An unforgettable Journey

Now that we have spent 6 wonderful nights in Cat heaven it was time to move on to the next laid-back island: Ko Samui. 🏝️

To get there, we had to take a Flight northeastwards across the mainland (province of Surat Thani) into the Gulf of Thailand.

Therefore, the three of us took the speed boat from Ko Yao Noi’s Manoh Pier back to the island of Phuket, where we grabbed a taxi to the airport. After a short flight we landed in Ko Samui at around 7.30 in the evening and were picked up by a taxi that our AirBnB host (Marine) had organised for us to bring us to “Villa Miss Koh”. Marine - a 35 year old French woman who immigrated to Ko Samui with her partner 10 years ago - was already expecting us at the Villa. That is because, three random Germans showed up at her place WITHOUT a valid booking on AirBnB - claiming that the platform had cancelled the transaction (which was true actually*). It was quite understandable she wanted to get to know us better and clarify the payment modalities before handing us the keys. After 2h of getting to know each other better and some lively conversations Marine suggested to settle things the old fashioned way: CASH payment! We were nodding vigorously as this would give us a much better rate. It also seemed like we were trustworthy. Lucky us!! Even though it feels weird to make such transactions offline.

So, we gave her all the money we had with us (approx 20% of the total sum) and agreed to meet again the next morning to give her the remainder. Getting huge sums of cash from an ATM machine however turns out to be a hustle if your credit card has a daily / weekly payout maximum - which was the case for all three of us. But somehow we managed to get the money and after our cinematic cash handover everyone was relieved. 😌

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*long story short: The original booking on AirBnB had to be paid in 2 steps. 70% upfront and 30% after the stay. However, Semmy’s credit card didn’t have sufficient funds for the total sum at the time off booking, so AirBnB send her an E-Mail stating that she had 72h to get that fixed otherwise they would cancel the booking in her name. UNFORTUNATELY, Semmy received that message in her business E-Mail account where it ended up in the spam folder. 😂
So, she/we didn’t get the info until the booking got in fact cancelled automatically. To make things worse, MARINE had a very strict cancellation policy in place, which would take 50% of the total sum in case of cancellation. Marine on their other hand claimed she had not received any money via the portal. It was a mystery and we had no idea whether we would get our money back. 😱
After unbearably long chats with AirBnB support and talking with Marine we did in the end get everything sorted at almost no cost.

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Villa Miss Koh was absolutely stunning and beautifully furnished. It had 3 bedrooms each with an en suite bath room, a big kitchen / living room and a pool! The stile - just Wow!!

It was our perfect home where we would spent quite some time by the pool (while the weather was good) and go on island exploration trips with the scooters which we had rented. Anni worked on her business plans. Semmy was focussing on healing her back issues. Pascal tried to work out and improve his hip flexibility with the goal to finally be able to sit in the lotus position. (Still a long way to go)

It’s hard to sum it all up in words but we were just having the best time and felt really comfortable at Miss Koh. In fact so comfortable, we extended our stay and moved back from the other villa we had booked for the second week, but that’s another story….

Overall, Ko Samui was definitely much busier/touristier than Ko Yao Noi. It was with 233 square km almost 6x times as big as Yao Noi which had only 40 square km. On Samui there were so many people on the streets everywhere and the traffic was next level. So we were quite happy to have practiced the basics on Yao Noi. 🛵

Samui was filled with tourists which brought 2 significant changes:
1) everything you can possible ask for is available somewhere
2) as a touristy/western looking person you constantly get approached by restaurant/ shop owner who want to pull you into their stores. This can be a little bit annoying sometimes especially when you really do not want to buy a suite or if you’ve just had dinner 20m down the road. :-D

Overall, Samui also offered more things to do. We enjoyed grocery shopping and cooking our own food (like Spaghetti Bolognese) and some pancakes for breakfast. In the evenings we went out to Fishermans Village for dinner and drinks. We treated ourselves to massages near Chaweng Beach and explored many nice spots around the island. However, we had no intention of seeing every corner of Samui because we were actually simply enjoying of having our own beautiful home. Also, a trip around the island takes easily more than 2,5h pure driving. Too big to see it all. However, we did get to see many nice beaches along the eastern and southern coasts and Anni and Pascal did a trip to the famous “Grandmother and Grandfather Rocks” and the Overlap Stone. Drone videos included.

