Samui Boat Lagoon Villa's in Plai Laem

Samui Boat Lagoon Villa's in Plai Laem

During the recent flooding on Samui during late March and early April this year, one of the persons that contacted me was Joakim and as it turned out, his family owned a Villa Resort near to where I live in Plai Laem. After a few emails to and fro I was invited by Joakim to visit the Samui Boat Lagoon Villa premises and today he was on the island and I had time to visit!

The general pool to be used by all guests, one of the biggest pools on Samui!

The complex houses 26 villas, split up in one bed room, 2 bedroom and 4 bedroom villas with an additional three beach side 3 bedroom villas! Plenty of choice and each villa has it's own pool, kitchen and living area besides the air conditioned bedrooms.

The reception

There's no restaurant on the premises, a choice well thought out and it makes no real difference since there are plenty of options available near the Resort area, including the Fishermans Village that's just a 10 minute drive away, besides the options that Bang Rak and Choengmon offer! Breakfast is offered at a small surcharge, with room service.

A view of the 3 bedroom beach villa

Since there are only villas and a general, very big swimming pool, the place has an intimate feel to it and once you're in your room, with a private pool, there's not much need to leave your room again!

2 Bedroom living area and kitchen

The one bedroom villas have 160 sqm to offer, the 2 bedroom villas 240 sqm and the 4 bedroom villas 500 sqm. Very spacious and at amazing rates!

Bathroom

I was especially impressed with the spacious bathrooms and the architecture of the villas, with all the amenities which you would expect at a modern resort.

With a great quiet location in Plai Laem, near the airport , Wat Plai Laem, plenty of restaurants within 10 to minutes rides and great offers available at the booking engines, some villas are currently cheaper than hotel rooms in other parts of the island, it's well worth to check out and consider staying here.

Booking by Agoda

Booking by Hotels Combined

Camille

Hotel bookings and reviews on Koh Samui for 2011

Hotel bookings and reviews on Koh Samui for 2011

Once Samui has cleaned up the debris from the current storm that raged over the island, it's time to start thinking of your next booking on our lovely island!

Besides this Samui info and weather blog, I also have a blog with Samui hotel recommendations that I update twice per month. Right now over 70 hotels are listed and the good thing about the reviews is that I either visited these hotels myself because family or friends stayed there, so I actually have a personal view on the hotels with often some interesting inside information that you won't be able to find on a booking site!

One of these sites is the 'Hotels Combined' site, as pictured above which compares various hotels on various booking sites, very useful to get a good deal.

The other site is the well known and trusted Agoda site

Maybe it's a good idea to bookmark my blog and use it once you plan on booking your hotel on Koh Samui or somewhere else around Thailand.

Camille

Hotel bookings throughout Thailand

Hotel bookings throughout Thailand

When you come to visit Koh Samui, my Samui Hotel recommendation blog may come in handy to get good advice on my knowledge of the specific resorts around his island. Very recently I had a blog post about this Samui hotel recommendation blog and it received a good amount of views.

Most likely, when you visit Samui, you will be staying somewhere else in Thailand as well, not only on Koh Samui. For this purpose I also have my Thailand hotel recommendation blog, in which I report first hand from hotels that I stayed at during my travels or places that I know of. Especially recently, when I started to conduct IDC's around Thailand, I find out about some great resorts.

My list of hotels in Koh Phangan, Koh Lanta and Kao Lak is growing because of this.

Hotels Combined, an excellent search tool for finding hotels around Thailand!

My reviews are personnel and honest, a very good way of finding out about a lot of small things that the websites and booking sites don't comment on or are not mentioned.

Have a look and browse around and maybe you find just that information that makes it worthwhile booking through my blog(s).

