Koh Samui -Bo Phut

We cheated and flew to Koh Samui rather than deal with buses and ferries. Short flights are much more civilised than long haul. By the time youve eaten your small snack you are descending. We hadn't pre-organised any accomodation, so sorted it out with a booking desk at the airport. The days of the cheap travellers bungalows are pretty much over on Samui so we were paying a little more than we had been on Phuket. Still, Sandy Resort in Bo Phut was right on the beach, with a pool and breakfast included. There was a bit of building work going on which let the place down slightly, but other than that it was OK. We did have a problem with our water, got moved, then worked out it was site wide.

Bo Phut is quite a nice place, reasonably quiet, but still with some bars and restaurants nearby. The development here isn't quite as unrestrained as on some of the other beaches, and the area called fishermans village was really quite nice. Old fishermans houses converted into business, but in a reasonably sympathetic way. We'd basically come to the North of Samui to await the Full Moon Party, held on the neighbouring island of Koh Pha Ngan. While waiting we just chilled out on the beach, took walks along it and generally did not a lot. This was quite nice.

We did take a taxi down to the next beach, known as Big Buddha Beach because of the massive Buddha statue in a temple at the end of it. The Buddha is quite impressive, if a little ugly, and we spent some time taking photos. We also made a donation and wrote our names on a brick for extensions to the temple. This apparently guarantees us some good luck. I'm not so sure I believe that, but if it's true perhaps I should have bought more bricks.