ubignut

It’s Christmas morning and I woke up wee early – 4:15 AM!  We had to be at the airport by 5:30AM to check in and catch our flight at 6:30AM that was taking us over to Kho Samui, one of the beautiful island beaches of Thailand.  All went good and we landed by 8AM, picked up bags (while listening to crazy xmas music sung by Thai people) and hopped on the shuttle to take us to our “Resort”.  There are several popular areas to stay at on Kho Samui – Chaweng, Lamai, and the newly up & coming Bo Phut area.  Our resort is in the area of Bo Phut, a place habitated just a few years back by the local island fisherman, that is until folks started realizing it could be commercialized more.  Now it’s starting to prosper as a touristy part of the island too.  Our “resort” is right on the beach – nice right?  Well I’ve noticed that in Thailand, just because the place has “Resort” in the name, it doesn’t technically mean that’s what it is!  We got our key and was taken to our room which was pretty basic.  The grounds were beatiful, but the bungalow type rooms looked as though they hadn’t been updated in years!  But maybe this was standard?  I think so! 

First off, the room had such a musty odor, like it hadn’t been used in a decade.  But then we noticed there was pooh all over the floors… did they clean the room before they decided to rent it out?  And what kind of visitors were we going to have with us?  For the price, the room was expected as far as amenities etc.  Mike and I paid a total of $36 a day to rent this room.  We had 2 twin beds, a TV, a sink, a toilet and a separate shower stall.  The bathroom wall that shares the bedroom wall is open at the top, so literally we can hear all that’s going on when you’re doing your “thing”.  And speaking of that, most places in Thailand have bad plumbing so you’re asked to not flush any toilet paper down the toilet.  Provided next to the toilets are waste bags to put your paper into and then throw it in the basket next to you.  But overall, despite some of the non-standard immenities you’d find in a “resort”, our room has AC so we were livin’ in luxury!  We decided to not worry about the room at the moment and just get our bathing suits on and head to the beach… afterall, that’s what we were there for!  Beach was primary, room secondary.

The beach area was really nice, despite the rocky sand at our feet.  Other beaches on the island have smoother, white sand but this one was noted to be the rockiest of sand. Either way, the view, the water and the sun was amazingly beautiful. Not many people were enjoying the water and sun so it was pretty quiet, except for the beach vendors there trying to get you to buy fruits, grilled corn on the cob, ice cream or jewelry and silk scarfs.  Just from a few days of walking around Bangkok I had already started to get brown so I tried to even some of the lines out and read my gossip magazines.  Hunger pains started setting in for both of us and we roamed around the main street looking for something to eat.  I was a little disappointed that as much as the area boasted about what to eat, that we couldn’t really find anything!  Nothing around but local pharmacies and tourist agencies or places to tailor you a suit.  Up the road just a bit we found a cute little place and enjoyed some thai food and pineapple shakes, then decided to go back to the resort and haggle about the room.  We wanted a newer room, not a manure room!  After showing a few options we moved to a better one – less of a musty smell and no animal pooh (which i guessed to be Gecko pooh).  Both of us were a little tired from getting up early for the flight so we opt’d to take a nap and catch up on rest (such a rough life eh?).

Up from the nap, only logical thing to do was… head back to the beach!  This time we went to the place next door since their beach lounge chairs were much nicer.  We started looking at all the maps we collected and dove into the travel books to see where would be a good place to have our xmas dinner.  After seeing the main street earlier and what it had to offer, i wasn’t quite convinced we had picked a good, populated area to stay in.  The authors were raving about all the variety of foods to choose from – but where was it? How could this beautiful, touristy island be so limited in choices?  So after my 2nd shower of the day, off to dinner we went to see what the “Fisherman’s Village” was all about.  Maybe I was missing something.  And boy was I right!  From the main street, about a half mile walk, a left turn and a left turn again, we found the gem of a street with bars, restaurants, shops, etc.  Had we walked up the beach, it would have been a no brainer to see what the rave was.  Everything is a lot more visible off the main streets it seems.  We walked a bit down this restaurant row to see what we wanted to eat, then settled on a place called “Billabong” since Mike was craving a turkey style dinner and they seemed to be the ones that were serving it.  Food was good – they played a U2 benefit concert from Scottland so that kept us entertained, as well as a fireworks show in the background.  I had a big burger for my xmas meal, and wasn’t feelin’ too good afterwards. I’m thinking it was the coconut in my drink, but I hurled like there was no tomorrow….

We walked around a little more to see all that this Fisherman’s Village had to offer. The books were right! And I was spotting a few places they recommended for eating and entertaining so we noted those as places to come back and try. On our way out, we chose to walk along the beach back to our hotel instead of on the main street with all the exhaust & taxi’s and motorbikes beeping at you for a ride.  It was such a nice evening and totally picture perfect.  There were quite a few restaurants behind many of the resorts with people eating their dinner on the sand.  And a cool little treat was seeing a few “moon floaties”.  These are large paper like lanterns and at the opening is a round piece that is lit and set on fire.  As the fire continues to burn, the lanterns start to fill up and within a minute or two, you can release them and they float up into the sky lit.  They are usually very popular on moon party days, and at times you can see hundreds of them in the sky at a time.  As they float up, you’re supposed to make a wish and hope that it will come true.  I’m vowing to get one on New years Eve!  As we continued walked, we heard some good tunes being played a little further up and decided to go check it out.  I was feeling much better than earlier and so figured it was ok to sit down for a bit and enjoy the music.  The place was called Cactus and it was very laid back, relaxing. The music was a soft techno/trance kinda sound and was totally putting us in the mood to just chill. We ordered a bottle of wine and talked a lot, and chatted with a few others there too. We had to top off our xmas meal with dessert and chose to have fried bananas and pineapple – oh my goodness, they were sooo good! I have to say that there definitely is no shortage of good food in Thailand, whether it’s street food or restaurant food, it’s all been good so far! Bellies full and slightly buzzing, we headed back to our fabulous “resort” and off to bed.  I’m really glad we found that area – definitely the disappointment feeling is gone!

Merry Christmas everybody!