Camille

Hotel bookings and reviews on Koh Samui

Hotel bookings and reviews on Koh Samui

Sometimes it is difficult to make a choice on hotels, especially if it's the first time you are going to visit a place. For instance Koh Samui! As a result I'm being asked many times about specifics of certain hotels or information in general about Samui hotels. As a long term local (I'm living now since 12 years on Koh Samui) and due to my work in the tourist industry on the island, I get to visit many different resorts all over the island and can give an unbiased and honest review about many hotels and resorts on Samui. I can tell you why I like a resort but can also give you some ideas on potential issues that aren't mentioned in a travel guide! For instance the distance away from any shopping or the state of the beach.

For this occasion and for repeat visitors to Koh Samui, I've got a separate 'Camille's Samui hotel recommendation blog', that has plenty of reviews of hotels and resorts all over Samui. The good thing about it is that I personally know all these resorts and plenty of times you will see my own pictures of said resort being posted for a review.

The blog covers plenty of areas all over Samui and reviews hotels and resorts in various price classes.

Have look and book your rooms through my site, that way you help me out keeping this blog going as well!

I also run a 'Thailand hotel recommendation' blog that works along the same principles as the Samui blog and covers plenty of cities and areas around the Kingdom. Please have a look there as well.

The two booking sites I recommend are listed below; Hotels Combined and Agoda.

Hotels Combined an excellent booking site I can highly recommend

The well known Agoda booking site, well established and efficient

Le Café des Arts, Chaweng

Le Café des Arts, Chaweng

This Thai/French (with emphasis on French!) restaurant is part of the Papillon Resort on Koh Samui in North Chaweng. It's down the road that leads to Chaba Cabana and you just need to follow the road, about two times you probably feel or think that nothing else is coming any more but you need to keep going and all of a sudden, at the end of the road the Papillon Resort and Le Café des Arts show up at your right hand.

Most nights we went out of dinner together with my sisters family but a few nights they went their own way and during one of these nights they visited the Le Café des Arts and for their last night on Samui during this years trip they decided to go back here.

The setting is really nice, a great and unusual view over Chaweng Beach is yours from their beach side Le Café des Arts restaurant.

The menu has an extensive choice but the staff must've had a fairly off day, especially compared to the first night when my sister came here, yesterday we had to wait a relatively long time for simple things like two bottles of beer! With thirsty guys around your place that's not a good service!

Once the food came around, everybody enjoyed his meal, I had the above pictured Grilled Lamb cotellets.

My sisters sons both had the T-Bone steak, as pictured above, one of the reasons they came back actually!

A pleasant night was had by all and if you're in for a nice relaxed evening in a lovely open air restaurant with a great view over Chaweng, Le Café des Arts with it's French cuisine may be your choice.

Camille

Amari Nova Platinum, Pattaya

Amari Nova Platinum, Pattaya

During my recent stay in Pattaya, we, my student Sunil and myself, stayed at the Amari Nova Platinum in South Pattaya.

The reason for our visit was a wreck dive trip for some Instructor level speciality training, which we completed earlier this week.

Swimming pool

The Nova Platinum is ideally located, near the famous Walking Street and main entertainment area and shopping opportunities.
This Pattaya hotel has 78 guestrooms, featuring a 32” flatscreen television, a DVD player, free wireless Internet access and an array of modern facilities. Guests will enjoy a tropical garden, a large swimming pool, a jacuzzi and water slide plus there's a small gym as well, next to the pool.

A second building has already been completed and a third building will be completed with in 3 months. This newest building will have a pc in each room.

For great deals on this hotel I can highly recommend using the Agoda booking page. Enjoy your stay in Pattaya.

Camille

Donsak Orchid Garden

Donsak Orchid Garden

Going over to Surat Thani to sort out a new Thai passport for our daughter brought me to the mainland by car and more specific to Surat Thani exactly to the day it was a year ago that I last visited, with my Dad, I just found out going through my own blog!

Sorting out the passport turned out to be a breeze, the passport agency or office wasn't busy at all and we were in and out of there with a mission completed within half an hour.

This opened up some time and resulted in a visit to two different Wats or Temples and a visit to the Donsak Orchid Garden.

