Thai Bow

Well... here we go for the final installment of my trip...

PS. Jet lag is still pretty bad - was wide awake at 3am today, and feeling groggy today... and still no sign of suitcases in Cambridge... ah well! ;-)

Akwa Guest House, Chewang Beach, Koh Samui Island, Thailand - Tuesday 17th October - Monday 23rd October
Tuesday
Woke up on this day with a really really painful cricked neck (was in tears on waking) and had to face a long and arduous journey to Koh Samui (a tuk-tuk, two planes, some ridiculous shenanigans in the now much-hated Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok, and a taxi to the Akwa guest house in Chewang beach).

The hotel more than made up for the hateful journey - lovely air conditioned place, with really comfy beds, kitschy pop-art all over the walls, bunches of fresh orchids all over the room, nice staff, and a DVD player in our room (with access to a library of films for free in reception!). The only draw-back was the incredibly steep stairs we had to haul our cases up to to get to the room... That evening we walked along the beach (1 minute walk away), got a nice dinner at a quiet hotel on the beach, and went back to the room and watched "Flight Plan" on DVD in bed before getting an early night...

Wednesday
Chewang is a fairly chaotic little resort, full of t-shirt shops and Indian tailors (trying to get you to buy one of their packages for as little as £40 - 2 handmade suits to measure, with three shirts and a coat etc... for a pittance!). If I had had room in my case, and more patience, I would have had a dress made to measure... We did the shops in the morning, and then settled in the beach for the day (gorgeous beach, and lovely warm sea). In the evening we went to a fairly posh restaurant on the beach called Eat Sense, which served really nice fresh Thai food in a nice setting...

Thursday
We hired a jeep (for just £10 for the day!), and drove around the island in it... this only takes a couple of hours, but we stopped for lunch at Big Buddha beach (lovely seafood fried rice in the most dodgy looking restaurant overlooking the bay) and made a day of it... got back to the room and watched another DVD ("Finding Neverland", which was fab), and in the evening went for another nice meal in the restaurant on the beach that we went to the first night...

Our trip in the jeep also enabled us to find our next port of call... the Golden Sands beach resort in Limai beach (a quieter resort than Chewang).

Friday
A free taxi picked us up to take us to the new hotel; which turned out to be a clean, and fairly basic chalet type thingy right on the beach front, beside the pool. We spent the day on the beach, swimming in the sea/pool and reading books... in the evening we went to a restaurant a couple of doors down from our hotel, and (quelle surprise) had a nice dinner on the beach!

Saturday, Sunday and Monday
These days were all spent in and around the Golden Sands beach resort, eating and drinking in local bars and restaurants in Lamai, and generally chilling out! We watched some football matches on Saturday and Sunday, and on Saturday I had a manicure and pedicure, and some traditional Thai massage (my god - it did the cricked neck some good when she walked up my spine! :-s)... On the last afternoon we met a really nice couple called Tracy and Richard (from Blackpool) and idled away our last few hours with them (drinking beer and sheltering from the only really bad storm we had in our time there). Was such a shame for us to leave Monday night!

The journey home was fairly uneventful, aside from yet another screw up at the god-forsaken Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok (deep breaths)... and of course our suitcases not arriving home with us...

All in all we had a gorgeous time.

Much love to you all
Hayls
xxx