Day 8 Digest from Koh Samui, Thailand
For the earlier daily travel digests from my South East Asia Backpacking trip, look here.
The exhaustion of Day 7 ensured that we woke up a bit late on this day. After the usual morning routine, we headed out to have Pad Thai by the roadside and kept walking by the Chaweng market road before we decided that we needed to explore the Choeng Mon area that was to the north of us. After a log of haggling, we finally got a share taxi who agreed to take us those 10 kms for 50 THB per head. The ride was along fairly easy as we crossed some beautiful views over the mountain roads. All of these view points were occupied by private properties and hence one needed to stay/eat at these properties to enjoy nature’s view. This really sucked, but there is only little that I could do about it.
In a short while, we reached the Choeng Mon area, walked to the beach and walked all along its length. The beach was fairly good, but was frequented by older people and/or families with kids. That was the first thing that we noticed because we had just come from a more younger area, the Chaweng beach area. The other thing that we noticed that everything was more commercialized here and one could go on the jet ski, do surfing and so much more. As we were watching all this, we noticed dark clouds coming at us quickly and in line with those clouds, it turned dark very soon. The last couple of days, it had been raining around these islands and it looked like we would get much more rain even today. Soon, the rain came and boy was it heavy. It poured for more than an hour and we had to take shelter in a dive shop. During this time, we made our acquaintance with the dive shop manager, found about the weather forecast and the various dive sites around. The underlying census was that the weather forecast was bad and the cost of diving from Koh Samui was insanely high as all the dive sites were either closer to Koh Pha ngan or Koh Tao.
After a long wait, the rain finally let off and we explored the Choeng Mon area a little bit before taking a taxi back to Chaweng. By this time, both me and my friend felt uneasy in the stomach and both of us guessed that it had to do with the Pad Thai we had in the morning. As soon as we reached Chaweng, we made a dash for our room, took some rest, had a late lunch, but a light one and then kept exploring some more of the market before it started raining again and we went back to our room. During our stay in the room, we watched the james bond movie, Sky fall and then after the decent movie break, we headed again to the Thai restaurant that we had liked during our visit last night. Food was again good there. We loved the curries here. During dinner we decided that since both of us did not like the big city culture of Koh Samui and since all the dive spots were far away from Koh Samui, we agreed to move on to Koh Pha ngan. In line with our decision, we purchased a boat ticket on a cheaper Haad Rin boat (200 THB per head) from our hotel front desk. The boat was supposed to leave the next morning at 9 AM and since we had an early start to the next day, we retired early. The uneasy stomach episode also ensured that we slept as soon as we hit the bed.
The exhaustion of Day 7 ensured that we woke up a bit late on this day. After the usual morning routine, we headed out to have Pad Thai by the roadside and kept walking by the Chaweng market road before we decided that we needed to explore the Choeng Mon area that was to the north of us. After a log of haggling, we finally got a share taxi who agreed to take us those 10 kms for 50 THB per head. The ride was along fairly easy as we crossed some beautiful views over the mountain roads. All of these view points were occupied by private properties and hence one needed to stay/eat at these properties to enjoy nature’s view. This really sucked, but there is only little that I could do about it.
In a short while, we reached the Choeng Mon area, walked to the beach and walked all along its length. The beach was fairly good, but was frequented by older people and/or families with kids. That was the first thing that we noticed because we had just come from a more younger area, the Chaweng beach area. The other thing that we noticed that everything was more commercialized here and one could go on the jet ski, do surfing and so much more. As we were watching all this, we noticed dark clouds coming at us quickly and in line with those clouds, it turned dark very soon. The last couple of days, it had been raining around these islands and it looked like we would get much more rain even today. Soon, the rain came and boy was it heavy. It poured for more than an hour and we had to take shelter in a dive shop. During this time, we made our acquaintance with the dive shop manager, found about the weather forecast and the various dive sites around. The underlying census was that the weather forecast was bad and the cost of diving from Koh Samui was insanely high as all the dive sites were either closer to Koh Pha ngan or Koh Tao.
After a long wait, the rain finally let off and we explored the Choeng Mon area a little bit before taking a taxi back to Chaweng. By this time, both me and my friend felt uneasy in the stomach and both of us guessed that it had to do with the Pad Thai we had in the morning. As soon as we reached Chaweng, we made a dash for our room, took some rest, had a late lunch, but a light one and then kept exploring some more of the market before it started raining again and we went back to our room. During our stay in the room, we watched the james bond movie, Sky fall and then after the decent movie break, we headed again to the Thai restaurant that we had liked during our visit last night. Food was again good there. We loved the curries here. During dinner we decided that since both of us did not like the big city culture of Koh Samui and since all the dive spots were far away from Koh Samui, we agreed to move on to Koh Pha ngan. In line with our decision, we purchased a boat ticket on a cheaper Haad Rin boat (200 THB per head) from our hotel front desk. The boat was supposed to leave the next morning at 9 AM and since we had an early start to the next day, we retired early. The uneasy stomach episode also ensured that we slept as soon as we hit the bed.
