"Beautiful and Relaxing!" a Ko Samui Travel Page by alisonr

For me, this picture sums up Koh Samui in just two words - beautiful and relaxing. I am though leaving out one important word - HOT!!

Having been to Thailand before, it was a hard choice not to go back to Phuket. I wanted to go there after the tsunami, but our travel agent had told us the weather was better in Koh Samui. I sort of feel bad now, I wish I had have gone back and supported the tourism industry, coz the weather I got was pretty hot and sticky, so I don't know exactly what my travel agent meant by 'better'!!! In 6 days it rained about twice in the afternoons or late evening, even a bit of a thunder storm on day.

But nevertheless it was a great holiday, just what I needed after 4 weeks touring around Europe. The people are friendly and accommodating, the food amazing and the shopping fantastic!!

These are the two things you will see the most of on Samui, especially in Chaweng and other tourist and crowded areas. Sadly they have a real problem with stray dogs on Samui. You will see them everywhere, when you are eating your tea, shopping, and a lot of them are recently injured or recently had a litter. But, they are not violent or aggressive and mostly spend their time sleeping and you have to watch you don't step on them! For an animal lover like me it is a bit sad to see, you feel like patting them all but they probaly have fleas. Thankfullysome wonderful people have set up the Dog Rescue Centre. The aims of the centre are to sterilize, castrate and tatoo all stray cats and dogs, give them rabies injections and provide free medical treatment for all cats and dogs on Samui - basically look after the puppies and cats. You can donate money at many of the pubs and shops in Samui including The Wave Samui on Chaweng Beach. You can even sponsor an individual animal at www.samuidog.org.

The other thing is motor bikes, or more specifically, tourists with bandages from accidents on motor bikes! Really, keep an eye out and you will notice just how many limping, bandaged and sore tourists there are!! If you are going to hire a bike from one of the many operators, make sure they do have insurance. We were told, not sure if it is true, that you cannot get insurance from any of the operators, even though they say you can. Not sure on that one.