Chaweng Walking Street

Saturday night, fun and music.

Chaweng walking street has the feel of a market -- nothing fancy. You'll see many happy people buying cheap food and drinks and enjoying the festive yet calm atmosphere.

The first gay bar on Samui

Across the street from the second gay bar, you'll find Gay Point, a bar that sells drinks for about 20% less than Pride, and offers oil massages, including naked ones with a happy ending. Its trashier, it's more crowded, and you get peanuts with your beer.
Really close to the k-club.

The place looks a lot less fancy, and feels a little more like youth hostel -- which sounds weird but feels nice and friendly. Come in for a few drings, maybe meet some cool guys.

The second gay bar on Samui

Pride, the second gay bar on the island, is never packed. Come in for a drink before going on to the next bar. Playful videos and a few guys inside. Techno music. That's pretty much it. ;)

If you like the more modern design, the TVs playing various party and music videos (usually showing good looking guys with minimal clothing) and club music, this is your place.

Gaeng Phet Restaurant

On the north of Chaweng main road, not far south of the best massage spa on the island, there's a cheerful restaurant that offers Thai food and seafood, plus some western dishes. 

Beer is served in a chilled glass, which I didn't expect to find in a humble place like this. I guess that means it's tourist oriented. The red wine was a little disappointing, but that is to be expected: Thailand in general is not a wine country. We had Pad Thai with shrimp -- excellent, and pad siew with tofu -- very good. The starters -- shrimp and veggie spring rolls -- were also fun and delicious. 

Papaya Salad Issian and Thai Food (restaurant on Koh Phangan)

We picked a random place on the side of the road from the pier to the west beach of Phangan. It looked like a good place because the locals ate there as well.

Just a small hut to the left of the main road, 100 meters south to the Big C.

Prices are 80 baht or under for anything on the menu. We ordered fried cashew and pork, and fried broccoli with tofu. Both dishes were extremely fresh and delicious -- probably more than anywhere else we ate on the trip.

It felt like a family place, and the staff was super friendly and cheerful. Really made us smile.

If you get lucky you will also have a little friend for lunch, we had a cute little puppy to play with until the food arrived.

Koh Phangan

Much less developed than Koh Samui, Phangan feels more like a village.

Boat to Koh Phangan

We used the seaflower Had Rin Queen to go from Samui to Phangan because the departure times were better for us and the ride is only 45 minutes.

There are other, better boats and the staff is not very friendly but if you come for the day you want to come back late as possible.

We took the boat at 10:30 and returned at 17:30. Since we booked through one of the local tour agencies we paid 100 baht extra per ticket and they had a car take us to the pier at Samui and pick us up on the return trip.

If you book by yourself the ticket will cost you 200 baht. You can do that online.