Koh Samui, Thailand, 2023

May 21-28

Thailand has 1,430 islands in its territories, of which, less than 50 are inhabited, and fewer than 10 are commonly visited by tourists. As I mentioned before, we originally planned to go to Phuket – the largest, but weather drove us to the 2^nd largest – Koh Samui. (We visited the 3^rd largest – Koh Chang in 1999). 

Koh Samui has its own international airport, with flights to Singapore along with regional flights that will take you through much of Thailand.

We took an Air Asia flight, with flight time a little over an hour from Bangkok and cost just over $100 each (including luggage). In that time, they managed to do beverage service and serve a meal and a snack. The staff was friendly and efficient – and a thumbs up to Air Asia overall. 

The Koh Samui airport gives you 2 hours of free wifi, so by the time we could proceed to our AirBNB (could not check in until 2PM, we arrived at the airport at 11AM), our wifi kicked out.

The taxi service had no idea where our place was (even though we had the address). The van driver took several people to 2 different ferry ports near the airport, and then drove back and forth trying to find our place, which we knew was only a few miles away. He finally dropped us at a bar owned by an Australian woman who called our host, got directions, waved down a songthaew (a Thai island Taxi – which is a truck with benches in the back), gave that driver instructions, and we found our apartment for the next week. The downside of the place – a/c was only in the bedroom of the 3-room apartment, and we had to pay for electricity separately from the weekly rental (the host said the average was 400-500baht). We did have a smart TV, so could watch some free channels (in the evening, when the fan and the evening breeze made the living area tolerable).  The heat wave that had affected us in Bangkok continued, our host said that most of the year the highs are in the mid 80’s and lows in the mid 70’s – it never went below 83 degrees the entire week. My feet got puffy from the heat and higher than normal salt diet. We were told that two very nice restaurant and guest houses across the street with pools allowed pool and beach access with towel rental of 50baht and purchase of a drink (beers were 100 baht and mixed drinks 150+, coffee drinks started at 80).

The apartment was across the busy road to the beach – so although not far, crossing could be a challenge since the constant traffic of motor scooters, songthaews, delivery trucks barely thinned. (Early in the morning was not too bad – most places don’t open until 9-10AM, so before 8:30 there’s not a lot of movement). This was a definite downside to our choice of accommodations.

Koh Samui is 88 sq miles (228sq km) – so no walking tours, but we found a van tour for $25pp that drove us all around the island. There are a lot of temples on Koh Samui, and our tour guide Tham was funny and much easier to understand than the one we had in Bangkok.

Something I had not known before, was how heavily Thai Buddhism had been influenced by Indian Hinduism and Daoism from China, and the influence of each can be noted in the different temples (as in the Chinese temple above).

There is also a different Buddha for each day of the week, and the one for you was for the day you are born (mine is the Pang Umbat – the Wednesday morning Buddha – signifying “caring for others”, polite, emotional and artistic, with lucky color “green” – which does happen to be my favorite color). 

Interestingly – one of the women on the tour had spent two years teaching English in a Thai school. She stated she was given no training, and spoke no Thai. Her wage was higher than a typical Thai teacher, which allowed her a nice little apartment, and enough money to travel around the country. She still makes some money tutoring online. By the way – Thai minimum wage is 354 baht per day – a little over $10/day. Thai teachers are respected and have a good salary for Thailand, earning about $17,000/year, and people teaching English in Thailand make about $25,000/year with any Bachelor’s degree. I digress – back to the tour.

There are many different types of beaches around the island, from wide and sandy to narrow and rocky (which was the kind closest to us – mix of sand and small rocks) – the nicer the beach, the more expensive the hotels in that area. We also discovered there were a number of night markets open different days of the week. With the extreme heat and humidity, it makes sense for open air markets to be held at night, when the air is much cooler, so people are more comfortable in the oft crowded conditions. There is also an amazing amount of diverse street food. Many people are scared of street food – but most of the vendors prepare the meal in front of you – so you can see how clean they keep their cookware, and how they handle the food. 

Koh Samui, and most of the Thai islands, are formed by “intrusive granitoids” – magma bubbling up from within the earth and shoving up rock – instead of a typical volcano, creating very steep mountainsides, some of which have worn down over the millenia with vegetation and wind, but the steep roads can be a challenge for some of the less powered scooters. The rocky side of the island had some interesting formations, including Grandpa and Grandma rock. 

Once we looked around, we decided we were perfectly fine where we were staying, so most of the week was spent enjoying the pools and the afternoon breezes, the inexpensive and good food nearby. We explored the Fisherman’s area night market in walking distance, which had some live entertainment. “Take me Home Country Roads” is a ubiquitous song throughout the world (along with “Hotel California”). They can be especially interesting when sung by non-native English speakers. 

The traffic bothered us more than anything else, so decided to move along to Koh Phangan after a week, to enjoy the more “hippy” feeling Island. The 45-minute ferry crossing cost 1000baht round trip including the taxi from the Ferry to the airport on the return. We had been quoted an outrageous price for a taxi the day before, and realized we might have to walk the 1km to the ferry, but a taxi happened to be at the youth hostel near us and quoted what we had originally expected, so no dragging large luggage down a busy road. And our electric bill was only 240baht.

Next up – 2 ½ weeks on Koh Phangan!