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Tag Archive: Koh Samui

10 days in Koh Samui

Sawadee!  We’re back in Bangkok after 10 days on Koh Samui hanging out at the beach.  The weather was pretty warm and humid and rained more than it should have.  The Thais even complained about the heat!  The food was great tasting and cheap. Dinner was a whole $10 total when we did take-away and bought beer at the Family Mart.

 Romantic Bamboo seafood spaghetti

Romantic Bamboo was up the street from our hotel. It’s owned by an Italian guy and his Thai wife. She does all the cooking. He is perfect for a restaurant – personable, friendly, talkative, describes the food well, makes great suggestions. We ate there three nights.

Speaking of beer … Thailand has regulations on what time any alcohol can be sold and we never could remember the times!  The Family Mart and 7-11 all post the times on the refrigerated cases, thank heavens.  I know beer can’t be sold until 11 AM and, I think, it’s until 2 PM.  Then sales can start again sometime in the late afternoon.

We used some SPG points and stayed at two different properties – Sheraton and Le Meridien.  We liked them both but liked different things about each property.  The beach at the Meridien is covered with white soft sand and a reef protects it, making the water nice and calm.  The Sheraton’s water has many more waves, making it a great place if you’re into playing in the waves, but the sand is much coarser with lots of tiny shells in it.

Sheraton beach and waves

This beach is by the Sheraton Samui. The waves were pretty big while we stayed there.

rocks on beach

Soft sand by the Le Meridien hotel on Koh Samui. This beach was easy to walk on in our bare feet.

Sunset on a Koh Samui beach. Must be Happy Hour time!

Each hotel is located in the middle of a little village with restaurants and LAUNDRIES meaning we had clean clothes for about $1.25 per kilo of laundry. We’d waited awhile to do the wash so our bill was about $5.   We dropped the dirty clothes off in the morning and could pick it up the next day, clean and folded.  One day, the drying took a bit longer after the downpour we had in the middle of the night.  The lightning and thunder woke us both up about 5 AM and kept us awake for about an hour.

We took the wine glass from the air-conditioned room to the patio and it steamed up, along with my watch and the camera lens!

82 F feels like 91F

Notice the “Feels like” temp

weather report

84% humidity at 82 F. This is VERY humid!

 

If you need a drink or food at the pool, just push the buzzer on the table by your beach chair.

meridien do not disturb

This is the “Do not Disturb”
sign at the Le Meridien hotel in Koh Samui. It really is NOT a monkey picking his nose.

fungi on tree

We walked by this tree every morning. I have no idea what the fungi are that grow on the tree, but they’re pretty interesting.

Always take beer along on kayaking trips

We learned a valuable lesson from a couple we met at the hotel yesterday while having drinks.  The couple is from Illinois – one U. of Illinois grad and one U. of Michigan grad.  You can’t avoid the Big 10 people no matter where you are in the world.

They went sea kayaking and took along a bag with wallet, money, credit card, passport and 4 beers in cans.  As they kayaked, they drank the beers and returned the empty cans to the bag to be safely and responsibly disposed of at the hotel.  As they got back to the beach with the kayak, they realized the bag had fallen out of the kayak so off they went to retrace their rowing steps.

Right as they got up to a dock up the beach, what did they see?  Amazingly, his bag was floating happily in the water.  They give all the credit to the empty beer cans for keeping the bag afloat!  The contents were a bit wet, but everything was still in the bag.

See, beer and kayaks go well together!

koh samui beach Sheraton

One of the beaches on Koh Samui. This one had rough waves over the weekend.