Reflective Reporting about Koi Samui by Alex

Hello blog readers,

My name is Alex and I'm in charge of wrapping up the reporting of Koh Samui. It was warm and hot most mornings, it was sunny and there was a light breeze. By the afternoon there was sometimes a heavy wind, but the clouds in the afternoon helped to cool off the heat of the day.  We loved the weather, it was a perfect way to start our time in Thailand!

Our resort was called Bandara and it is one of the fanciest places that we have ever stayed. Every morning we got to eat breakfast down by the sea over looking the beach. Breakfast was an all you can eat buffet - also a first for us (except for the Mandarin with London family in October). There were many different options of traditional Thai food or Western breakfast food. We tried lots of new things like dumplings, curry, seafood, and new fresh fruits. The fresh fruits were my favorite and there was an endless supply of juices to try - every colour, I liked the pink and green ones but the mango is a family favourite. After breakfast we often went for a wander along the busy streets to enjoy the mopeds passing by, notice the many wires above our heads and look for other things that were similar or different from home.

At the resort I enjoyed swimming in the many pools, my favorite was the largest pool with little elephants where their trunks were fountains putting water into the pool. Too bad we didn't get a photo of this :( - oh well - it was fun to swim under the spray of their spouts and play on the benches in the shade of the trees. One morning we went very early to do some laps and we got a cool Pagoda with mattresses in it - the whole thing looked like a small box with two little comfy bed-chairs. It was fun to lay there to warm up and then jump in the pool!

Most nights we went out for dinner. Sometimes we looked for a place close to the hotel and other times we wandered through the Fisherman's Village or a small market nearby. One particular night we stopped at a restaurant called The Thai Tapas and they had many different options for food, my favorite was a colorful meal with with different dyed rice and food that sparkled because it was sprayed with food paint. We met the owner who was a French man, who taught us about how he dehydrates fruit to make natural dyes for the rice and he Imports the gold, silver and purple edible sprays made out of potassium from France. He put a little bit of gold spray on our hands - which we rubbed on to our faces and it made us sparkle, I never want to rub it off!

It was fun to walk around at night and see all the people and all the lights. There were so many shops to go in and little stalls selling things we might not have been able to see in Canada, such as crafts made out of teak, textiles with elephants, hand carved colorful soaps made-to look like flowers, lots of incense and flower shaped hair clips. We did not buy anything but we did enjoy looking and watching all the people. Everything about Samui was fun!

Samui was a great place to have our first Thai experience and get over the jetlag from 30 hours of travel! We had a wonderful 5 days and even the airport was nice - it was all open-air, with no walls. Good bye Samui - we are off to Chiag Mai!

Love from Alex