It's located about fifteen minutes at most after arriving at Donsak ferry terminal and leaving there direction Highway 401 to either Surat Thani or Nakhon Si Thammarat

Besides hosting a beautiful orchid garden and being located in a very nice and relaxing setting, they offer food and they also have rooms available for an overnight stay. In case you miss the ferry and could do with a laid back evening? Here's a picture of an eating/sitting area with a lovely overlook over a small river floating by in the background.

This restaurant looks very inviting to just sit down and spend a couple of hours over a meal. It overlooks the orchid garden, where my wife stocked up on some real bargains in the flower dept!

One of the main buildings on the premises with a real homely feel to it. The bungalows are cheap and scattered over the area.

This orchid came out really well on the macro setting of my camera and there's plenty more to see in all kind of shapes and colours.

The visit to the orchid garden was a pleasant and unexpected stop over, before hitting the ferry back to Samui and I can highly recommend stopping by if you visit or leave Samui by car. As already mentioned before, if you miss the last ferry and don't need any bright lights, this would be a perfect place to spend the night within a few minutes of the ferry.

Camille

International School of Tourism, part of Surat Thani's Rajabaht University, Chaweng

International School of Tourism, part of Surat Thani's Rajabaht University, Chaweng

The off shoot of Surat Thani's Rajabaht University's campus on Koh Samui, dedicated mainly to hotel management is about to complete it's construction.

The Samui campus is almost completed, in contrast to what the static Uni's website tells us and classes could start happening with the start of the next school year.


The complex houses a hotel so the students get hands on training and experience. Not sure what the rate for rooms will be but I'm sure it won't be the last I report about this Uni and I will update on news regarding the Uni and room rates accordingly.

In my opinion this is an excellent initiative and exactly something that Samui needs. Tourism is the main source of income nowadays on Samui so this Uni makes absolute sense.

It's located near Tesco Lotus' traffic lights, on the road leading into Chaweng, also not too far away from Thai International Hospital.

Camille

25th June, 2008

Today's weather;

It's very cloudy this morning but there's no wind, at least not for the time being. Current temp at 7 am is 26.5C.

Yesterday it was merely cloudy with sometimes some blue, sunny patches and it remained dry. There were also no extreme strong wind gushes, as in previous days. Max temp reached 29.3C.

Yesterday I also started a new blog, it's a blog about Thailand hotel recommendations. It's going to be a blog that will grow bigger over time, with the addition of new hotel recommendations all over Thailand. Please visit it and have a look and help me out by booking your accommodation throughout Thailand through this blog.

You can help my blog by voting for it on this blog top 100 site, my Samui weather blog is listed as Camille on Samui and currently you can find me around the 30th spot.

Camille

22nd January, 2008

Today's weather in Surat Thani;

It's foggy like there's no tomorrow, we're on the 14th floor of our Surat Thani city hotel (well, outskirts of Surat) and can't see the road. The sun is coming on hard though and soon the fog will disappear. At 7 am the temp is 22 C.

Yesterday was a long day's driving, we started at 9 in Bangkok and traffic was slow there, it took almost an hour to cover the 6 or 7 km's to the expressway.
From there on we had a blue sky all the way down to Surat Thani, 700 km's! We got to Surat around 5.30 am.

Tomorrow we will be back to the regularly scheduled program, folks. Daily updates from the Samui weather and some more stories from our travels, lots of beautiful temple reviews coming up.

Hope you enjoyed my travel tales a bit.

Camille

Day 9, on the road again, from Sakhon Nakhon to Korat, going home

Day 9, on the road again, from Sakhon Nakhon to Korat, going home

Two days ago (already!) was a busy day and we started early. After a bleak breakfast at the Karin hotel in Udon (we had to change hotels since we checked out of the nice hotel and that was solidly booked for a week) we headed off to the Ford outlet to pick up our new car. Unfortunately I didn’t have any internet access yesterday, so here’s my update now.

With a bit of sadness in our hearts we said goodbye to out Ranger Hi Rider and waited for the new Everest to show up.

