25th June - ok so we got up early on the 25th June to catch a taxi to the airport, our first flight since we started travelling. It is classed as cheating but we think we've done really well to last this far, especially doing the hanoi, Vietnam to Vientiane, Laos bus trip (24hrs!) We flew at 9am from Bangkok to Surat Thani which is on the main land. We then took a 2 hour bus trip to the port an dthen a 2 hr boat trip over to Koh Samui itself. Once there we then took a mini van to Hat Chaweng Beach as lonely planet advises this is where all the action is and it is the best beach...mmm, we should have learned by now not to believe everything the lonely planet book says! We decided to stay in a gorgeous resort right on the beach for 10 pound a night (very expensive for us. Our room was gorgeous although the photo doesn't do it justice! Si went round the pool and i got my head down as was still really worn out from the all the medication i was on. At the pool si met a couple called Mike and Tess and that night we ended up going for a meal on the beach with them. They were leaving for Phuket the next day. They had an early night so we went for a few drinks in the bar next to our resort which had a fire show and bach party.

The full moon party on nearby island Koh Phan gan was on the 29th so we were hoping to get to see it but all we heard when we got the koh samui was that all accomodation was fully booked months in advance as it was the 20th anniversary. Koh Samui was doing speedboats every hour over to the island so we were thinking on maybe doing that instead. We decided the next day that we were going to move on from Koh Samui as not only was it really expensive we felt like we were in Magaluf not a thai island. I think it was just the area we had come to, for anyone going to Koh Samui don't go to Hat Chaweng Beach! The beach was nice but the water was really dirty aswell. What we should've done is moved to another part of the island and got the speeboat from there to the full moon. Instead we decided to skip straight to Koh Tao, which is island after Koh Phan gnan and get a speedboat from there, as everyone goes to Koh Tao after the full moon anyway so we were just jumping the rush...more about that later.

So we decided we would leave Koh Samui on the 27th to get to Koh Tao and settled in before the full moon on the 29th, therefore on our last night in Koh Samui we decided to go out. We had a great night out and ended up in a club called Green Mango which was like BCM (again like magaluf!) quite a drunken night as you will see from the photos, the lady boy in the photo with me was huge and she/him came over to me to ask for a photo...normally its Si they go for...ha ha!!

So that was it for Koh Samui, we should have moved to another side off the island to get a better view of the place but we were thinking of the full moon...which incidently we ended up missing anyway!

next blog...Koh Tao...