Koh Samui

Kat and I spent 4 days on the beautiful island of Koh Samui, soaking up the sun and relaxing. It was nice to just get away from the hustle and bustle of city life and not worry about anything.

We stayed at The Passage Resort and although it was catered towards couples rather than a couple of college kids, it worked out fine. The Passage had 3 pools (we barely touched them), a beach with chairs and hammocks, a restaurant, spa, mopeds, kayaks, the list goes on.

Wednesday night we had dinner at the restaurant; I got a spicy beef salad with white rice. Boy, was it spicy. Haha. Then we were both craving desert and decided to walk to the nearest 7-11 for ice cream. It ended up being 2.5km away, but we found a little furry friend who followed us for the majority of the walk.

Thursday, we planned on going to a waterfall nearby and instead of paying more than 200 baht for a one-way taxi ride, we decided to rent a moped. Okay, so neither of us actually knew how to drive a moped and the hotel didn’t really offer any lessons, so once I didn’t feel comfortable driving it after a little go-around in the parking lot and Kat rode into a bush, we decided to just lay low and hang around the hotel and beach.  

We did take the hotel’s free shuttle to Nathon, a small town in Koh Samui (actually, where the pier is located) and wandered around there for dinner and shopping. We found a cute little place called The Green Onion and I got this delicious fried rice with pineapple dish along with a milk shake.  We then decided to save money and walked back to the hotel.

Friday was just another beach day. I got owned by the sun and sported a lovely shade of red for the rest of the trip, but it was nice to just chill by the beach with my book. For dinner, we walked back to The Green Onion and enjoyed our last night meandering around Nathon.

Saturday we packed up and said goodbye to The Passage. We were taking a boat back to the mainland at 1:30. After the boat, we took a bus/shuttle to a bus station where we were dropped off around 4pm. We had to wait until 8:30pm for the bus the Bangkok. 4 hours in this deserted bus station where the only food was overpriced and prepackaged and the bugs feasted on us. Thankfully, we had had lunch at the hotel before we left Koh Samui so we weren’t hungry. During the four hours though, I was able to finish the book I was reading, write a blog post about Bangkok, and started studying for a midterm I had this past week.

The bus ride back to Bangkok was an uneventful nine hours; I was able to sleep for a good portion. We were dropped off at 5am on the side of the road (basically) somewhere in Bangkok, where a million and one-taxi drivers offering their services greeted us. We had to bargain for a taxi to the airport, but one finally agreed to meter the ride. We got to the airport at 6am and had to wait until 1pm to check-in for our flight. We grabbed some drinks and food from Starbucks and settled into some chairs; I passed the time doing some reading for classes, writing another blog post and playing Snood.

A little before 1, we decided to move to the check-in area so we could be first to check-in. Well, by 1:30 the Royal Jordanian employees weren’t there yet, so some Thai Airline employees started to check us in. Oh. And they decided to inform us that our flight was delayed until 8pm. Yep. 8pm. Apparently the flight was being delayed in Amman (it was going from Amman to Bangkok to Hong Kong). Kat and I were pissed, as were everybody else who was in line to check in, and we were trying to figure out how we’d get back to school since we’d be landing in Hong Kong after midnight and the MTR wouldn’t be open. After about twenty minutes of panicking, we were kindly informed that our plane was now only delayed about fifteen minutes, so instead of leaving at 4:15, we’d be leaving at 4:30. THANK GOD.

We quickly got out tickets, proceeded through immigration and security with no problem. We were both starving by the time we go to our gate so we grabbed some lunch and used up the last of our baht.

The flight back wasn’t too bad, nice and quick compared to the lovely 15-hour flight from JFK to HK. Though, on every flight since I left JFK, I’ve been given a survey by a flight attendant to fill out about the flight. It’s the same old stuff- how was the food, the friendliness of the flight attendants, etc. I’m just surprised they give it to a young college student rather than an professional looking adult. Haha

Once in Hong Kong, going through customs was easy, especially since we are allowed to go through the ‘Resident’ line and the MTR was still operating so we made it back to Lingnan by 10pm.

This week back was a tough adjustment back to the ‘real’ world. It was nice being forced to study for a midterm otherwise I’m sure I’d still be on island life schedule. 

Thai's Diet Coke