Anything that could have been better? Not much really. Maybe the forms at the immigration office. And well, the weather as we did have many cloudy days and a bit of rain as well. 🌧️ Other than that: Paradise! ☀️

After a wonderful time on Samui we were ready for the next adventure: Ko Phangan. ☮️もっと詳しく

After two awesome weeks on Ko Samui, it was time for our next destination.

Actually, this would be our last one as the “3 angels for Charlie” as Pascal and I would fly to Singapore next and Anni would fly back to Germany.

On Dec. 2nd we took a ferry to Koh Phangan with many other fellow Full Moon Party tourists. Especially during this time of month the island gets flooded with part tourists who are there for a couple of nights. We in contrary would stay for a whole week. I was quite excited, as I knew Koh Phangan from a vacation 6 years ago and I wanted to check out some of the known nice beaches. Turned out that I could not recall a single spot on the island. For me everything was new 😂😄
However, this wasn’t a problem. The 3 angels for Charlie just didn’t have a tour guide as expected but instead 3 interested tourists.
We stayed at the north west side of the island in the Buri Rasa Village which was a very nice beach hotel with good food. The only downside was the recurring alarm at 10:21ish of all breakfast staff, telling us breakfast would close soon, so we better get some last delicacies from the buffet before they close. 🙈 alright! ✌🏼
Of course we wanted to take some scooters again to explore the island. Our first trip was to a very special lookout to which you needed to cross bumpy roads first and then walk through a very tiny path through the woods. Pascal said he would see snakes everywhere as the roots of the trees looked like snakes 🐍
To be honest, it was quite scary and Anni and I we’re really happy that Pascal was brave enough to be our No.1 leading the way ahead for us. 🙌🏼 after the hike we made it to thw last obstacle through some stones to be finally up the hill. Let me put it this way… through the help of different fellow hikers we all made it up to the hill and had an amazing and rewarding view!!! 😍
The weather god was NOT with us all the time, so we had to deal with quite some rain again. However, we knew how to use it wisely and that’s why we were well known in the local massage salons that we saw almost every other day. 😂😇 Getting a 60min full body massage for 450 THB (which is like 12,50€) was just a great deal we had to take.
On a lucky day we had a good intention to explore the island a little further. We saw several cool beaches. One of them was Zen beach. This was a place for young people to chill out at the beach with a cocktail and good music. Some people were even performing Acro yoga, which was very cool to witness. I loved doing it myself with Vanja and Mary in Germany some time ago, and it reminded me how great it is and that I definitely want to do it again!!
After Zen beach and crazy roads (completely broken, flooded and muddy) we finally made our way to Secret beach for sunset. And it was really worth to watch it, as we haven’t had too many beach sunsets on our trip yet. 🙌🏼🤩
Our way home was longer than expected and we were happy to be back at the hotel after the ~1 hour scooter drive through the island.
The next day was GAME day 😂 FULL MOON PARTY DAY!!! unfortunately we had some stomach difficulties over the past days, which hit me on that day in particular. Therefore, my sister Anni and Pascal had to check it out without me.
You could say if you are on Koh Phangan it is definitely worth a visit. What you will experience is a beach full of drunk and crazy people and SUPER loud electronic music that blasts on the beach from bar to bar. Similar to our „out of this world“ experience at Bangkok‘s Khao San Road.🙉
On December 10th it was time to pack our stuff and leave Thailand after 7 fantastic weeks. We also had to say goodbye to our travel mate Anni, which was for me definitely a tearful one. It was such a great time and I am so thankful that we experienced so many things and places together 🤩🙌🏼✨🏖️ thank you Anni for enriching our trip!!
Now it was only Pascal and me again on our way to the next destination: Singapore ✌🏼もっと詳しく