After roughing it in cheap hotels in the north of Thailand, we decided it wa time to live it up, blow the budget and stay somewhere flash in Ko Samui. Aoife had been honing her bargaining skills in the night bazaar in Chiang Mai and managed to charm the man in a gorgeous hotel into giving us a big discount on a luxury poolside villa, a few metres from the beach. It was LOVELY! We felt like rich people (though they probably don't haggle for hotel rooms) and passed a week lounging around with a few breaks for shopping, eating, swimming and tennis.
Snake
We did manage to exert ourselves long enough one day for a snorkelling and kayaking trip around a stunning group of islands. We were taking a break on the beach of one of the islands when, I'm not joking, a 3 metre snake fell out of the really tall palm tree next to us. How scary, then it slithered back up the tree. Didn't feel quite so relaxed on the idyllic beach after that.
Spa
Ko Samui is full of those luxury spas you always read about in travel articles. Obviously, Aoife and I had to go to one, our new "rich person" lifestyle seemed to demand it. It was gorgeous - up in the hills with views out to sea, we were greeted with ginger and tamarind juice and shown to our private treatment suite. So far, so fabulous. We started with a herbal steam and jacuzzi - we were told to strip off, no bikinis allowed and bundled into the steam room. After ten minutes we were ushered into what I can only describe as a honeymoon bath...it wasn't much bigger than normal bath (very cosy for two!), the milky water was gently bubbling and floating in it were loads of flowers, petals, lime segments and kaffir lime leaves. What a romantic experience to be sitting naked in all of this with your sister in law while a lady brought more ginger drinks and, quite strangely, plates of mini jammie dodgers. Ha ha, I wish I could say that we were very sophisticated about it all but we had great fun sniggering and giggling at our romantic experience. After that, it was down to the relaxation business, we were scrubbed, massaged and pampered for the next two and a half hours. What a decadent day, it was brilliant, I wish I was rich.
Aoife's gone home now (not before one last luxury of a gourmet meal on her last night) and we're in Penang, Malaysia. The knock on effects of our rich persons lifestyle has made it tough to go back to the kind of places where the sheets are bobbly and have cigarette burns in them. So we haven't - after one night in a cheapy, we checked out and moved on up to a four star...good thing there's only a couple of weeks of the trip left.
