Our 7 Month Travel Blog

It was sadly time for us to leave our hostel in Taipei and head for Thailand.

Thinking we were now on Race Across the World, we thought it would be a good idea to get a flight at 01:05 from Taipei, saving on a night’s accommodation, and that it would be fine as we would just sleep on the plane….

Not only was this now looking like a questionable idea, we also had to get two flights, first to Singapore and then onto Phuket – we were then getting a 7hr bus from Phuket to Koh Samui the next day.

It probably had something to do with flights on offer from Taiwan to Thailand, cost, and airline options, but maybe don’t do this! We did question our decisions slightly further when we were transiting in Singapore and saw a flight going straight to Koh Samui!

We were flying with Scoot and the first flight was very smooth, despite being sat nearly in the toilet!

It was around 4hr to Singapore and then another 2hr from Singapore to Phuket.

Once we landed in Phuket we decided to get the bus from the airport to our accommodation. In hindsight, it would have been nearly the same cost and a lot easier to have gotten a taxi but you live and learn! The first bus was the right bus but for some reason it didn’t stop where we needed it to… bit of a change from Japan and Taiwan’s transport.

In the end, we were walking down the road to another bus stop, where the police had set up a traffic stop, and they asked where we were trying to get to. They ended up stopping traffic on a dual carriageway to pull over a bus for us which took us a lot nearer to our accommodation!

We arrived and checked in at around midday, feeling pretty tired but needing to stay up, from our self-imposed jet lag!

The accommodation was really nice for £20 a night and had a swimming pool and a gym, which was really nice after travelling!

The next day we had a short walk to get our bus to Phuket at 08:00.

We were pleasantly surprised as the bus was actually quite nice, it left on time, and was quicker than expected!

We also packed some good snacks!

We arrived at the ferry terminal to reach Koh Samui and it was very busy, it also turns out you can take anything with you….

We then set sail to ‘tropical paradise’ along with IKEA …

We arrived at our next accommodation and were again really impressed by how nice it was, this one was £96 for the week!

We then headed out for the evening. Our accommodation was within walking distance to the town of Fisherman’s Village. It has quite a hustle and bustle with a night market full of different stalls. We found it very touristy but there were some good food options.

We found a really nice Thai restaurant where we had Pad Thai’s!

One thing we hadn’t realised before coming to Koh Samui was the high population of street dogs. There are apparently thousands on the island alone. Due to religious Buddhist reasons (compassion to all animals), they don’t really do anything about them.

Most are pretty chill and don’t do much, however on the first night we may or may not have been ambushed by three dogs that seem to hang about on the land in front of our accommodation. [insert loud aggressive barking and a battle line of three angry dogs]…

The ‘plan’ ended up being an old Thai lady who shouted, threw water and clapped at the dogs, escorting us to our door!

Luckily, this hasn’t happened again and we have developed some very advanced deterrent devices, including a bottle with coins in…

So we are ready for their next attack!