At 9.09 am my wife drove out of the garage and everybody was happy. All of a sudden we have plenty of space in the car, in the backseats and for our luggage.

We continued on to Sakhon Nakhon and on the way and in Sakhon we visited various temples and a museum, which I will all introduce to you at a later time.
Sakhon is a nice city and we had some lovely dinner last night at a Suki Lao place.

Today we got back to Korat, on the way back home again.

First we were off to see the King’s Palace which he uses whenever he’s in Isaan and we were lucky once more, that Kob and Chot know so many people around here and we were allowed to see the actual palace together with one of the people who works there and who allowed us to take pictures of the actual house/palace, another privilege. Pix soon to come!

Than we were off to Khon Kaen through the mountains, a very nice drive and on to Korat again. This time we checked in to the Sabai hotel, not easy to find but well worth it. Another great tip by Kob and Chot!

Catch you later.

Camille

Second day, the Big Mango; Bangkok

The second day of our trip brought us into Bangkok.

After an early start this morning, out of Prachuap Khirikhan, we headed first for Cha'am, for breakfast, which was just under an hour away.
How much we liked Prachuap, how disappointing the hotel was, the aircon was leaking in such a way that the whole area in front of the bathroom was drenched with water, which was rather not very safe and enjoyable with the kids.

Cha'am is very near to Hua Hin and I like the feel of Cha'am, although we just had breakfast there, definitely a place to look closer into. Just for the record, Cha'am is a beach resort, popular with both Thais and Westerners.

Around noon we entered Bangkok and it took us a while to find our way to Legacy Suites in Sukhumvit, Soi 29, with all the one ways, no right turns allowed and other traffic rules around Sukhumvit, but we managed at last.

The day followed up as predicted yesterday, with lots of shopping at Siam Paragon an upscale shopping mall and Central Chitlom. At Paragon it would have been nice to visit the Aquarium at Siam Ocean World but we just didn't have the time.

Tomorrow we're off to Samut Prakan and the three headed Elephant or Chang Erawan, so keep your eyes posted!

Camille

World Resort, Bophud, Koh Samui

World Resort in between Bophud and Maenam,

This is where I conduct my PADI Dive Instructor courses, aka IDC's. However, that's not the reason I'm writing this blog entry. Due to myself spending a lot of time at World Resort, during these courses, I got to know the resort really well, since more than 4 years I'm there almost every month for about 2 weeks.


The resort is very nicely located at Bophud beach and can be reached from the ring road, it's half way between the traffic lights in Bophud and downtown Maenam.


The resort has bot a beach and a swimming pool, including a children bath so you can choose between lounging around beach side or having fun with the kids at the pool.

On the resorts beach, you can enjoy beautiful sunsets, like this one.

What I like a lot about the resort, is that it's family owned. The parents who manage the resort together with their daughter, where originally local teachers and they started the resort on it's current location just with a couple of beach huts. This must've been some 20 years ago.

In all the years that I've been coming to World Resort, it changed a lot, in a very positive way. The family keeps up with modern times and in low season they are steadily working and constructing in and around the resort to keep everything up to high standards. This is what I like about this resort, it's family run, they put a real effort into making you feel welcome and to make sure that you enjoy your stay there. The staff in general stays on a long time as well, which helps to make your stay more enjoyable.

Here's an impression of the resort. The bungalows are placed along lots of green and flowers and all bungalows just had a revamp.

The restaurant is beautifully located at the beach and the view there is awesome. See the picture below. Besides that, the food they serve is really awesome and their menu has a splendid mix between Thai and Western food.

The beach at World Resort allows for a direct view over Koh Phangan, which is located almost opposite the resort. This picture merely shows the beach, Koh Phangan is off to the left, only slightly visible.

This is me during on of my IDC courses at lunch time at the beach restaurant, enjoying the wonderful food that is served each time.

All in all, if you want to get away from the busy streets of Chaweng and enjoy a quiet and relaxing holiday, than I can highly recommend World Resort.

