In the past, whenever I've heard the words Koh Samui it's always conjured up in my mind the vision of a tropical paradise with miles and miles of white sand, cool cabanas and a chilled beach vibe. Catching the ferry from mainland Thailand to Koh Samui, my first glimpse of the island was somewhat different to what I'd imagined. It looked quite ordinary. Sure, there were palm trees and beaches and beach resort hotels but I'd expected somewhere a bit more, well, glamorous. There were ordinary looking houses and businesses like we'd seen on the mainland and, as we reached our destination, the streets with their tourist bars, restaurants and souvenir shops looked suspiciously like Bangkok's Khao San Road.
We were staying in the capital Chaweng so, after checking in and going for a quick bite to eat, we headed off to find the beach. The best beaches we had come across on the trip to date were in Vietnam - Láng Có and Nha Trang. Really quite stunning. I was disappointed with the beaches on Koh Samui but a beach is a beach and the scenery was still very pleasant, if not as stunning as Vietnam. Despite a somewhat hazy day we spent the remainder of the afternoon strolling along the beach, drinking cocktails and eyeing the ominous looking dark clouds in the distance. There are worse ways to spend a Monday afternoon. We walked home through the town later that afternoon during a tropical thunderstorm and had dinner that night at a unremarkable restaurant serving Thai and Western food on the main street. It hadn't happened yet but I was still waiting for Koh Samui to excite me.
I spent the next day sunbathing at the beach, something I very rarely do as I'd rather be out and about visiting places and sunbathing usually bores me. For 150 baht or £3 we hired a sun-lounger on the beach for the day and spent our time lounging, snoozing, being served cool drinks and lunch and taking the occasional dip in the sea to cool off. It felt lazy and decadent to do nothing all day, something I haven't done in a very long time. I enjoyed it and vowed to do more of it in future!
That evening one of our group, our resident Welsh chap, was celebrating his birthday so after showers and a change of clothes, we headed to a nearby restaurant for dinner and drinks. We toasted the birthday boy with 2 for 1 cocktails and enjoyed a piece of birthday cake complete with a red Welsh dragon that our tour leader had organised. Dinner over we all headed to a bar on the beach where the previous night some of our group had been practising their juggling techniques with the resident jugglers. There was a cool, chilled vibe as we laid out on bean bags on the beach, drinking cocktails and watching the guys juggling with fire. One of our group later tried fire juggling herself and did herself proud at her first attempt. It felt like the perfect way to spend an evening. Koh Samui was beginning to grow on me.
Around 1am we left the beach bar in search of somewhere to go dancing and found ourselves at the Green Mango. As dance music pounded out of the speakers we pulled some shapes and demonstrated our dancing prowess to the largely unimpressed clientele. As the night drew to a close and bars started to shut, surprisingly early I thought considering it was supposed to be such a party town, we wandered past the ladyboy bars and pool halls back towards the hotel. It had been a really enjoyable night and more importantly, the birthday boy had thoroughly enjoyed himself.
Next day, having got a little sunburnt the day before and deciding not to push my luck by exposing my skin to a second day of the sun given my track record, I enjoyed a lazy morning having a lie-in before wandering down to the beach to meet the others who were catching a few rays. It had been a relaxing few days on Koh Samui and we'd all appreciated having some much needed rest. The next day was going to be an epic fourteen hour journey as we had another border crossing and another country to travel to.
I spent the last evening on Koh Samui enjoying an impromptu dinner with the birthday boy before heading back to pack the dreaded rucksack ready for an extremely early start the next morning. We were headed to Malaysia, to the island of Penang and the capital Georgetown. Malaysia was a place I knew very little about and wasn't somewhere I would have necessarily opted to visit had it not been for the fact it was one of the destinations on the tour. To my surprise, Malaysia would turn out to be a fascinating, charming place and one of the trip's highlights.