Songkran on Koh Samui

[of both] 13th April in Thailand, and also a Friday. Those of you who are a bit more familiar with Thailand will surely have come across this date before. In Germany, it may be an "unlucky day", but here it is the beginning of the Buddhist calendar, which starts counting 543 years before ours (the Gregorian calendar). This is due to the transmitted death date of the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama.

Nowadays, it is not only the start of a new year, but also the starting signal for the "Songkran" festival, Thai style New Year celebration. For 3 days, they organize a huge water fight with cheerful music on the streets throughout the country.

But for us, it was unfortunately a day of onward travel, as we had planned to cross to Koh Samui on this day. So we are leaving the Andaman Sea and are now in the Gulf of Thailand.

We had booked a combination ticket between a minivan and a ferry (500 Baht per person = 12.93€), which also included pick-up from our hotel. With a little delay, a minivan finally arrived, which took us. We were lucky that it was closed, because already on this journey, there were people everywhere on the streets, splashing water on every passing vehicle, and on the streets, there were pickups with dancing people on the loading area around a water canister, splashing the people on the roadside. But the minivan did not take us, as planned, to the other side of Thailand, but only to a bus station just outside of Krabi, where we were dropped off and had to wait for another hour for a large bus. Meanwhile, new "deliveries" of passengers arrived from time to time, some even with an open pickup truck. Accordingly, they were wet.

Eventually, our bus departed with a little delay and took us about 3 hours through the jungle to the ferry pier in the Gulf of Thailand. From here, we continued with a ferry that was hardly occupied. This ride was also unspectacular and we arrived on Koh Samui about an hour later. Unfortunately, on Koh Samui there is only one taxi company and therefore no competition, so the taxis are extremely expensive. But we had read before that red pickups on the island drive around the main road in circles and act as a kind of "bus". So we went to the main road of the island and it didn't take long for one to come by, which we stopped by waving. It took us for 150 Baht (3.80€) per person. Those who have paid attention and read attentively will have noticed that the following could be fun, because: It was Songkran and we were in an open pickup truck... It didn't even take a minute until we encountered the first group by the roadside, who drenched us with buckets of water. Luckily, we had taken precautions and packed our luggage (which was by now on the roof) as well as all our electronics, mobile phones, passports, and wallets in waterproof plastic bags. The group in the pickup truck was really cool and we had a fun time together on the way to our guesthouse while constantly being drenched with water.

But the whole onward journey took longer than expected, so on this day we only had dinner and looked forward to the next day, as we planned to celebrate Songkran on the streets with the locals.

But when we woke up the next day and looked for something to eat, as it was not included in our guesthouse, we noticed that everything related to the water fight had been dismantled. There were no more canisters full of water anywhere and no hoses protruded onto the street. When we returned to the guesthouse, we googled why and had to find out that on Koh Samui, of all places, it is mostly a one-day festival and we had missed everything on the onward journey. Extremely disappointed, we spent the day without anything noteworthy happening. We only firmly resolved to make up for the missed Songkran festival at some point!

We then spent the next day at Lamai Beach, Koh Samui. The beach was really great. White sand and turquoise water, we have seen it several times by now, but it is always a dream. It gently sloped into the sea without any stones or anything. Here, a bar called "Utopia" offered free beach chairs by the sea, of which we took 2 and enjoyed the view. We drank 2 fruit shakes and later had a chicken sandwich with fries (total of 360 Baht = 9.32€) for lunch. But not much else happened on that day.

Unfortunately, we didn't do much more on Koh Samui, because the next day we were already on the move again. Maybe we should have rented a scooter again to explore the island a bit more or see a few other beaches, but we just didn't feel like it. Maybe the island would have grown on us a bit more, but we don't know. But it's all just a big maybe...

We were both really looking forward to Koh Samui and probably had too high expectations of the island, in the end we were very disappointed. Not only because we missed Songkran on the island, but also because of the island itself, or rather the town of Lamai. It just wasn't beautiful. There were luxury resorts lined up with shops and restaurants that were very tourist-oriented but still seemed somewhat poor. It wasn't a nice overall picture that emerged here.

It's a pity that we didn't like the island so much, even though so much is raved about it on the internet and in the travel guides. Can't change that. Maybe there will be another opportunity for us to go to Koh Samui again someday and get better impressions of the island.

Our next stop and also the last one before heading back to Bangkok and then back home, we really like. But more on that in the next blog.

Until then,

Franzi and Jonas