Koh Tao Sea View Hotel on a budget

We’re continuing with the stories from my notebook about Koh Tao. And if you haven’t read these yet, here’s Part 1 and Part 2.

Koh Tao – Day 3

In the morning we spent a couple of hours in the shade overlooking the beach, chilling, eating, looking at the photos and  writing – the day started great. We then walked to the pier where a taxi picked us up to take us to Moondance Magic View hotel. Well, if I thought the songthaew ride in Phangan was fun, this was even better. Probably because there was no backrest whatsoever, just a plain bench at an equal height with the edge of the car boot, and a rail behind it to hold onto. And the roads where even worse than in Phangan – much steeper and full of ditches.  Well, not full of them, it seemed that the ditches were what made the road! My arms got tired from holding onto the rail and at some point I had to hold onto the bench with my feet!

We reached the hotel and the view from the restaurant was really, as the hotels’ name suggests – magic. Rocky shores, turquoise blue water, a couple of tiny islands quite close, just soo lovely. Our bungalow was really cosy too, with a wicker hammock in the porch and outdoor shower nicely decorated with pebbles.

Although after a couple of nights with the cockroaches in Hacienda we were quite vary of sleeping in a bungalow where there were more holes than wall material, so we put the mosquito net down on the bed straight away, tied knots on any holes we found and tucked the ends neatly under the mattress. We also took anything we might need to the bed as we planned for the worst – that we’d be awake all night and wouldn’t go outside the mosquito net. (reading this now makes me laugh, but back then we were a bit paranoid!)

Now that the bed was protected from insects we could relax. We walked down to the rocks, took some pictures, chilled out in the hammock, had a nice dinner at the restaurant and stayed there until the lights went out around 9 pm.

We walked back to our hut, lit some candles and stayed outside for a while. It was nice and calm as the mosquitoes and even the ants in the bathroom have gone to sleep. We took the candles inside and shortly fell asleep, feeling safe and calm under our mosquito net, with nice warm candle light surrounding us.

Keep reading about Koh Tao in Part 4.For more stories from the same trip read: Koh Phangan Part 1 and Part 2, Angthong Marine Park, and Koh Samui.

More photos on our Flickr page here.