I think Koh Samui is much prettier than Phuket and, notwithstanding recent development, I'm sure it's still more laidback. The main beach, Chaweng, is where all the development is focused. But it still had a nice vibe to it when we were there, especially in the evening, when the beach is converted into a strip of makeshift restaurants, serving decent Thai food and beer by candle light while you hang out on beach blankets and listen to lounge music. And the rest of the island is much less developed and more naturally scenic. With the arrival of some new and better hotels, I'd now recommend it over Phuket unless you're really into the club/bar scene.

Apart from the gnomes, the other big problem with the hotel was its bigness. The villas were priced similarly to the top Thai resorts, but one drawback here is the villas are attached to a much bigger and cheaper hotel. So the hotel food and service can't really measure up to the smaller boutique properties who they're competing with, at least in price. Tongsai Bay (5) Room: 6, Facilities: 4, Service: 2, Wow: 0.

We stayed at Tongsai Bay Resort, which was the only high-end hotel at the time. (Now there are quite a few boutique hotels here, which I think fit much better with the overall laid back feel of Samui). Tongsai is ok, but no better. There are a few villas, one of which is pictured here. They are huge, with an enormous outdoor space overlooking the bay, complete with bathtub, bed, and bar (Somchai the bartender not included). So the outside space gets two thumbs up. If you look closely at the bar area photo though, you'll see three frog statuettes. No big deal in the open deck area, but inside, the statuette theme is carried out to a horrible extreme. There were over 200 statues of frogs, garden gnomes, assorted animals etc. They were everywhere, row upon row, and were really offputting. There were also lots of plastic trees inside, which is pretty inexplicable in the tropics (or anywhere, really).

Koh Samui is the second largest island in Thailand (after Phuket) and is in the process of being Phuketicized. It didn't have any roads until the 1970's, and remained difficult to get to, but the airport put Samui firmly on the tourist map. When we were there Samui was still quite underdeveloped relative to the other Thai beach resorts, but I would think by now it's pretty indistinguishable. The airport, where these photos were taken, is great, very laid back with plenty of open space for tourists to catch some last minute sun before heading home.

57. Koh Samui, Thailand Sept '00

I know you're all diligently tracking my every entry, wondering, when will he screw up? Well, you got me. As you're no doubt aware, the New Zealand trip was in October, so why is it being followed by a Koh Samui trip in September? The long answer has to do with the miracle of time travel, but the short answer is I temporarily lost the Samui photos, but they resurfaced just as the New Zealand part of the blog was finished and I'm not smart enough to figure out if there's a way to slot Samui in chronologically, so it will remain out of order forever, and when some aliens descend on earth millions of years from now and are trying to figure out our civilization, this blog will cause them to question whether September or October comes first in our calendars, and throw all their historical research in doubt forever. Sorry about that.