Koh Samui White Cottage

Another very long travel day. The bus to the ferry departed at 9am. In case you forgot we left the hotel at 1am! We arrived at the ferry terminal at 10.15am and the ferry was ready to board immediately. The ferry was almost 2 hours and was a very smooth ride. Flat water all the way and quite slow. Barely knew you were moving. We were expecting to take a Songtheaw (Little Red Truck) that you ride in the back of and hail down on the roads here. But the first Songtheaw driver we spoke to outside the ferry terminal could hardly understand us and we couldn't understand him at all. We therefore checked with a shuttle driver and he spoke great English. The shuttle to very close to our accommodation was 150 Bhat per person, about $7.80. I had already checked the Grab option and it was 560 Bhat for the trip so 300 seemed good. We had to wait 30 minutes while he filled up the shuttle with 10 more people. 

We arrived at The White Cottage, our accommodation for the next 5 nights, at 1.30pm. Put us down for a 12+ hours travel day using 4 modes of transport if you count shank's pony. The accommodation looks great. It's costing 2,200 Bhat or $115 per night. It's a small number of individual units around a pool and courtyard rather than a hotel. The beach front is one flash resort away which we will check out later. The absolute beach front resorts are $400+ per night which is too steep for us. The swimming pool here is right outside our unit. Actually it's outside everybody's unit as there aren't many. Hopefully it doesn't get too noisy later or if it does we might have to join in. The beach is about 100m away we think. 

The weather here is warm and sunny. Officially 28 degrees but sitting outside in the courtyard feels a lot hotter than that. It's nice and cool inside the unit though. The Thai woman who manages this place speaks really good English and had already been very informative about what is nearby. Her name is "O" which is easy to spell and remember. I think we have chosen a good location but will need to confirm that in the next few days.