Koh Samui

Things were getting tense – the stark difference in incomes was easily seen. On either side of the river, the middle class Malaysian village to the south, the poor Thai shantytown to the north. After going through customs, we had a kilometer walk in the humid heat to the Sungai Kolok train station. We were told we’d be able to take a train all the way up to Surat Thani where we’d catch the overnight ferry to Koh Samui, but southern Thailand, in particular Chumphon and Surat Thani had been devastated by flooding from recent unusually fierce storms and typhoons. As a result, the train could only go as far as Hat Yai. We really didn’t want to spend our first night in Thailand in Hat Yai or Surat Thani, but without a whole lot of information to go on, we set off on the train.

The train was dirt-cheap and we found out why quickly enough – they only had 3^rd class trains with brutally hard seats. Our car was packed solid with hundreds of boxes of foodstuffs that were loaded everywhere without regard to other passengers. It was actually pretty fun watching them try to unload their shipments at each station before the train started up again – a French girl even pitched in and helped unload boxes from under and above her seat. The ride was nearly as bad as the 5-hour haul to Pangandaran in Indonesia.

When we arrived in Hat Yai it was pouring. We immediately searched for a bus company to get us to Surat Thani by 11:00pm – it was 4:45 at the time and we knew we were cutting it close. We went to a place near the train station and luckily they had 2 minibuses leaving at 5:00 (250 Baht) from the hotel. Sweet!

The drive up to Surat Thani was harrowing - flooded roads everywhere and no visibility for the driver. We had to cross over into the oncoming lanes to avoid impassable roads.

We eventually rolled into Surat Thani right next to the jetty for the night ferry at about 10:30mp. Despite having heard lots of bad stories about the night ferry to Koh Samui, we weighed our options and went for it. The overnight ferry was called the “slow boat” for just that reason – 60 km in 6 hours – you do the math! The good thing was that the first 30 km were up a river so we managed to fall asleep before we hit the open seas. After a restless sleep avoiding cockroaches, real and imagined, we finally docked at 7:00am having avoided seeing and experiencing any bouts of seasickness. The seas must have been calm overnight, but it was raining heavily when we got off the ferry.

A few bemo drivers, smiling sadistically greeted us. When we insisted on keeping our bags instead of strapping them on the roof (it was pouring!), our driver got all pissed off. He proceeded to drive around the island for an hour dropping everyone off but us, and then switching us to another taxi that did the same thing. “Welcome to Thailand” we kept thinking to ourselves. It was obvious no one wanted us staying at Wanna Samui Resort, where we were meeting friends – instead the bemo drivers would say “Why not you stay here? Nice place.” – Obviously some places paid a little commission to the drivers. We quickly found out that the emphasis in Wanna was on the NA, as no one could understand us. Some friends from Japan, Tomi, Brad and their two kids had been staying at Wanna for a month (it was their 3^rd time) and we were also meeting up with Chad, another friend from Japan.

Eventually the taxi driver dropped us off at the main road in a fishing village called Hua Tanong, south of Lamai beach road. We paid him half because there was no sign of WanNA anywhere. We ended up having to walk a kilometer with our packs. Finally, we found the resort, but we were NOT happy campers. We checked in and fell immediately to sleep.

There were two main beach areas on Koh Samui – Chaweng Beach and Lamai Beach. Chaweng was just a much bigger, noisier, more developed version of Lamai. Both had a main road lined with shops and restaurants, and access to the bungalows lining the beachfront. LamaiWanna but Chaweng would be the place to go (especially the Green Mango) if you really wanted to party. was a good place to go out at night for us because it was close to

The first day at Wanna we met up with Tomi and Brad and their two kids Luke and Max. At first, we didn’t really like the setup of the place – inconvenient, too quiet and a pain in the ass to get around. But we quickly changed our minds: it was a perfect base to do what we wanted, the place was beautiful, it had hot water and fan rooms practically on the beach for 200 Baht, and the comical owner, Mr. Moo (believe it or not) was really nice and a superb cook. We realized that we hadn't slowed down much on our trip, and we decided we would just relax a little more and spend time with our friends. We could rent scooters (150 Baht per day plus gas) there, and there was a driver who would periodically drive us to town. To top it off, we had free access to the neighboring resort “Maria’s” excellent swimming pool. One of the coolest things that reminded us we weren’t in the Caribbean was the twenty or so wild water buffalo that would wander up and down the beach in the early morning and evening.

Our friend Chad, who had been travelling for 3 or 4 weeks in Thailand and Burma, arrived the day after we did. I still remember when Chad was planning his trip when we were back in Tokyo – I kept suggesting he go to Cambodia, but he’d never heard of Angkor Wat at the time. No sooner had he said hello in Koh Samui, than he told us that he had been in Cambodia for the last ten days… A flashing light went off in my head – was it a danger light, or a ray of hope? It was only about five or six weeks after the bloody 2-day coup that had seen 41 Khmer “politicians” slain. Chad had decided to go on the spur of the moment after talking to an ex-pat living in Phnom Penh, and he raved about it the whole time we were at Wanna together. Beth never really wanted to go, but I had had a strong desire to go up until we read about the bloody coup way back in Bali, two months before we met Chad.

