Without doubt one of my favourite things about the island was the greenness of it all. Most evenings, before heading out to dinner (or sometimes staying put for dinner, when room service called), Jason and I would stretch our legs with a walk around the grounds, so that we could soak in the experience of being somewhere so beautifully tropical.
The hotel was set on a hillside running down towards the sea, so we’d meander up and down the sloping pathways between thick hedges and tall palm trees and flowerbeds thick with the sorts of plants and flowers you’d only see in the most well-appointed of greenhouses back home.
The fauna was as much of a draw for us on these walks as the flora though, truly. There were so many lizards skittering around the place that we even ended up with one living inside the bathroom of our room (he was maybe 2cm long at the most- I’ve seen bigger spiders here in the UK!), and a far beefier gecko we watched slowly shedding his skin over the course of our stay. And that’s not even to mention the fist-sized snails that appeared from nowhere each time it rained, and the frogs we had to step over on the deck outside the front door of our room, and the families of semi-wild cats who knew that being extra-affectionate was a sure fire way to get fed the handfuls of sliced ham and fish I’d squirrel away from breakfast each morning.
On this particular day’s walk we headed out a little before sunset, with the intention of working up an appetite for the meal we’d been looking forward to all trip long- dinner on the beach. Our hotel offered the opportunity to eat dinner at a candlelit table set up right on the sand just once each week, and we’d jumped at the chance as soon as we arrived.
As we walked that evening, I mentioned to Jason that the light was so strange I’d had to adjust the colour settings on my camera to compensate. The air was so very thick I could feel it on my bare legs and feet as we walked, and was so still and heavy it felt like walking through soup.
We should really have guessed, then, that a storm was brewing.
We wandered on, pausing to marvel at the boldness of this spiny lizard and to take his photo just in time before he dashed off and was lost amongst the greenery.
Isn’t he a poser? (The lizard, I mean, not Jason…)
By the time we’d finished our walk we had half an hour or so to kill before heading down to our much anticipated dinner on the beach, so we popped back into our room to drop off my camera and pick up hair pins because for the life of me I couldn’t once manage to eat a meal without needing to knot my hair up on top of my head. And then, just as we went to leave and began to look for the room key we managed to lose at least once each day without fail, the heavens opened and the first raindrops began to fall fast and loud on the little pool outside our living room window.
It turned out to be the most spectacular thunderstorm we had the whole time we were there, and so whilst dinner on the beach, under the stars and by the light of candles, didn’t quite happen, an evening of room service and watching ‘The Life of Pi’ to a soundtrack of thunder rolls and heavy rainfall did, and it was so very lovely I’m not sure I would’ve had it any other way.
~ ~ ~
And that’s a wrap from Koh Samui! It was the most amazing place to spend our first couple of weeks as a married couple, and we couldn’t have been happier with our beautiful hotel. Now if only we could just work out a way to make annual honeymoons a thing, that’d be perfect…
