The ferry doesn’t leave for a few so we chill in the hostel lounge area until ferry time. Utah Nick is there and he’s eager to see me up on my feet and the swelling fading from my eyes already. He gives me a high five and we become Facebook friends. Nick is gonna be up in Chang Mai in the North so we’ll hit him up for some intel on that later. We’re coming around to that area in a few weeks. Hopefully we can even meet back up further down the trail here.
We tell Nick we’re heading to Cambodia next. “If you see a tall Mormon named Elder Hall say hi. That’s my cousin haha!” Good go with the flow dude, Nick. Hope we can meet up later.
We get the Goodtimes desk girl to call us in a taxi and go out to the road to meet it.
We get taken to a different pier than the one we came in on. Got just under an hour to kill so we head across the street to a place called The Hub for some pre-boarding brews and grub. I go super cautious this round and just opt for a burger. If there’s fish sauce in this fucking burger I will lose my damn mind.
The ol’ hives are clearing up throughout the day dramatically. Thinning out from red to pink. I’ve got some energy back too which is a major bonus. Thai medicine, I tell ya.
We head down the pier to the boat. Looks like a speedy bitch! (It’s the boat on the left)
We take the comfy speed ferry back to Koh Samui. Takes about a half hour. They just show full moon party videos the whole time. Looks like some legendary shit, may have to make a return trip at some point.
Back on Koh Samui we hail a taxi. Well 25 taxi drivers hail us actually. It’s a 50 minute drive back to chaweng road. They want 1000 baht. Seems ridiculous. We talk them down to 250 each. “We’ll get a tour of the island I guess.”
The drive is through the rural side of the island. Little houses and schools. Nice to see the not so touristy side. It’s all local hangs and no white folks anywhere.
We get dropped off at Chaweng Regent Beach Resort. I told Queenie I’d treat her to a nice beach side resort for her birthday, but then she got super excited and just went ahead and booked this place before we left Koh Phangan. It is swaaaaanky pants.
A girl named Bassy, which she pronounced ‘Bossy’, took care of our check in. Super friendly and nice she gave us some cool towels scented with lemongrass and a round of some kind of coconut rice water that was pretty refreshing.
Bassy takes us through the grounds to our room. This place is really really well kept and the scenery and decor is just amazing.
And the room we got is pimping!
We head down to the beach to check it out. Walk passed the adjoining Red Snapper (same people that own the Tai restaurant that blew our minds 2 nights ago), a gazebo and koi pond area, the amazing pool and swim up bar, a second pool and whole other restaurant, and then out to the expanse of white sand beach. This place is beautiful!
This will do for sure. We take a short walk down the beach. there are a number of massage platforms set up everywhere and the whole area is high end resorts like the one we were in.
Wash the feet and back to the room. There’s a giant slug on the tree outside our door.
We go to family mart and stock up on some supplies for the night. We get a bottle of vodka, some original red bulls, passion fruit juice, some odd flavors of chips, something cute and pink (because Queenie is powerless against cute pink advertising, or anything with a panda on it), and some dried durian which I’m guessing is horrendously disgusting but, I mean, we just gotta try it. (It’s disgusting).
Narco sets up the bar back at the pad
We make some stiffies and head out to the Koi pond gazeebo to relax with a drink. I’m starting to feel pretty well at this point. It’s kind of amazing.
The hives are disappearing, I’ve got way way more energy, I can carry a conversation and make decisions, I’m almost a normal person again!
We finish the vodka off over a few rounds by the koi and we decide to make another effort for Bees Knees since we bailed on it the night before and it still has a really cute name. Plus it’s the only microbrewery on the island.
A short walk from the resort and we’re there. It’s a cool spot, that I forgot to get a picture of outside, with a short bar and all the brewing gear set up on the ground floor.
We meet the owner, Jim (who’s pouring the beer there), and he’s a polite and patient guy from London. He used to be a helicopter pilot working for oil and gas in Singapore for a while but felt he was getting too old for it. So he decided to open a brewery in Thailand. There are a lot of benefits to opening businesses here, despite the mountains of paperwork, apparently.
Jim is fairly open about things and we have a good chat while sampling the four beers he has on tap at the moment: The Black Bee, Wheaty Bee, Summer Bee and Bitter Bee. They are a porter, fruity wheat, pilsner, and english style bitter respectively. All are decent. nothing terribly groundbreaking here but good takes on the classics and definitely definitely an amazing reprieve from the Chang and Singha that we’ve been swilling on everywhere else.
After the second round we decide it’s dinner time. Jim offers us a tip on getting back to Chaweng: There’s a shortcut through a car park outside Tops grocery store that leads to an alley which pops you out halfway down the strip. Should save a bundle of time. Cheers Jim!
And then we totally miss the shortcut but kind of make our own. We walk the strip looking for a spot that catches our eye but everything just seems too touristy at the moment. We get a lift back to a place closer to Bees Knees (yes passed the shortcut that we took) and decide that we should have just gone with our instincts to go there in the first place.
We did meet some interesting characters along the way I guess
My reasoning for going back to the first restaurant we’d seen was that it was all locals there and it wasn’t on the strip. We’ve found ourselves in these circumstances, notably in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia, on the last trip and it always seemed to work. You get off the main tourist strip by a few blocks and find where the locals eat. It will usually be 1/4th the price and twice as good
The place is called Samui D BBQ and it’s basically one of those spots that you get your own grill, go pick out whatever you want, buffet style, and then cook it up yourself. Some people don’t like this kind of dining (we call it ‘Nice to Meat you’ back home), but I think it’s kind of fun. Drisdelle is worried about cross contamination and being drunks cooking under cooked meat, but I don’t think we’ll have a problem.
We grab some beers and feast the hell out of it. We get two grills so that Q and D can have a seafood one all to themselves. It’s a good mix of stuff. All of those unique mushrooms and veggies you only seem to get at Asian places, and tons and tons of marinated and peppered meats. We cook up several rounds and are pretty content.
After dinner I put back my new cocktail with a Chang. That antibiotic is a doozy
“Ok, what’s next?” Good question. After our Koi pond vodkas, the Bees Knees brews and this round of Changs we were starting to feel pretty good. The jet lag seemed to be under control and my steroid shot and pills concoction was doing wonders for my energy levels and mood. I’m back, baby!
“Green Mango?”, “Oh fuck yeah, let’s go to Green Mango!”
And then things took a turn for the stupid…