Three Brothers in Thailand
After a painless bus and ferry journey from Bangkok we arrived on the island of Ko Samui. I spent part of a holiday here 8 years ago and once we arrived in the main tourist town of Chaweng things looked quite different. Where there used to be cheap and affordable beach side bungalows there were now $150+ per night resorts. This time arriving without pre-booking accommodation backfired. Finding somewhere vaguely affordable amongst all the resorts was hard enough, but was compounded when hotel receptionists were quoting higher prices compared with booking the same hotel online. In the end we booked a hotel online, then turned up ten minutes later!
Unintentionally I had booked a hotel with a private beach, but this was great for Matthew and I as we spent the afternoon playing frisbee and messing about in the sea whilst Nilgun had a snooze on a sun lounger. We were all counting down the hours until we would head off to Ko Samui's tiny airport to greet by other brother, Jonny.
Inevitably his plane was late, which made the anticipation greater, and there were a number of false alarms as tall men walked through arrivals. Once Jonny arrived it was fantastic to have both my brothers and there were plenty of smiles and group hugs.
After dropping his bags at the hotel Jonny declared it "Chang Time!". So we walked down to a local bar and celebrated with a few bottles of Chang. The four of us took over the bar's pool table for the rest of the evening, however the quality of our games quickly deteriorated as we were spending most of the time chatting and catching up. There was so much to talk about, it had nothing to do with the rather large bar tab.
The following morning we checked out and had a short hop across the water to Ko Phangan. This island is regarded to be more relaxed and less developed than Ko Samui. Fortunately, this is true and the ferocious development that has blighted Samui is far less on Phangan. The previous day Matthew and I had booked a nice looking accommodation for a great price, but you never can tell as often hotels don't live up to the professional photos. This time it was the reverse. There were lots of 'oohs' and 'aahs' as we were shown around Milky Bay Resort. This place is gorgeous! Even the ends of the toilet rolls were cutely folded, tied and decorated with an orchid! The small resort of bungalows had a pool, restaurant, two bars, TVs showing sport, pool table, volleyball, ping pong, all beautifully presented. Which was a bonus as shortly after arriving a huge storm rolled in and precluded us from using the beach. That evening my brothers and I headed down to Hat Rin, site of the famous (now infamous) full moon parties. There were a few sound systems playing but most of the area was fairly quiet. However, with Jonny's descriptions, we could imagine the chaos that ensued (shame it wasn't on whilst we were there ;-)).
Over the last couple of days one of Matthew's feet has ballooned with swelling. After three days without any reduction it was time to seek out medical advice; Matthew had been barely been on Thailand and already needed to be hospitalised! An hour later we left the medical centre with a bumper package of iodine, gauzes, antibiotics and cleaned and bandaged Matthew, and only £47 lighter.
We spent the remainder of the day exploring the island on scooters. We stopped for lunch in the beautiful bay of Haad Yao. I had stayed in a bungalow on this beach during my last visit to Thailand (8 years ago). The beach was as pristine as before but there were so many more bungalows and guesthouses, but it still retained the charm I remembered it for. We used the scooter right up until nightfall and then headed down to The Fisherman Restaurant to meet up with our friends, Mel and Kirk, whom we had met on Otres Beach in Cambodia. With a name like "The Fisherman" you would expect the fish to be good; maybe it had something todo with the cooking method or the herbs and spices but the fish was outstanding! A beautiful end to our short stay on Koh Phangan.
