We were ditching Bangkok for Koh Samui on Wednesday. Our car for the airport arrived promptly at 10am and we seemed to avoid some of the interminable traffic that sometimes afflicts the city’s “expressways”! Arriving well and truly ahead of schedule, we enjoyed the Bangkok Airways lounge, which uniquely, is open to all passengers. The food and drink offerings were simple but X burned some energy in the kids room, sharing it for a time with a couple of pretty destructive children, much older than Xavier, but considerably less aware of basic tenets of courtesy and good behaviour.
We boarded the plane via a bus from the terminal and took off pretty much on time at 12.30pm. Bangkok Airways calls itself “Asia’s boutique airline”. In line with this, it served a hot lunch on this 50 minute flight (barely long enough to reach cruising altitude before starting to descend again). The massaman curry was tasty and the seats comfortable enough. Before we knew it, we had landed at Koh Samui, collected our bags and set off in our 800 baht ($34) taxi to Lamai Beach and the Thai House Beach Resort. L and I came to Koh Samui in 2006 and really enjoyed it. On that occasion, our accommodation was at Chaweng Beach and did little more for the week than sit by the pool or beach, read, swim, eat and drink. It was a great time. This time, we thought it would be good to stay at a quieter part of the island, hence Lamai.
After about 30 minutes, we arrived and checked in. The hotel made it a very personalised experience and we had the help of a friendly bellboy to carry our considerable luggage to the room. The staff member who managed our check-in also showed us all the bits and bobs in the room, including the in-room safe and details of the breakfast arrangements, before leaving us to our own devices. We disrobed, in favour of our togs, before hitting the pool area. All the (few) deck chairs were taken, with a combination of European and Australian guests, including an apparently multi-family group from Oz who seemed to be celebrating a major occasion of some kind (never clear what, despite our best sticky-beaking efforts!). The pool was blissful – warm but not too much so, small enough for Xavier to swim across in two legs, not so full we couldn’t find space to navigate between bodies, etc. After a while, some chairs became free and we claimed them swiftly, ordered beers from the pool bar and set in for a few minutes’ relaxation. Perfect! Perused Trip Advisor for dinner recommendations and decided on the pizza place a short walk away.
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| Pout, darling, pout |
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| First afternoon in the pool |
Headed back to the room to get changed and noticed the air con wasn’t really pumping out cool air. Headed our for dinner (really good pizza, yummy broccoli fettuccine (yes, broccoli) but alcohol-light cocktails unfortunately) and returned to find no improvement in room temperature. Reported it, maintenance man appeared shortly afterwards, numerous re-entries to room to fiddle and feel (the air and the thermostat, that is!) and eventually a gentle reduction in temperature became apparent. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough to make sleeping feasible. Given the room was a triple, but without a separate bedroom, X’s retirement at about 8.30pm meant it was lights out. Thank goodness for smart phones and WiFi. Linton watched some Netflix and I consumed some gory YouTube videos until slumber seemed appropriate.
Next morning, the air-con was still struggling. We jumped out of bed somewhat well-rested and walked down to breakfast, nicely located at the poolside restaurant. The pool at this time was suddenly glowing a quasi-neon shade of green! What the…? Seemed the pool care team had knocked off early for the last few days or run out of a key chemical additive. Combined with lots of fairly drunk Aussie guys and gals peeing relentlessly, the pool chucked in the towel and became an algal bloom! This was a big hiccup from our point of view. We had 6 nights booked and our time was dedicated to doing very little else than swimming in the pool and lounging next to the pool, frequently with drink in hand. Xavier was intended to be worn out daily from his aquatic exertions. A green pool, while not officially closed, was not a place we were about the let him drink water from, even if incidental amounts thereof. After the underwhelming breakfast experience, we resolved to ask the hotel to let us leave and refund our pre-paid room. After much research about replacement accommodation on the balcony while Xavier napped, Linton was sent in for the critical negotiation. While it was barely in doubt, success ensued! We checked out after X awoke, secured a fixed-fare taxi (400 baht; $17) to Poppies in Chaweng and off we went, with pretty good things to say about the hotel manager’s approach to managing disappointed customers.
A breath of fresh air is the best way to describe Poppies - 24 cottages on a beachfront block, with consistently shaded (and crystal clear!) pool, lush tropical gardens, friendly staff, delectable breakfasts and an international clientele. This was blissful (yes, it’s overused, but appropriate in this case).
We stayed from Thursday night until Tuesday morning. We overate at the a la carte breakfast every day. We swam in the quite calm sea, sat by the pool and on the beach, drank beer from 11am (before realising that happy hour started at 12!) and got foot massages while X concurrently watched YouTube on his tablet and happily allowed one of the ladies to cut his quite lengthy toenails without so much as a whimper while doing so on one occasion! Otherwise, nothing much of note occurred. We found a local low-key Thai restaurant at which we had a few meals during the five days and ventured to a mixture of places for our other meals, all of which were pretty good. The margarita pizza from the Thai place was, strangely, the stand out though!
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| Enjoying a massage (one of many) |
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| Busy with the tablet |
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| Sandcastle construction |
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| Dinner at Chaweng Beach |
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| Cool cat Xavier |
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| Mojito for lunch |
We had apparently timed our visit well, as the Samui Festival was on, with one of the major events being an attempt to exceed the world record for the longest line of food stalls in a row (something life 2.5km) on the Sunday afternoon. Not sure whether the attempt was successful but it was a feast for both the stomach and the eyes, with each stall giving away its (most often 4 or 5 star hotel wares) for free to those wandering the beach. While the western-style sausage and frozen fish pattie sliders seemingly enjoyed peak popularity, there were plenty of Thai delectables to be enjoyed too. We strolled along the beach for a while, sampling a few delights. Things started to get really busy about an hour after the whole thing kicked off, so we sat for a while at our hotel watching the combination local-international crowd often piling up their paper plates high with free offerings was entertaining (although a bit horrifying in that the relatively wealthy foreign tourists had no shame at all in taking copious food that would otherwise have been available to the locals – seemed somewhat arrogant and insensitive in some ways). It was a spectacle in many ways and we were fortunate to enjoy it.
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