Another day, another island

  Ko Samui, Surat Thani, Thailand Friday, November 28, 2014

We took the boat from Kho Tao and we arived in Koh Samui just 2 hours later. We had prepaid for a taxi to take us to the Na Tong area of the island which was about 30 minutes away by car. . Na Tong is where we had booked a really nice room for a few days - Bryan decided we needed to splash out a bit - but as tthe nice hotel was full for our first night here, we were planning to find somewhere cheap near to it, to make moving the following day a bit easier. The taxi dropped us by the jetty at Na Tong and we walked up and down a bit but we had seen Jinta City Hotel advertised on the internet so we headed in that direction. When we found it, at first we were pleasantly surprised as it seemed nice and had a pool, and then she showed us the room. Oh it was horrible and it smelled bad too. She showed us another which we did accept in the end but it still wasn't very nice. We tell ourselves that this is the trade off for having somewhere lovely for the remainder of our stay. We dropped our bags and walked further along the beach where we came across Lucky Restaurant. There was an English chap outside encouraging people in and this turned out to be Steve who had settled here from Birkenhead. Well as Steve had the full English breakfast on offer that we were looking for, we went in. Steve and his wife were really friendly and he served a great cup of tea too. Double bonus! We have to say that after so many months away from home, it was nice to have a conversation in proper English not the stunted English you use when speaking to people who can only speak a bit. Steve and his wife recommended a massage place around the corner so we popped in there to kill a bit of time during the afternoon too. It was excellent and quite cheap and once again they were so lovely we promised we would be back in a few days' time. We managed to find an Irish bar so the evening was spent there, starting with the guinness and ending inevitably on cocktails. Oh dear! Well, we had to brace ourselves for staying the night at Jinta! The next day we checked out of Jinta as quick as we could and headed with all our luggage to Lucky and for another of Steve's full English breakfasts. He very kindly let us leave all our bags with him whilst we ran some errands trying to book our ticket to the mainland and onward to Malaysia in a few days time. Our Thai visas run out on 4th December so it was quite an important that we got that ticket booked. Unfortunately we returned to Lucky without tickets and agreed we would try a different part of the island in the hope someone would know what to do. It was time to go to our new hotel and our hopes and expectations were running high. The very good hearted Steve even gave us a lift in his car.  Our new hotel, where we would spend the next for days and nights, was Viva Vacation (not a name that conjures up a glamorous image we have to agree). We waved Steve off ever-so grateful to him and stood to take in our new surroundings. Our bungalow wasn't quite ready so we went for a wander around the resort. It isn't very big here. They only have 11 bungalows which looked ok but nothing special. The gardens were nicely landscaped and they led onto the beach. It was a really lovely stretch of beach with enough loungers and hammocks for all 22 residents to sit, either on the beach or by the pool. The pool was lovely too, not stunning but really nice and very clean. And no one in it - even better. About an hour later (and after Jody had thrashed Bryan at table tennis) we were given the keys to our bungalow and it pretty much stopped us in our tracks. Jody had found Viva Vacation on the internet for £27 a night (it was normally £100 a night so we had booked it thinking we were getting a real bargain). We had just paid £13 a night for the disgusting room at Jinta so we were now paying double the price of that, but we did not expect what we got. It was amazing! It was like a whole house you would live in apart from no kitchen but we had a lounge, a separate bedroom, just the most enormous marble bathroom, a walk in wardrobe and a second toilet. Double the money gets you way more than double the accommodation. It was all in Thai style inside and we spent the first few minutes just running around and around giggling. It was right on the beach too so just a great location and once again we congratulated ourselves on finding a fabulous place. Well as much as we wanted to, we didn't spend our whole time here in the bungalow. On another day we hired some motor bikes and went around the island. We bypassed the waterfalls - it felt like too much energy was required to walk up to them, and onto Hin Ta and Hin Yai or the Grandfather and Grandmother Rocks as they are better known here. If you want to know why they are called that, just look at our photos and you will soon understand. We stopped for some funny photos and rode on. We ended up on Chaweng beach where we finally found someone who could get us to Langkawi in Malaysia on the 4th December. It would mean leaving Koh Samui on the 3rd though as we had to spend a night on the mainland first because of the ferry timings. So bus tickets in hand, we were minding our own business when we were touted for a Timeshare. As we had nothing else to do and the promise of a free coffee and a free weeks' stay in Thailand was dangled at us, we went along and paid it lip service. Actually it was quite interesting and was more of a holiday club than timeshare so we popped along the next day too for another free coffee and to get a bit more information. Deciding it wasn't for us afterall, we left with a free handbag for Jody and a weeks' free accommodation in a luxury hotel (that will come in very useful for sure). Not bad for an hour or so in their air conditioning. We visited Lucky restaurant again and always had a great breakfast thank you Steve! We also went back to the massage place and this time we were greeted by some of the younger girls shoving photographs at us excitedly asking us if we knew who the man in the photos was. Well of course we did - it was Duncan from Blue. They were all swooning and giggling and saying he had been in. We didn't have the heart to tell them he was gay! We had a nice time on Koh Samui but overall we didn't like it as much as Koh Tao. It's quite a big island and very commercialised. The roads are very busy and it took us almost an hour to get from one side of the island to the other. We didn't feel like it was anywhere we wanted to rush back to and we never find the soul of the island. Everyone here seems to be from somewhere else or going somewhere else. We of course would never say never, but for us, there is so much more out there to explore and experience, that we would rather try somewhere else first. [gallery columns="4" ids="9374,9378,9386,9390,9399,9403,9407,9416,9421,9428,9438,9444,9450,9457,9460,9471,9474,9485,9490,9495,9505,9513,9529,9537,9546,9551,9560,9569,9579,9588,9597,9608,9617,9627,9637,9646,9659,9675,9685,9697,9709,9718,9726,9737,9747"]