To reach Koh Samui, I spent about 12 hours in transit: Air Asia from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Bangkok Airways from Bangkok to Koh Samui, and a bus from the airport at Koh Samui to some crazy hotel in Lamai.
Flying from Bangkok to Koh Samui is an interesting experience. Bangkok Airways rate themselves as “Asia’s boutique airline” and they certainly are. Every ticket holder gets access to the Bangkok Airways lounge, with free wireless, food, drink, magazines, and so on. It’s like the Qantas Club, but for everyone. The short flight to Koh Samui shows off coastline and ocean, before several small islands appear. Then an enormous island appears, and the plane lands: welcome to Koh Samui. Bangkok Airways built the airport themselves, and it’s an intriguing place: open sides, luxurious, and compact.
I jumped aboard a minibus taking people to various hotels and decided to stay at some place that looked interesting. The driveway was enormous… lined with shops, and very new and modern. The hotel was interesting… I was fairly sure I was the only person staying there. It was very new and decked out in colonial style four star goodness, but was absolutely deserted.
After a wander to the beach area I quickly decided that I hated Koh Samui. It was full of stupid white tourists, overpriced crap for the stupid white tourists to buy, and underpriced Thai women for stupid white tourists to enjoy. The streets were lined with girlie bars and sports bars and massage places and cheap and nasty looking food places and 711′s and all sorts of other junk. It rained a lot. It wasn’t nice. I went to bed early, only to be women up throughout the night by lots of strange noises in the hotel… and then the power went out. Turns out there was so much rain that several rooms were flooded.
Koh Samui just pissed me off. I had to get out, but to where? I had a vague plan of meeting up with the English guy from the rafting trip on Koh Phangan for a full moon party, but I couldn’t get in touch with him. I figured I’d go there anyway.
The following morning the hotel driver took me to a boat dock on the other side of the island, where I waited for a ferry. While I was waiting I started talking to two guys who were travelling together – A Belgian guy who had been living in Australia, and an American guy who had been all over the place. They convinced me to go to Koh Tao to go diving with them… so I did.
A quick talk to the ferry ticket sales guy, and I had my ticket changed to Koh Tao. I knew nothing of the place, and I’m not a huge fan of the ocean.
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