Ko Samui

Samui's name may come from a local tree or from a Hainanese phrase brought by early Chinese traders. Oral tradition holds that the island was first settled in about the sixth century by fishermen from the Malay Peninsula, with traders from southern China calling in; from the thirteenth century it lay within Siam's feudal system and worked as an intermediary on the trade between China and India. Chinese immigrants, most of them Hainanese, came in numbers in the nineteenth century and began the island's cotton and coconut plantations, shipping the crop to the mainland by boat.

That isolation lasted a long time. The island had no roads until the early 1970s, when crossing the 15 kilometres from one side to the other could mean a day's trek through the central jungle, and electricity and piped water came later still. Backpackers reached Samui in the same decade, arriving on coconut boats from Surat Thani, and simple bungalows appeared behind Chaweng, where the first resort development began. Ferry services and then the airport, built in 1989 by Bangkok Airways, changed the pace: mass tourism grew through the 1990s, the bungalows gave way to hotels, and Samui became one of Thailand's principal resort destinations, with villas on the headlands and shopping centres behind the beaches.

Growth brought the problems of a small island carrying a large industry — pressure on water and waste, unplanned building on hillsides, land disputes and a road with a bad safety record. Tourism collapsed during the travel closures of 2020 and 2021, when the island's economy had little to fall back on, then returned quickly afterwards. Samui's profile abroad rose again when the third season of an international television series, filmed on the island and elsewhere in Thailand in 2024, was broadcast in 2025.

Samui is southern Thai and Buddhist, with a strong Chinese-descended community whose ancestors came from Hainan as traders and planters in the nineteenth century; their temples and shrines stand in Nathon and the older villages, and Chinese New Year is celebrated across the island. Temple life follows the mainland calendar, with merit-making on Buddhist holy days, monks collecting alms in the morning and ordinations attended by whole villages.

Coconuts are the island's oldest identity. Generations lived by planting, harvesting and processing them, and older islanders still speak of Samui as a coconut island first and a resort second. Buffalo fighting, in which two animals push against each other until one turns away, is a southern Thai festival contest held on the island — an old rural custom that sits uneasily with some visitors.

Layered over this is a large foreign and mainland population: long-term residents, hotel and dive workers, and migrant workers who do much of the construction and service work. English is widely spoken in the resort strips and hardly at all in the plantations a few kilometres inland. Visitors are expected to observe temple dress, to keep swimwear to the beach and to treat monks and Buddha images with respect; islanders are used to tourists but not indifferent to bad behaviour.

About 70,000 people were reckoned to be living on Samui in 2023, with more than 200,000 others coming to the island for work. Most live away from the beachfront, in villages along the ring road and on the inland lanes, while the shoreline is occupied by hotels, villas and businesses. Nathon holds the district offices, the hospital, banks and the main market, and is the practical centre of island life.

Tourism supports nearly everything: hotels and restaurants, boat operators, dive schools, transport, construction and the shops that supply them. Coconut plantations still work the hills, and fishing families put out from the northern villages, but neither employs many people now. Wages depend on the season, which runs high from about December to August and slack in the wet months when many staff return to the mainland.

The day starts early, with markets open before dawn, schoolchildren on the ring road and boats loading at Nathon. Afternoons are hot and quiet, and evenings busy along the beach roads. The island's recurring problems are practical ones: fresh water, rubbish disposal, road accidents, traffic on a single circular road, and the strain of building on steep ground where heavy rain brings landslides and flooding.

Samui's cooking is southern Thai with the sea and the coconut at its centre. Local kitchens serve kaeng som, a sour orange fish curry made hot with fresh turmeric, kua kling, minced pork or beef dry-fried with a fierce spice paste, and kaeng tai pla, a pungent curry of fermented fish innards eaten with rice and a plate of raw vegetables. Khanom jeen, fresh rice noodles topped with curry and piled with herbs, is a standard breakfast.

Seafood is the obvious pleasure: blue swimming crab, squid, prawns and whole grouper or snapper, grilled over charcoal or steamed with lime, garlic and chilli, and pu phat phong karee, crab stir-fried with curry powder and egg. Restaurants on the north coast and at the fishing piers buy from local boats, and the night markets sell the same fish more cheaply on skewers.

The coconut runs through the rest. Curries are built on fresh coconut milk, the young flesh goes into desserts and drinks, and coconut sugar sweetens sticky rice and grilled bananas. Island sweets include khanom tom, coconut-filled rice balls, and kalamae, a dark, chewy coconut toffee sold in blocks that is Samui's usual gift to take home. Fruit stalls sell rambutan, mangosteen and durian in season, and every village has a coffee shop brewing strong, sweet local coffee.