This morning we took our time getting up because our hotel doesn’t serve a free breakfast. This left us to fend for ourselves and search for a good breakfast spot in Fisherman’s Village. Turns out there is a little hotel/café just up the road that dishes out pretty unique coffee, pastries, and eggs on toast. The place was easy enough to find and carries the same name as the village, Fisherman’s Café.
Our hotel doesn’t rent scooters (which is ideal if yours does, because you usually wont have to fork over your passport), so we asked for a recommendation. Dave, our hotel owner, said there was a really trustworthy guy just a few doors down that goes by Mr. P. The sign said “Open from 10am-6pm,” but a staff member didn’t arrive until just before 11am. We rented a 250cc scooter because the hills and road in and through Koh Samui are no joke, and went on our way.
Today we planned on seeing the entire island and successfully made it around the whole landmass! We started on the north shore in Fisherman’s Village, also known as Bophut. We rode east to the small peninsula that supports the massive “Big Buddha,” known locally as Wat Phra Yai. The Big Buddha is seated in Mara posture, with the left hand resting palm open and the right hand facing down over the right knee.
As we approached the massive structure, we saw a solitary monk giving blessings of good luck and fortune to people, so Joey decided to pay respects and ask for a blessing.
After we spent some time in and around Wat Phra Yai, we continued riding towards the northeast bay of Thong Sai. Here we saw the immense complex of Wat Plai Laem. This group of temples has a central Wat that is flanked by a huge Budai (laughing Buddha) and Guanyin. Each one of these structures is magnificent, but together they make up one of the most beautiful modern constructions we have seen in Thailand. Throughout the complex, there are also beautiful statues of Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva, Sakra, Brahma, and Indra around Budai.
After riding around the north shore, we headed south to see the east coast of Samui. We quickly zoomed by Chaweng Beach with its McDonalds and Burger Kings and made a stop in beautiful Lamai Beach. This beach is still quite popular, but not as overcrowed at Chaweng. Here, we grabbed ourselves a cold beer and a bar swing and couldn’t have been more content. The sun was shining, the drinks were cold, and we were on a swing sitting at a bar! What could be better?
After enjoying the weather and our cold beer, we decided to have lunch just south on the beach at a place called Boabab. This restaurant is not necessarily an authentic Thai restaurant, but they had a very extensive menu with pretty reasonable prices (for its beachside location). Joey and I both ordered seafood dishes, mine with fried rice, and his with sweet soya noodles. They were both pretty large portions and we were stuffed after finishing them.
After taking a few minutes to digest, we were back on the scooter and heading to our next destination, the Hinta and Hinyai rocks. This translates to grandpa and grandma’s rock. These names seem very curious, even once you see and understand what they are referring to. Even after visiting the site, we both agree that the names might not be the most appropriate…funny, yes…appropriate, not so much.
After spending some time around the rock formation on the southeast coast of Samui, we rode off and made a quick stop at the very exceptional Wat Ratchathammaram. This temple, also known as the Snake Rock Temple, is made from a beautiful red stone that makes it that much more intriguing and captivating to its visitors.
The next temple we stopped at, Guan Yu, initially seemed very out of place. After all, it’s a Chinese temple in Thailand, depicting the famous war general (sometimes even referred to as the god of war), but what’s amazing is that it’s actually a few meters taller than the Big Buddha Statue (and valued at 20 million baht aka 600,000 USD)! It was built in 2014 and has a very animated figure and expression that makes you wonder how this gigantic Chinese statue made it to Koh Samui, Thailand.
After our brief stop at Guan Yu, we visited one of the most unique temples that we’ve seen, Wat Khunaram. As you approach this temple, it seems like just another wat with beautiful reliefs on the outside, but once you get closer you are greeted with a sign that tells a story of one monk in particular. This monk predicted his own death (while in meditation) and was preserved in an upright meditating position, as had remained in that same position since his death in 1973. The monk, Luang Pho Daeng, requested that his body be preserved and put on display to be a reminder of the transience of human existence.
Once to the southern tip of Samui, we planned on taking a winding route through the middle of the island (which reaches over 1,500 feet in elevation) back north to our hotel. As we reached the southern tip and took a little break to swing from a buoy, we noticed some pretty serious rain clouds approaching quickly.
We had some fun swinging, but afterwards we decided to stay on the main perimeter road, and it’s a good thing we did. As we were riding up the western coast, rain started pouring down! We found refuge under a small convenient store and had some ice cream, but if we had taken the mid-mountain route, we would’ve been stranded with no cover.
We waited for the major part of the storm to pass and continued our ride north to our hotel. Once back, we rested up for an hour or two and head to the neighboring bay to the west, Mae Nam. It seems that each sub-district on Samui has its own little restaurant that has amazing food for really cheap. We are staying on Bophut, near Fisherman’s Village, and ours was the Hut Café. We really loved the food last night, but we wanted to try another! The one we found on Mae Nam is called Ma-Yom.
We rode the scooter over around 7pm expecting to sit and eat right away, but every single table was full! And worse than that, it seemed like everyone had just sat down; everyone was still holding a menu and no one had food in front of them. We contemplated heading back to Bophut and go to the Hut Café again, which still would’ve been great, but we both decided to wait it out since we were already there.
We parked our scooter in front of the restaurant and both sat on it expecting to be waiting at least 30 minutes to get a table. Five minutes hadn’t even gone by and a guy, about our age, approached us and asked if we wanted to join him and his girlfriend. We were a little surprised by the gesture, but happily accepted. We immediately hit it off, talking about travels, hometowns, occupations, and common interests.
They are from Munich, Germany and even invited us to a Bayern Munich game, which is one of Joey’s dreams (they have season tickets to all home Bundesliga games)! We shared an invitation to New York as well and hope we can link up in the near future. One of the greatest things about traveling around the world is all the new people we meet!
Our conversations carried far beyond the meal and we actually ended up being one of the last ones left in the once overcrowded restaurant. We parted ways and rode our scooter back to the hotel for some much needed rest. Tomorrow we plan to catch our last ferry to back to the mainland of Surat Thani, where we’ll be for one night before our last week in Bangkok, so stay posted!