Leaning In

Our experience of island life in Thailand consisted of 20 days going between the 3 main islands in the the Gulf of Thailand.

Koh Samui – the big island

Koh Phangan – home of the full moon party

Koh Tao – scuba diving central

We visited this cluster of islands towards the beginning of our trip and if we’re completely honest it wasn’t all as relaxing as we had imagined. If you’ve been following along with our posts so far you’ll know that day 1 on Koh Samui involved a change of accommodation due to a couple of cockroaches that we just weren’t prepared for, and Ryan getting seriously sunburnt resulting in him waking up in our very nice hotel with sun stroke. We had planned to use our first few days to explore Koh Samui before moving on to Koh Tao for our Open Water diving course which we had already booked. In reality those days on Koh Samui were spent inside, hiding from the sun and trying to get Ryan well enough to be able to the diving which we were really looking forward to. The only place we ventured to was Beryl bar, a reggae style outdoor bar just a couple of minutes’ walk from our accommodation at Mai Samui. The Mai Tais were lethal and the food was delicious! 

Thankfully a few days with no sun and a lot of hydration worked it’s magic and we headed off to the Lomprayah pier in Nathon, a town not far from where we had been staying. There are multiple piers on Koh Samui and it seems like most of them run ferries to all the main ports so you are likely to be able to find a boat to take you where you want to go!

The Lomprayah high speed ferry stopped at Koh Phangan on the way to Koh Tao so the journey took around 2 hours in total. As soon as we were taken away for the pier and nearer to our accommodation we knew we were going to like this island. It’s the smallest of the three, and also seemed to be the cleanest. There is a big push here to reduce plastic waste and litter and there are signs all over the place reminding you of this cause. We even bought a couple of karabiners made from recycled plastic collected on the island. You can get all sorts of things, from coasters to jenga, all just made from Koh Tao’s plastic. I think this is the only place in Thailand, in our experience, that was noticeably conscious of protecting the environment. This probably has something to do with the fact that this place is a scuba diving hub. Everywhere you look there are schools advertising various scuba courses and experiences and that was the whole reason we came here. If you haven’t read about our diving experience, you can read about that here. 

We loved Koh Tao and probably could have spent weeks there if we’d let ourselves. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to properly explore the island as another bought of sickness hit us both and we spent the extra couple of days we had booked, with the intention of seeing more of the island, in bed feeling very sorry for ourselves. But we are still talking about it and how we would love to go back there in the future to actually explore it a bit, and do more diving of course!

So Koh Tao pretty much ruined the other islands for us!  We headed back onto the Lomprayah ferry and in around 1 and a quarter hours we were at Koh Phangan. We bought a ticket for a shuttle on the boat for 150 THB which was definitely a bargain compared to the prices taxis were charging at the pier. The shuttle took us to our accommodation for the next three nights which was a tent just outside of Haad Rin. 

For those that don’t know, Koh Phangan is famous for it’s full moon parties, and half moon and new moon and basically any kind of moon that provides an excuse to party hard. The full moon party takes place at Haad Rin beach and from what we hear is pretty wild. We were there when there were no parties on (thankfully!) and so the place was pretty quiet and relaxed. We spent our first full day just lying on the beach and enjoying island life. 

Our second day, we hired a scooter from our host and set off to see a bit more of the island. We headed to Mae Haad beach and Ko Ma. Ko Ma is an island separated from the beach by a sand bar when the tide is right. We spent a few hours there, again just enjoying the island life. 

On our way back we stopped at the side of the road where there were a lot of monkeys looking for food. That was kind of surreal, being so close to these creatures in the wild! But it’s just the norm here, the locals don’t bat an eyelid!

The next morning our host dropped us at Haad Rin pier where we got what I would say was a more traditional Thai ferry across to Koh Samui. The journey took just over an hour on this boat and was pretty bumpy, although the open sides helped with my seasickness! Arriving back on Koh Samui at Bang Rak pier we were tormented by taxi and tuk tuk drivers looking for a job. We ducked into a restaurant for breakfast and to hide from the hoards. Once we were done, we booked a Grab (our go to here, as it’s so convenient but in our experience also cheaper) and went to our accommodation. We were staying in Chaweng this time, the opposite side of the island than our last stay, and opposite in a lot of ways. Chaweng is basically a city, it’s busy, there’s a lot going on and, if we’re honest it’s not really our thing! Even the beaches here aren’t as nice as what we had seen on the other side of the island. There is noticeably more litter on Koh Samui which is a real shame as it would be complete paradise without it. 

This time around we rented a scooter and got to see more of the island, we even went back to our favourite spot, Beryl bar. We also got some delicious (and cheap!) food at the night market at Fisherman’s Village. The market has everything from souvenirs, clothes and jewellery to any kind of food and drink you could imagine.

We had originally booked a flight back to Bangkok but because we ended up staying on Koh Tao for longer than we had anticipated we missed it. What we didn’t foresee was that there would be no flights available for weeks when we were ready to leave. And so we ended up taking a very roundabout route back to Bangkok, which involved a ferry to the mainland, a bus to Nakhon Si Thammarat airport and then a flight from there. What should have been an hour long flight from Koh Samui turned into a 12 hour journey from start to finish.

Little did we know then that in just over a week we would be experiencing the day from hell and this journey would seem like a walk a park. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read about our nightmare of a day here.