This post may contain affiliate links, for which we earn a small commission at no additional expense to you. Click here to read our Disclosure.
Since we decided to stay in Malaysia for Christmas instead of going home to Canada, we decided to plan a one week vacation for the first week of December. We had fond memories of Thailand from our trip in 2006 and I was eager to return. In fact I couldn’t believe that we had been here for 10 months without a trip to Thailand, Malaysia’s closest neighbor. Paul always likes to go to a new country that we have never been to before, but I convinced him that Thailand would be a great relaxing holiday. We picked Ko Samui, an island on the east coast of Thailand. Thailand is the most visited country in southeast Asia for a reason. The food is great, prices are cheap, locals friendly and tourism is well established. We fondly remembered Thailand phad thai, green curry, $7 massages, banana pancakes, inviting beaches and smiling faces. Since it was low season on the island, we were able to rent an unbelievable villa right on the beach. Anyone who knows me well knows that I love travel research and spend hours planning our vacations: looking up all the hotel reviews, creeping travel message boards, google mapping major sites. Well all that travel research paid off big time in the form of the most perfect villa ever. My brother Steve & Audrey had been traveling in SE Asia for the past two months and were going to spend the week+ with us. Very rarely do we come back from a holiday and say we would do it all over again. Not because we don’t usually have a good time, but because we are always eager to try new places. But this was the perfect holiday for us and we would gladly repeat it all over again sometime. It was great having our own villa (Villa Charmant) because we didn’t have to worry about the kids disturbing others and we had plenty of room to spread out. The kids had a hard time deciding each day if they would swim in our very own pool or the beach. Paul and I got more time to relax because Steve & Audrey were great helpers with the kids. We managed to squeeze in 4 massages each, a nice dinner out, lots of wine, lots of reading and of course lots of yummy Thai food. We really didn’t do that much because we couldn’t tear ourselves from the villa. Usually our holidays are jam packed with site seeing and it was so nice to just relax in our own little ‘home’ and spend quality time with Steve & Audrey.
This trip was quite different from the last time we were in Ko Samui (2006) as our lives have changed just a little bit. Well really there are 3 big differences (Ella, Gavin and Miles). Check out our Blog from 2006 in Ko Samui.