AFP
Thai women dressed in costumes, parade during Samui Carniva on Koh Samui island.
Koh Samui, Thailand – “Go on”, he said. “Hit me!” I struck him with my fist, only for him to openly laugh at my feeble blow. I hit him again. He laughed harder still. I’ve had rows with hotel staff before – who hasn’t? – but normally I settle scores with a terse review on TripAdvisor.
I’ve never actually thumped anybody. My last stand-up fight was at infant school. But here I was being taunted by an employee of a five-star hotel and here was I coming over all Jason Bourne, trying to aim roundhouse kicks at his head.
At the Conrad Koh Samui, being allowed to bash hotel staff is part of the service. On Mondays, the man who on other mornings does aquarobics or yoga runs Thai boxing classes.
Happy Monday (I couldn’t ask him to say his name a fourth time, but he was happy and it was Monday) pulls on the gloves and suggests how guests might fell him with a well-placed elbow. To quote TV’s In The Thick Of It, Thai boxing is a “pub fight, Motherwell rules”. As an activity, it’s certainly different.
So was the 45-minute massage designed to combat insomnia. After five minutes of gentle pummelling, I went straight to sleep. While the massage was extremely good, the falling asleep had more to do with me than any aroma. I’ve nodded off during every massage I’ve ever had.
Embarrassingly, I’m not a quiet sleeper. In fact, my snoring is so awful that my wife refuses to sign up to any spa treatments for couples.
I feel a bit awkward about it too. Falling asleep makes it seem as if I’m not really paying attention. I now warn all masseuses of the certainty that at some moment during the procedure I’ll lose consciousness.
“Oh, that’s OK,” they say.
If I were them, I’d probably want all my clients to fall asleep at the earliest possible moment; they could then pop out for a cup of tea or read a newspaper until the 45 minutes was up. But, as far as I can tell, they keep on massaging conscientiously.
A Thai massage has now become the gold standard for massages throughout the world. Similarly, a Thai curry has become the must-have item for every smart Asian fusion restaurant. The new Conrad Koh Samui has both items well catered for.
Literally so when it comes to Thai curries. An additional attraction is that at the Conrad guests can take a class in curry cooking with one of the hotel’s chefs. For someone like me who finds beans on toast a challenge, this was a revelation. Cooking a Thai vegetable curry was simplicity itself: it involved tossing in coconut milk, palm sugar, curry paste and an assortment of vegetables (the chef had thoughtfully assorted this all for me) while I stirred it up in a big pot. The result, I have to tell you, was pretty sensational.
But then, Koh Samui is a pretty sensational place. On the 40-minute drive from Samui airport to our hotel, we passed the usual modern holiday resort sprawl of McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks. The Thai island that once topped the travel wish-list of all serious hippy-trippy backpackers has now been colonised by inter-national big business.
This shift from backpacker heaven to package staple has become a fairly common trail, already blazed by Morocco and Turkey. But what’s astonishing about Koh Samui is this transformation has happened so quickly.
Little more than 40 years ago, this was an island that grew coconuts and lacked proper roads. And during much of the 1970s and 1980s, when the backpackers came, it provided accommodation that can best be described as basic – sheds on the beach to be precise.
Now it boasts the creme de la creme of top hotel chains: Banyan Tree, Four Seasons, Intercontinental, Orient Express, W, Six Senses and – the resort where I was heading – the Conrad. Luxury hotels attract famous names: Kate Moss, for example, has been a regular visitor to the island for New Year celebrations.
When I made my first visit to Thailand at the end of the 1970s, telling people where I was going prompted them to respond by singing snippets from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King And I. Thailand wasn’t recognised as a holiday destination – it was vaguely assumed to be Siam, a country of stunning golden temples and peasants probably still ruled by Yul Brynner.
In Thailand, it’s worth noting, hardly anybody in the country has seen The King And I. The musical’s portrayal of the Siamese king as a despot, albeit a well-meaning despot, went down badly in a country where the monarch still has something of a divine presence. Similarly, in Austria, nobody has a clue what you’re on about when you start singing “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens”. The Sound Of Music, another Rodgers and Hammerstein creation, generates the sound of Austrian silence.
Both musicals play fast and loose with true history. In The Sound Of Music, for example, if the Von Trapps had really climbed every mountain to make their escape, they would have been ascending their way straight into Germany.
Similarly, The King And I is largely based on the Victorian memoirs of British governess Anna Leonowens, who proved to be something of an unreliable witness.
