Koh Samui: The Hangover movies comes to life.

After an eventful, but short stay in Frankfurt, we had a fantastic flight (on the brand new Airbus 380) with Thai Airways to Koh Samui, via Bangkok. On the the flight from Bangkok to Koh Samui we met Wes and Dee, the reason why we were in Thailand to begin with: Their wedding. The plan was to spend 5 days hanging out together with them, their friends and family, before they would get married on the 6th day.

35 people were flying in from: Australia, South Africa, US, Canada, UK and us from Norway. Out of the 35 people we actually had 13 different nationalities present, so we were quite a mix. What I can say is that I’m honored to be thought of as a part of this fabulous group of people. The best way to get acquainted with people is over food and drink … We did both. The first is easy, because Thailand has sensational food, the second … Well, let’s just say that the is a “small” selection of bars on Koh Samui, so we didn’t have to struggle.

We had two days of mingling in the Lamai Beach area on Koh Samui which involved sand, sun, great food, buckets of drinks (yes, Buckets), late nights and tons of fun. On the third day we had the stag and hen night, so the guys and gals split to make sure that the bride and groom had their separate “send-offs” into married life. Kjersti went to the hens night and from the sounds of it, they really enjoyed it: a Thai cooking class, Moulin Rouge (a lady-boy cabararet), followed by a pub crawl that ended where we were at the end of the stag night: Ark Bar.

The stag nights was a different cup of tea from the hen’s. We started with some adrenalin fueled zip-lining amongst the tree tops in the island interior. This was immediately followed by 2 hours of hard core ATV’ing, where Wes’s dad and I did our best to make sure that everyone else was coved in dust, something I’m happy to say that we succeeded in 🙂 By the time it was 17:00 (5pm) I was shocked to note that we hadn’t eaten or even started drinking, but now we went at it with iron clad resolve and boy did we succeed! We ate a great lunch!!! and hit the drink. Everything quickly became a bit of a blur and I vaguely remember the girls showing up at Ark Bar, but know what we had an awesome time … Many fun stories will be told of that night: the pictures do tell a story. I felt like I was watching the slide show at the end of the Hangover movies when I saw the pictures from the evening.

The next two days were used to recuperate, and to move from Lamai to Lipa Noi (on the other side of Koh Samui) because on the third day Wes and Dee got married there. Everyone were out of their shorts, tank tops and flip flops and into their finest. I was shocked at how well everyone (myself included) cleaned up. The wedding ceremony on the beach was amazing, there honestly wasn’t a dry eye on the beach when Dee walked down the aisle looking absolutely stunning. The ensuing ceremony, dancing, cutting of the cake, planting of the love tree (minds out of the gutter please), and sensational dinner with some great speeches set the scene for a great party, that spilled over next door and became a pool party at midnight. It is by far the prettiest and most awesome wedding I’ve ever been to.

After the wedding we had yet another day to chill and relax, before everyone went their separate ways. Most people were flying home, but some of us were continuing the vacation. 7 of us boarded the Lomprayah catamarans and went to Koh Tao and that’s where the next post will be from.

Summing up the 8 days on Koh Samui is easy: it was awesome! I hung out with fabulous people, had a great time, ate delicious food and enjoyed good drinks: on top of that the temperature was 30 degrees Celsius higher than home, it was sunny and you could dive into the sea anytime without getting cold 🙂 Life is good. We’re already planning to meet up with some of the people from the wedding party … I won’t be surprised if we head to South Africa soon 🙂