The combination of being with friends and being surrounded by cheap beer (20 Baht in the store, or 40 Baht at Bars) led to a few nights of drinking, including an all-nighter at Lamai Beach. One of the things I remembered from that night was that Chad, Brad and I had been playing pool on a patio – Brad was flirting all night with, what was obvious to Chad and I but not to Brad, a “lady boy” (transvestite/transsexual prostitute). Chad and I couldn’t help laughing as Brad kept saying “this chick really digs me man!”. We had a great time, and the almost total abstinence of drinking so far had lowered our tolerance a bit too much!

Chad and I rented scooters one day, planning to whip around the island doing all the cheesy tourist things like visiting the Snake Farm, seeing the Monkey show and lots of other crap – turns out we would have needed at least 3 days to see all the cheesy sights on Koh Samui – and every one of them was a blast!

We started out down at the South end of the island, where we passed the house of some enterprising individual with a sign in front that read:

“Old House, Perhaps 150 Years Old – 50 Baht”

The house was exactly like every other wooden shack along the road. Chad and I almost lost control of our bikes from laughing. The first stop was the snake farm show – an hour-long show featuring handlers of different kinds of snakes, scorpions and centipedes. Putting them down their pants seemed to be pretty popular. At the end, Mr. Cobra comes out – a tiny Thai guy with long hair, lots of scars and 2 very mangled hands to prove that he’d been bitten over 100 times by king Cobras. We were disappointed that he didn’t do the pants thing…..

Throughout the show, the MC – a tiny little guy far back from the stage almost completely hidden by a large podium giving him the appearance of a shady auctioneer – rambled on and on, saying some of the most hilarious things. At first we didn’t know he was speaking English, but when we concentrated, we caught about 1 word in 3. During one lull in the show, he said “you want see water buffalo fighting, tonight you see at…. I don’t know what stadium… we have 7 stadium you know”. When the handlers were on stage with their deadly reptiles he would hiss and ooooh and aaahhh and say “they bit you, and you die, die, DIE! Oooooohhhh” or “you take picture, go home, show your friend, they come back”. All the while, the MC would fade music in and out by turning the volume on his century old tape player. He even ejected a tape instead of pressing play, and proceeded to apologize to the audience and chuckle. To top it all off, when the show was over, the song that came on was …… you guessed it:

Nah nah nah nah,

Nah nah nah nah,

Heh – hey – hey,

Good – bye

We worked our way up the west coast, stopping for lunch near the port area. In the afternoon, the go-carts sign caught our eyes, and we headed for that. It turned out to be a good little game center, with pool, ping pong and darts. The carts were a little expensive to rent – about 300 Baht for 10 minutes. We did, however, watch one westerner try to break the sound barrier – in the process lapping all the timid Taiwanese drivers on the course. The guy was hilarious to watch, and as we could have predicted, when he got out of his car after the race, he was a little skinny guy with curly hair and coke bottle glasses – he drove slowly away on his scooter accompanied by his homely looking wife…

The next stop was at the northeast corner of the island, to see the twelve meter high Golden Buddha. It was as tacky as expected, and I even got a shower of “holy water” for 10 Baht. Working our way around, we ended up at Chaweng Beach, by far the most developed place on the island. Too bad CDs were not a popular item as tapes were going as cheap as 10 for $10USD. I found one of an Internet cafes and caught up on some correspondence.

By the time I was done, Chad had gone back to Wanna and it was dark. They said there was an average of one person killed per day riding scooters on Koh Samui during peak season – they must have been driving at night. The thirty-minute drive home along windy, up and down, unlit roads with trucks screaming by on both sides was frightening to say the least.

The five of us decided to do a day trip of diving at Sail Rock, just north of Koh Pha Ngan (135 Baht per person). Our Pro Divers divemaster’s name was Roland, a retired Swedish army officer who ran everything by the book. His pre-dive briefing was going along point by point, quite plain and dry, until he grinned wickedly and said “If we see a whale shark, fuck the dive plan!” – it seemed so out of character that we all erupted in a heap on the deck of the boat. It was a nice day of diving if you had to dive from Koh Samui. The boat was quite big, not too crowded and the lunch provided between dives was, as usual on these types of trips, excellent.

We frequented a bunch of restaurants for dinners at night – all of which were good. One place in Lamai that was owned by a Swedish guy named Eric was really good. Eric would come by after dinner and chat about anything and everything. The stall food in Lamai and Chaweng was also delicious – grilled chicken on a stick, barbecued corn on the cob, even hamburgers! For breakfast we usually had a heaping mound of fruit and muesli, and for lunches (sometimes twice a day!) we would have one of Mr. Moo’s curries – red, green, yellow or penaeng.