She explained her dark complexion by claiming she had a Welsh father from Caernarfon when actually the real reason was that her mother was Indian – something she felt it was necessary to conceal in order to be more socially acceptable.
The story of Anna and the king is largely about how, towards the end of the 19th Century, ancient Siam was trying to assimilate Western influences while still retaining its native character. It is in the past 30 years, however, that the country’s struggle with modern life has been felt most acutely.
In the years since my first visit, Thailand has in most ways been radically transformed. At the end of the 1970s, the war in Vietnam had only recently petered out. Neighbouring Cambodia was in the throes of the horrors of Pol Pot’s Killing Fields.
This part of Asia wasn’t seen as a place for holidaymakers – it was a destination for backpacking budget travellers. This was where the Lonely Planet guide series scored its first major success with South-East Asia On A Shoestring – soon known to its enthusiastic disciples as the Yellow Bible.
This was the world that Alex Garland was writing about in his best-selling debut novel The Beach published in 1996 (adapted into a film four years later by Danny Boyle, starring Leonardo DiCaprio).
By the time the book was published, however, Thailand had already begun to establish itself as Britain’s favourite long-haul destination – a fact that sits slightly at odds with Garland’s Heart Of Darkness/Lord Of The Flies story with its ultra-violent denouement.
In The Beach, the still largely unspoilt island of Koh Samui is dismissed as being spoilt “too many tourists” observes one character. For the novel’s backpackers, the ultimate place was a beach far from the madding crowd.
Today’s visitors place a higher premium on quality and style. Whatever it is that Koh Samui has, tourists can’t get enough of it.
Last year, hotel occupancy was at an all-time high. Bangkok Airways, the main airline linking the island with the Thai capital, has rapidly stepped up its business, adding extra flights. While Germany and the UK are the two main overseas markets, the number of Russian visitors is growing rapidly, though Phuket remains their favoured Thai destination.
At the Conrad during my stay, the largest single nationality was South Korean: the place was full of honeymooners.
All of the happy couples were busy recording each moment of their stay on a broad selection of devices, including smartphones, digital cameras and iPads.
Sometimes, they used two devices at once. Suffice to say, if you are ever invited to look at a South Korean couple’s honeymoon pictures, the session is likely to be an all-nighter.
One of the honeymoon attractions of Koh Samui in general – and the Conrad in particular – is that you have no real reason to leave the property for the entirety of your stay. The Koh Samui “things to do” section of TripAdvisor manages to find 39 attractions. Given that numbers one and four are sports clubs and numbers two and three are beaches, you’ll understand that sightseeing isn’t a priority here.
One afternoon, I took the 45-minute drive to Bophut’s Fisherman Village. It’s best visited on a Friday night, I was told. Perhaps it’s more lively then – during the day it’s a fairly dull collection of shops, craft stalls, restaurants and cheap bars selling mojitos at 50p a go.
I declined the chance to see the monkey show (my real life is a bit of a monkey show) and wasn’t keen to visit the Big Buddha (like a small Buddha, I imagined, only larger).
The one attraction that intrigued was the mummified monk. On display is the body of a monk who died 20 years ago in a posture of a meditation. He must have also died wearing Ray-Bans because in his mummified state he is displayed in a glass case meditating and wearing shades.
If his body didn’t decompose, he said, he wanted it to be displayed to inspire future generations.
The main reason, however, for sticking to the hotel is that, like many places in South-East Asia, Koh Samui traffic operates a bit like real-life dodgems (“You drive on the left?” I asked our Thai taxi driver. “Sometimes,” he replied.)
Leave the outside traffic behind and the Koh Samui Conrad reveals itself as paradise on earth. The island’s newest luxury resort property, it has 80 villas located on a secluded hill on the south-west tip of the island.
It is spread over 25 acres and guests enjoy panoramic views of the Gulf of Thailand’s stunning sunsets, outlying islands and a surrounding landscape of lush coconut plantations.
It certainly has an epic quality to its design: a series of exquisite villas that rise up out of a sheer hillside on spindly legs.
Each villa has its own pool and, I know this shouldn’t be important but it is, red-hot fast wi-fi (certainly a lot quicker than my connection at home).
All the hotel lacks is a beach. To compensate, staff run a shuttle boat service to a neighbouring island, which looks like something straight out of the Alex Garland novel. But instead of being populated with drug-crazed hippies, the island has been colonised by Korean honeymooners gazing lovingly at each other and taking photographs of their partners’ soulful looks.
I hit the beach, rested my head and went straight to sleep. Yes, that anti-insomnia massage was a huge success…- The Mail on Sunday
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Just another day in Koh Samui
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