in the scenery and amazing views. There were these crazy looking monkeys roaming freely that were jet black and had white rings circling their eyes. We later found out that you can stay on this island for 150 baht a night and had we known this beforehand we would have definitely camped on the island. We would recommend this to anyone thinking of coming into this area and doing the trip!

We met a couple of aussie girls and a really interesting Thai bloke called Tip and after our little adventure we all headed out for beers on Samui to finish off the best day we'd had so far. The evening started off fairly relaxed, smoking sheesha and drinking on the beach, but after the others left we soon found ourselves really quite drunk and ended up at some random half moon party/rave a few kilometres down the road. We were dancing our socks off until about 5.30 in the morning. It was good fun until we woke up the next morning and needed to check out and move onto our next destination - Koh Phangan.