Khao Tok

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. ☮️Read more