Ko Samui
In 1971 two tourists arrived on Thailand’s third-largest island via a coconut boat from Bangkok and stumbled upon paradise – white-sand beaches with palms blowing in the wind and clear green seas sparkling in the sunlight. It was a picture-perfect background of lush green hills and brown roads interspersed with rough wooden structures.
More than 30 years after the first rough-hewn hut went up on Ko Samui, the island and the archipelago that includes 80 smaller islands, has become the Asian travel markets’ most enigmatic chameleon – as attractive to fire-twirling backpackers as to flashpackers toting Louis Vuitton. On the map alongside places like Goa and Bali, Samui has polished its reputation as a hippy island paradise that remembers to provide the best of the creature comforts from home.
Samui Food
Austin Bush expands your culinary vocabulary...
Dining on the Thai island of Ko Samui has the linguistic variety of a UN summit; from Indian biryani to Korean bibimbap, pork pie to phat thai. However, one cuisine conspicuously missing from all this is the native cuisine of Ko Samui.
So what is Ko Samui food?
As the languid island lifestyle suggests, the food of Ko Samui embraces simplicity and locality, emphasizing ingredients that can be gathered with a minimum of fuss. This includes seafood such as sea urchin eggs and octopus, fresh herbs, the island's ubiquitous coconuts, and even a kind of local seaweed.
Intrigued? If so, there are a few places to try authentic Ko Samui cuisine on Ko Samui:
Bangpo Seafood (Ban Bang Po, 077 420 010). At this low-key establishment you can sample local specialties such as yam khai hoy men, a 'salad' of sea urchin roe, or tom som waay, a sour soup made from waay, a type of small octopus gathered just offshore. If you fancy getting really local, take your dishes with khao man thua khiaow, rice cooked in coconut milk with salt and dried beans.
Kin Khao Bang Kham (Ban Bang Kham, 077 426 181) is a beachfront eatery with some local dishes on its expansive menu, including fresh seaweed. The seaweed, known as saraay khor, is gathered in the waters in front of the restaurant, and is rinsed and par-boiled before being thinly sliced and combined with other ingredients in a spicy/sour Thai-style salad.
Sabeinglae (near Hat Lamai 077 233 082) is a well-regarded open-air seafood restaurant that caters to those put off by the word weed by offering an obscure kind of sea anemone. Here the anemone, known locally as het loop, is added to kaeng khua, a coconut milk-based curry that is topped with spicy cumin leaves.
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