Camille

Big Buddha Phuket

Big Buddha Phuket

Today it was a nice and sunny day in the morning and it was time to kick back and relax at the pool with the kids.

Here are some pix of the pool at Centara Kata Resort. It’s a very big pool and has a small kiddy pool as well.

What the kids love most is the waterslide!

Another view of the pool. The hotel has 3 pools in total.

After the pool party, we were off to the Big Buddha in Phuket. The Big Buddha here is still under construction.


It’s on top of a big mountain and they’re construction a road to the top which is almost completed. On top you have great views over the Chalong harbor and Phuket town.


These funny things are the hair that’s going to be on Big Buddha’s head. You can ‘buy’ such a piece of hair and it will have your name stuck onto it on a piece of paper as sponsor for Big Buddha. The pieces are covered by marble.

The area is laced with various kinds of Buddha’s in various sizes. This one I liked for it’s peaceful appearance.

What I personally like about many of the temples in Thailand is the ‘old’ feel that many places have, this room has that old feel to it, with all the old pictures on the wall. It's almost as if time stood still.

As you could see in the first picture, eventually the Big Buddha should be covered with marble, this must be part of the marble that’s going to cover the statue.

A beautifully designed multi headed statue.

This area I would consider the inside of the temple that belongs to Big Buddha. There’s a monk sitting on the left, praying and chanting for people who do their ‘Tambun’.

Here are some dragon’s that live on top of a tubular bell.

Here's, at last, a detailed picture of the actual Buddha statue, still under construction.

Hope you enjoyed the pix.

Camille

26th August, 2007

Today's weather from Surat Thani;

This morning there was light overcast in Surat Thani city, where we stayed for the night. This morning we left real early to be on time for the wedding which was in Donsak, where there was a light drizzle. Temp right now is 30C with light overcast.

In Surat Thani we stay at the Diamond Plaza Hotel, which is a good deal for just under 1.000,-Baht per night, incl. breakfast, with a swimming pool, massage parlour and gym on the 3rd floor and Wifi for 100,-Baht per 24 hours in the room. If you ever get stuck in Surat Thani city, this is a good recommendation. It's also next to a big Tesco Lotus shopping mall.

Yesterday it was a nice day which saw some sunshine and both on Samui and Surath Thani there was a max temp of 33C

Camille

The Sea Lodge on Koh Tao

The Sea Lodge on Koh Tao

Is my favorite place to stay on Koh Tao. It's smack downtown Mae Haad and ideal if you're just there for diving and want to be located centrally. It's directly next to the Safety Stop bar and at the end of the Seatran pier on Koh Tao and on top of the Diver's Emporium.

The Sea Lodge's logo.

One of their rooms. All rooms are fitted with Teak furnishings, air-conditioning and ceiling fans, hot water shower, mini bar, 40 channel satellite TV and FREE WIFI.

They only have 4 rooms, so an early booking may be well in place;

Room 1 Deluxe four person family suite with panoramic bay views and lounge area
Room 2 Double room with queen size bed
Room 3 Double room with twin beds
Room 4 Triple room with queen size bed and one single bed

Bookings can be made by through my Thailand hotels recommendation blog on the Sea Lodge write up page.

Here are the rates;

GUEST RATES

HIGH SEASON LOW SEASON HIGH SEASON LOW SEASON
01 /06 – 30/09 01/10 – 15/12 16/12 – 30/04 01/05 – 30/06
Room 1 2500B 2000B 2500B 2000B
Room 2 1700B 1300B 1700B 1300B
Room 3 1700B 1300B 1700B 1300B
Room 4 1900B 1500B 1900B 1500B

Rates are incl. 7% VAT, excl. breakfast
Extra bed surcharge. (THB 500) Breakfast is an additional 200B per person served in the room or Safety Stop Restaurant next door
Minimum stay during high season is 2 nights. Child policy:- 1 child under 12 years sharing the room with parents without extra bed is free of charge,

Just for good measure, a view from the (shared) balcony of the rooms during a sunset.

Camille