Day 11 – Tour Around Koh Samui

We didn’t have a super early morning today, so after waking up a little later than normal, we get ready and head out for breakfast at the main building of the hotel. I got some berry pancakes and a breakfast sandwich, both of which were filling and delicious. Once done, we met up with the shuttle driver from yesterday for a 3 hour tour of the island. We only had a couple of destinations in mind, but our driver said he could take us to several of the tourist attractions on the island.

We stopped at a popular beach before visiting the small town of Lamai. Several large rocks overlook the sea on the coast of the town, nicknamed “Grandfather and Grandmother Rocks.” The town itself has impossibly narrow streets, so I still couldn’t tell you how our shuttle driver managed to get a van through them, much less without taking out the nearby pedestrians. I bought some strawberry juice, and then we hopped back in the van.

Our next destination was a waterfall that was a little more inland. On the way, our driver was pointing out some of the fruit trees in the area, as well as some nearby elephants that are on the island, and after taking a couple pictures, we were back on the troad. Next up was a distillery, which was unfortunately closed, so instead, we went to visit a couple of temples.

The first temple we visited contained the preserved body of a monk who used to live there, along with many golden and colourful decorations. We also managed to barely beat a large tourist group there, as the minute we started leaving, dozens of people came in to visit the temple. The second temple was much larger, containing multiple large statues of religious figures and brightly coloured shrines. Despite how beautiful the temple was, it was still scorching hot, and the heat was starting to tire me out.

We go to our second last stop to the capital of Koh Samui, Nathantown, where we grab ourselves a coffee. Nathantown itself wasn’t super noteable, as much of it is just focused on the dock for larger ships. After we finished the coffee, we were off to our final stop, being the fisherman’s market, which is a road with alleys branching off of it with restaurants and stores scattered along it. Unfortunately, we got there too early for the food carts to be open, as they were still setting up.

After a brief trip back to our hotel, we thanked our shuttle driver for showing us around and went for a swim to cool off from the heat. We dried off, relaxed for a bit, and then got a taxi to a local Thai restaurant. The restaurant was pretty cheap and had amazing Thai curry, though they didn’t really speak any English there, but we got around that using menus with pictures. After enjoying our meal, and went back to our place to get some sleep before our flight over to Bangkok tomorrow.