Koh Samui: Thai Beaches – What Took Us So Long?

Published Jun 01, 2011•Updated Sep 06, 2022

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It has barely been a week since I was home in Kansas, but already I miss my family. Lucky for me, the complete separation didn’t happen immediately. A bit of home made its way to Thailand last week and was waiting for Frank and I down south at the beach. My mom was here, and we met her on Koh Samui for some beach time over the weekend.

Despite the fact that so many people seem to think of its beaches when they think of Thailand, Frank and I spent our first six months of long weekends journeying North. This was our first glimpse of these beaches that “everyone” seems to gush about.

Koh Samui had been described to me perfectly by friends who had already been. There is very little to do on the island besides relax, eat, and enjoy the gorgeous beaches. (For those of us attempting to learn Thai, there is not even the pressure to practice…as everyone we encountered spoke perfect English better than I do.)

After our arrival at the resort, I was hard-pressed to think of any reason to leave. Exotic and tropical, Samui felt worlds away from Bangkok. Plus, who could want for anything while enjoying a beachside snack of finger bananas with a view like this one…

And, as I would hope with any decent tropical island getaway, the wildlife was never far from view.

There was something refreshing, too, about the fact that nearly all of our activities on Samui were done outdoors. In Bangkok we move from air-conditioned apartment to air-conditioned train to air-conditioned building. On bathing-suit clad island vacations like this one, it is glorious to move leisurely from the beach to a shady veranda overlooking the water.