Hey,
So this post is well over due I’m finally getting back to writing posts again after my trip to Thailand so I wanted my first post to be about my trip. I wanted to share my experience in Koh Samui – where I stayed, favourite restaurants, trips that we done etc so I hope you enjoy it will be a long post :).
Myself and two friends headed to Koh Samui, Thailand on May 20th we flew from Cork to London, London to Kuala Lumpur and finally from Kuala Lumpur to Koh Samui. Our long flight from London to Kuala Lumpur was with Malaysian Airlines we were a bit nervous about it but apart from the screaming kids behind us it was fine. After a day of travelling we finally arrived at Koh Samui the airport here is outside so when you step off the plane its just instant heat we arrived early in the morning so we had a full day ahead of us to get sorted which was great. After surviving queuing outside in 35 degree heat with no AC for passport control we booked our transport to our hotel luckily it was only a few minutes away.
Our Hotel
After reading ridiculous amounts of hotel reviews on Tripadvisor we booked the Dara Samui Hotel Beach Resort & Spa Villa and because we arrived so early asked for early check-in. When we arrived the staff we so nice and we knew we had made a good choice booking here. We got two double rooms and they were so spacious and had air conditioning, balcony and most importantly Wi-Fi in each room 🙂
The hotel had a swimming pool and it was right on the beach. The beach was Chaweng beach and it was so nice the water was like a hot bath I usually don’t get in the sea because its always so cold but here it was amazing!
Over all the hotel was perfect it was so clean, the staff were so friendly they couldn’t do enough for us and it was in the perfect location. We could literally walk everywhere from our hotel a 5 minute walk brought us to the main bars and restaurants.
View on the beach in front of our hotel
Delicious smoothie on the beach in front of our hotel
Restaurants
We did not have breakfast or dinner included in our hotel so we used Tripadvisor a lot to find top restaurants in Koh Samui. Here are a few of my favourites and if you are going to Koh Samui must visit.
- Khaw Glong Thai Restaurant (Delicious Thai food)
- Duomo (Italian)
- The Coffee Club (Amazing for breakfast and smoothies)
Mango Smoothie from The Coffee Club the nicest smoothie I ever had 🙂
- The Cliff Bar and Grill (This was my favourite place views are incredible and so it the food)
Cliff Bar View
- Dara Samui (Our hotel set up tables on the beach and its such a nice experience)
Dinner on beach at our hotel
Day Trips
Coming to Thailand we had a lot of things in mind that we wanted to do we did leave it a bit late to book them we actually booked when we got there which wasn’t a great idea as some of the things we wanted to do were all booked up.
- Thai Cooking Class – not a day trip but a 3 hour long cooking class. This was great fun there are a few places that do this we went to the Samui Institute of Thai Culinary Arts. You learn about all the ingredients you use, prep all your own meals and then cook them. At the end you have 3 dishes that you then eat upstairs. The food was amazing we made Thai Green Curry, Pad Thai and Cocunut Milk Soup with Chicken. We didn’t know what to expect from this but it is definitely worth doing. We were giving recipe books and I really am going to try cook these at home.
The finished dishes
- Koh Samui Round Island Sightseeing Tour – I wanted to see the Big Buddah while in Koh Samui so we thought this trip would be great. The day that we done this trip was the hottest day we had on the holiday so it wasn’t good for site-seeing. We went to Wat Plai Laem and Big Buddha Temple (Wat Phra Yai) the bus that was taking us around wasn’t very air conditioned so after those tours we had to go back to the hotel as the heat was unbearable and we would not have lasted the whole day sightseeing.
- Angthong National Marine Park Snorkeling Tour – Snorkeling was the one thing I was so excited to do while in Thailand. We looked at a lot of tours on Tripadvisor and the tour with the company 100 Degrees East Dive Team had really great reviews so we booked with them. (Tripadvisor here). This trip was an unbelievable experience we stopped off to go snorkelling first this was my first time and it did not disappoint. We then went canoeing around an island this was tough in the heat but was worth it. We stopped off on a gorgeous island for some Thai food that the tour guides brought and it was delicious been on this island felt like we were in paradise. The last stop was at the Blue Lagoon the views here were just stunning. This was by far the best thing we done while in Koh Samui.
Snorkelling
Views – Angthong National Marine Park
Blue Lagoon
Views – Angthong National Marine Park
Nightlife
The nightlife here was great I’m not going to go into too much detail as this post is super long but the main places are Green Mango, Arc Bar and the Ice Bar.
Hope you enjoyed this post if you have any questions just ask 🙂
Richael x