Koh Samui, Thailand

On July 9th we had a flight leaving Singapore to go to the island of Koh Samui in Thailand. We had a slightly stressful time at the Singapore airport that morning as we visited 3 different airport terminals in search of our check-in counter for our flight. According to our travel reservation (which we had made online a few days earlier through Expedia) we were flying Air Malaysia from Singapore to Subang, Malaysia, and then from Subang to Koh Samui, Thailand. Little did we know that the Subang flight was actually with the airline FireFly, and it didn’t appear in any of the departure screens in the 3 terminals we checked. We eventually (after over 40 very stressful minutes) found the correct terminal and check-in counter, and after 7 hours of traveling we arrived on the beautiful island of Koh Samui, Thailand!

Our resort was awesome, we had a private bungalow only steps from the pool and Lamai Beach!

We spent the next day (July 10) on the beach relaxing and having some fun in the water and sand!

We took a walk down the beach to check out an amazing rock formation.

It was hard to see the rocks clearly from land and we wanted to explore them in greater detail. Since there was no land access, we trekked through the water holding our bags above our heads, and then climbed up and over the rocks (in nothing but our bikinis and bare feet) to an isolated cove. We struggled getting up some of the rocks, but luckily a very nice man saw us struggling and hoisted us up.

The area was beautiful, and well worth the scratches we endured on our body and feet from rock climbing!

Back inside the resort I made friends with a beautiful parrot:

The following day (July 11) we spent the day on a boat, taking a boat tour around the island of Koh Samui. It was really nice to see the whole island from the water as we saw lots of rock faces, beaches, villas, hotels and lots of greenery.

After seeing all the amazing villas on the island we made a plan for our future: one day (when we are older and have some excess money) we will buy a villa here together. Our spouses/significant others will become best friends and take lots of skiing, golfing and fishing holidays together so Mads and I can have some serious, quality, relaxation time in our beautiful villa.

We docked the boat on the island of Koh Tan to enjoy the beach and have some lunch. The beach was almost completely deserted! The only people on the beach were the 25 people on our boat tour that day. So far every beach we’ve been to on the trip had a fair amount of people on it, so having the beach to ourselves was amazing!

Back on the boat after lunch we passed through the Five Rock Islands, which is a collection of 5 islands where they have protected swallows nests. Swallows spend about 3 months creating nests made from their saliva. These nests are then harvested and sold (mainly to China) to make the famous “Bird’s Nest Soup”. This soup is one of the most expensive soups in the world, and a bowl can sell for between $30 (USD) and $100 (USD), and 1 kg of the nests can cost over $2,000 (USD). These islands are highly protected by guards with guns, and if your boat gets too close then you are in serious danger.

This is one of the islands:

We had a great relaxing day, and it was a nice way to see and experience different parts of the island.

Koh Samui was awesome. We really liked our resort and the area of the island we were staying in (Lamai Beach). This beach was different from Kuta, Lovina and Santosa. Kuta’s beach was very long and the sand was beautiful, but it was very touristy and packed with people so it was impossible to actually relax on it. Lovina had very dark, coarse sand and the beaches were narrow. Santosa’s sand was very fine, almost like powder, but there was a lot of pollution in the water so swimming wasn’t too appealing.

This beach was perfect! The sand was a beautiful shade of light beige, almost white, and it was very soft on the feat. It also only had a sprinkling of people on it at any one time, so we could enjoy some peace and privacy while relaxing on the beach. But this isn’t the case all throughout the island of Koh Samui. Chaweng Beach is one of the top tourist destinations on the island, and that area is packed with people, similar to Kuta Beach in Bali.

Chaweng beach is full of restaurants, bars, hotels, nightclubs, stores, markets, and tons and tons of people. It totally caters to tourists and you can find Starbucks, McDonalds, and many other American chains all throughout the streets. It almost doesn’t feel like you’re even in Thailand. The area offers many dining options, including dining on the beach on lawn chairs. It also offers a very active nightlife.

Koh Samui is a beautiful place and we enjoyed every minute of our time there! We were excited because the following day we had plans to see the Angthong National Marine Park, located in the Gulf of Thailand to the west of Koh Samui.