So here we are, in our new home in Koh Samui, Thailand. It’s a nice little house in a compound of about 10 houses, and it is blissfully quiet, but in walking distance to all the action. Because Koh Samui is such a popular tourist destination, there are loads of houses for rent and they tend to come with WiFi, cable TV, hot water showers, AC bedrooms, and furnished kitchens. We only had to buy a few basic necessities to make life a bit more comfortable. It was really quite an easy transition, and it is really lovely to wake up in the morning, and sit and drink coffee on the front porch, listening to the birds.
We live in an area called Lamai, which is the second most popular beach on the island, located on the east coast. The beach is just around the corner from our house, as is the supermarket, wet market, general store, shopping and bar district, gyms, loads of restaurants, and even a Muay Thai boxing ring, which has boxing matches every Saturday night. It is a great location and we were lucky to find a house so close to everything.
We are slowly learning about how things run on the island. It’s amazing how things just seem to happen here. It is a very information economy, transacted by word of mouth. You mention to someone in passing that you need to do some laundry, and the next thing you know, a Thai woman on a motorbike pulls up to your house and with a smile takes the bag away, and the next afternoon you find a clean bag of laundry on your front porch, and this service only costs about US $1. We don’t know her name, we don’t know where the laundry place is, but we know she will come when we call.
So, here are a few pictures of what life is like in Koh Samui so far:
We’ve also bought two little bicycles, which should help us in getting around and exploring. We chose to get bicycles instead of motorbikes because almost every day someone gets in an accident and dies on a motorbike, and on top of that, we also need to lose some weight, because the food here is so good and so cheap, it will be very easy to get happy and fat.
That’s all for now — time to hop on the bikes and ride over to the beach. More coming soon….
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THE TRAVELLING TRINI 
Such a cute house, and what fun! I’d love to be able to bike again. Maybe I’ll get my recumbant exercise bike soon and think of the scenery you see as I ride it.
Seiji sent some pictures of your kitchen. So nice, we were surprised to see the stove elements you have are fueled from propane with the bottle right in the kitchen. Over here, if a person has propane, the bottle has to be outside. Good thing you have windows open most of the time. Do you have a fan when they are on to take exhaust outside? The sink is like Jen has. Yours, though, is open to windows. Very efficient. Are those a type of Palm tree outside?
What have your temperatures been? So much for us to learn.