Thor and and I arrive on Koh Samui to sample the island life.
NOTE: “And now for something completely different.” Thor and I made our first trip to Asia — the beautiful country of Thailand. We were lucky to squeak through the pandemic flight closures in January/February of 2020 as we returned from our three-week trip. Since more travel has now become a distant prospect, we hope you’ll take a virtual vacation with us in the following weeks. (This blog series started on June 13.)
My August 8th post saw us departing Bangkok for the airport and the lovely island of Koh Samui. (I’ll keep this one brief as I recover from surgery.) One of the reasons for our trip was to check out possible locations for spending several winter weeks in the future, with the goal to find warm sea and good snorkeling in an affordable, not too crowded location. We quickly realized that Koh Samui, which had been recommended to us, is way too crowded, so we decided to simply enjoy being tourists for a few days.
The price was right, very reasonable for this nice condo I found on VRBO, with lovely view and infinity pool.
The first evening, we walked down the steep hill to a street of basic shops and enjoyed a delicious dinner at hole-in-the-wall local Nana’s Cafe. A very tasty dinner with beers came to around eight dollars for the two of us. The owners were, like almost all Thai people we met, very sweet and helpful. We became regulars!
The streets here, as in Bangkok, are festooned with tangles of electrical wiring. I tried not to think about fires.
A sign in our neighborhood. Since we’d already visited the snake farm in Bangkok, we passed on the Cobra Show.
The next day we found a rental car (after our reservation had disappeared) and drove to the Big Buddha shrine (top photo). From the shrine, a beautiful view of the islands we will visit in an upcoming post. Meanwhile, thanks for joining us, and stay tuned.
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You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is available in print and ebook: The Ariadne Connection. It’s a near-future thriller set in the Greek islands. “Technology triggers a deadly new plague. Can a healer find the cure?” The novel has received the Chanticleer Global Thriller Grand Prize and the Cygnus Award for Speculative Fiction. Sara has recently returned from another research trip in Greece and is back at work on the sequel, The Ariadne Disconnect. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com
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