The Day the Heat Broke Me

We flew from hot, hot Siem Reap to Bangkok in the evening, and at 10 pm checked into our room in a hostel near the airport for what was probably my shortest stay ever in a booked room—6 hours. We had a 6 am fight to Koh Samui the next morning, and got up at 4 am to get to the airport on time.

The room was a typical private room in a hostel—bed, nightstand, bathroom—and at first I thought we’d failed to book our own shower and would have to share…until I looked behind the bathroom door and saw the shower head attached to the wall!

This was by far the most economical use of bathroom space I have ever seen! The shower was fine—as long as you didn’t mind soaking the toilet seat and sink and flooding the bathroom floor in the process.

The flight to Koh Samui was our second flight on the regional carrier Bangkok Airways in as many days and confirmed for us that it was our favorite airline of all time.

Their fares are cheap, they allow you 20kgs checked luggage and 2 pieces of hand luggage and even on flights that take only a little over an hour, they serve you a full meal—no extra charges for anything!!! Best airline ever.

We arrived on the island of Koh Samui at around 7:30 am, but our ferry to the island of Koh Phangan, where we had booked a beach house for a week, did not depart for two hours, so after taking a short bus ride to the ferry port, we waited in the ever increasing heat for the ferry to arrive.

The ferry was an open boat and took about half and hour, so we arrived on Koh Phangan around 10 am but would not be able to check into our Airbnb until 2 pm.

Our host was sending a taxi for us, but we had to walk about a quarter of a mile from the pier with all our luggage into the town of Thong Sala and kill several hours before it would arrive.

There were a couple of semi-air conditioned cafes that we parked ourselves in, but by the time the taxi—an open pick-up truck called a songthaew—arrived, I was overheated, tired and very cranky.

A bumpy 20 minute ride later we arrived at the beach house. It was cute and tiny (we knew this from the pictures) and right on a Chaloklum Beach, which is very pretty and located on a quiet bay with a laid back fishing village at its edge.

No big resorts, beachside bungalows or hotels. It was exactly what we wanted…

….until we stepped into the cottage, which was an absolute oven.

There was air conditioning in the tiny bedroom, but none in the living area/kitchen/bathroom, which were served only by a standing fan blowing the hot air around.

Tom cranked up the AC in the bedroom, but it was soon obvious that it would never cool the whole place down—there were too many ways for the cold air to escape plus we were being charged extra for energy usage so we decided to just shut the door and keep one room as the ‘cool room’.

Taking in the entire situation, I flopped down on the day bed that served as a sofa, and the mattress slid right out from under me. Not only was it unbearably hot, there was no comfortable seating either.

The thought of spending a week here huddled on the bed in the one cool room made me want to cry.

We were now aware that all of SE Asia was in the grip of a prolonged heat wave of unprecedented intensity, and we were right in the thick of it.

Trying to cope with that in a place that wasn’t fully air conditioned seemed unthinkable.

Tom could see that I had reached my breaking point and he quietly handed me his phone, which showed a beautiful villa with its own private pool on a different beach on Koh Phangan that was available to book in two days’ time.

He was pretty sure I would not want to eat the cost of the Airbnb we’d already paid for and spend twice as much for the villa, but I completely surprised him by saying ‘Book it’ without a second thought.

Tom had thrown me a life preserver and like a drowning person I grabbed on to it with both hands.

Now that I knew I only had to put up with the beach cottage for another day and a half, I could try to enjoy what it did have to offer.

The village was quite charming and had a couple of inexpensive beachside restaurants we could eat at, a lovely little fruit stand and of course, a 7-11, which are ubiquitous in Asia.

The next two mornings we got up early and swam in the sea, then retreated to the bedroom to sit out the hottest part of the day. In the late afternoon, we could stand to be out on the front veranda in the hammock, and then we took an evening swim at dusk before walking down the beach to eat.

The beach had powdery white sand, the water was calm and very warm. The local fishermen brought in their catch early each morning, and the beach was largely deserted after that.

If it had been a more comfortable place to stay, we would have loved it there, as the vibe was like a small Mexican beach town and we really liked its non-touristy ambience.

But it definitely wasn’t fun spending hours shut up in a tiny bedroom every day.

On the appointed check-in afternoon, the villa sent over a lovely air-conditioned van to pick us up and take us to Thong Nai Pan Ya Beach on the northeast side of the island.

When we walked in, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven.

We went from this….

to this…

Every room was beautifully air conditioned, the villa and pool were cleaned every day, the beach was yards away, the private plunge pool was divine—it was perfection.

For the next five days we did absolutely nothing.

We got up early and went for a swim in the sea at high tide, went back and made some breakfast, then lolled by the pool for the rest of the day until it was time to stroll down to the beach and decide which of the bungalow resort restaurants we were going to dine at that night.

It was definitely more of a resort beach than Chaloklum, its entirely length dotted with bungalow resorts. But it was still pretty low key, and most of the people in the resorts seemed to be families from every corner of the globe travelling with young children. We were no longer right on the beach, but it did not matter to us one bit as we had so much peace and privacy at the villa.

Balmy evenings walking along the beach at sunset, quiet days poolside or in the air conditioned comfort of the villa listening to nothing but the sound of birds and cicadas, occasional forays into the nearby village for supplies, nightly swims in the privacy of our own infinity pool—all of it refreshed and recharged us for the remaining few weeks of our trip.

The villa was relatively expensive by Thai standards, but ridiculously cheap by European or American ones, and we did not regret our decision for one second. It was bliss.