Thailand: Koh Samui

Little island in front of the Chaweng beach 

I arrive at Koh Samui after a long train ride and a boat trip which together sum up to 14h of travelling. My first impression of the island where quite mixed, the water around the dock seemed quite dirty and the little town at the dock side looked way to crowded. luckily, the dock town wasn't my final destination on the island. So I get in the cab and head towards the other side of the island: Chaweng, it's said to be one of the nicest beaches of the island, with coral reefs at the northern and the southern sides of the beach, and 6km of beautifully white sand in between.

So obviously the first thing that I do when I arrive at Chaweng is have a look at the beach. And I got hit by a slight feeling of disappointment, the beach was amazingly long and looked beautiful, but it wasn't kept clean. As I walked along direction north I encountered so many rash in the sand, from old flip flops with plants growing on it up to empty oil cans.

I continue my walk up north, and at one point you have these lovely islands in front of the beach in search of the coral that I heard of I walked for about an hour and decided to get something to eat before continuing.
Sadly enough, even after walking all the way up to the northern part of the beach and even higher, I found no coral reefs to snorkel around. I did find out that there are plenty of trips going to the national park for a day, but there was no possibility of snorkelling around the area.

Grandad's rock

This changed up my plans a little bit and the next morning instead of going on a snorkelling adventure I decided to rent a scooter together with a guy I met at the hostel to explore the island. I knew that going around the island would take a maximum of 45 minutes by car. So I decided to have a look at the two waterfalls at the southern part, and on my way there pay a little visit to the well known Grandparent rocks.
The Grandparent rocks are not more than a bunch of rocks, under which you can find two special ones: Granddad rock and Grandmother, and they have this name due to their shape, which, as you can imagine, look like their respective sexual organ.

Waterfall nr1 

The waterfalls where very nice to see, unlike those of Pai, they where full of water and and had quite powerful currents. The first one we visited was the waterfall 2, which required a little 15 minute walk to reach. But the walk was kind of the nicest part of the waterfall, which, at the bottom had a little natural pool where you could jump in (It was very crowded up there though). While the second one was very easy to acces, the waterfall itself was bigger and there was another natural pool here which was three times the size of the first one.

After the waterfalls we decided to have a look at the Big Buddha, at the northern side of the island, but before heading there I had to get some passport pictures for my Cambodia visum, so we decided to meet back at the hostel once I had everything. I went to get the pictures, and on my way back, Google maps decided to tell me that there was a short-cut from where I was to the hostel, of course, without thinking twice I take this short-cut and here is where the fun begins. The road i got on was a dirt road, and with recent rains it had transformed in a mud road at some parts, of course, I was already half way there so I wasn't going to turn back around. I gather all my courage and accelerate through the mud... Aaand I got stuck, I had to push the bike out and of course I made sure that everything around me was now covered in mud. On my way back I passed by a local house and asked if I could clean my feet a bit, the Thai laughed and the helped me with cleaning the bike. Of course, these things only happen when you are alone.

After the short mud adventure we head towards the Big Buddha in the north, and we notice that we will probably make it just in time to get tome nice pictures of the sunset. The Buddha was not really all that special but the sunset pictures I got over the sea where amazing.

For dinner we had a look at the night market, which in this place was more of a food market than a night market, you had one or two stands where you could buy souvenirs and similarities while all the rest of the stands where just food stands. Not that I'm complaining though, I loved the massive amount of options that I had for my dinner.

And I had to get a good dinner, because the following day would be a loong looong travel day. Leaving from Koh Samui at 12 in the morning and arriving at Bangkok at 6 in the morning the following day, just to get a bus there towards Siem Reap.
Lots of hours of sitting await me.