The Five Islands Restaurant

Today I am going to tell you about a lovely dining place on the west side of Samui, another one of my long-time favourites...

A few days ago our business brought us to Baan Taling Ngam village which is one of the most authentic villages in Samui, and hasn't seen much developments over the last years.  It's always a pleasure to get away from hustle and bustle of  Chaweng and Bophut and totally chill sitting on the beach here, without being surrounded by tourists, beach sellers, jet-ski, massage ladies, and all the other accessories of the North/East Coast beaches...

Koh Samui’s less-travelled West coast has amazing natural beauty, lots of mountains, coconut palm trees and coconut farms, temples, fishing villages, slow pace of life...

One of the most beautiful places over there is The Five Islands Restaurant, which I personally call a real Samui gem, as it's got a great reputation for service, cuisine, unique location and the best sunsets on Samui.

I am starting to immediately relax as soon as I get out of my car and start walking to this beautiful place...

Gosh, I've just found a picture of the place and myself taken 8 years ago, when I was there for the first time :-) :-)  Sorry for the quality of the pics - I wasn't married to a photographer back then :-) , I just used my cheap camera :-)

Over the years the place haven't changed much, actually I don't think it changed at all, it's perfect the way it is!

I also absolutely adore it's founder and owner  - charming, softly spoken, one of the loveliest and friendliest men I know, English born Colin Burgess, who, in his trademark waistcoat and fisherman’s pants, always impresses me and all other visitors with his knowledge of the real, often unknown to tourists Samui.

The beautiful beachfront restaurant has the most stunning views to the famous Five Islands  and it's also one of the best places for watching sunset, while sipping a delicious cocktail.

The restaurant is an open plan building with the open-style cooking area situated in the far corner and very much part of the restaurant, allowing you to watch the daily catch prepared before your eyes.

A few tables are situated under the roof and some are on the beach . Here on this beautiful sandy beach, the fishermen literally deliver fresh seafood from their boats.

The menu has big variety of extremely well prepared locally sourced dishes and the service is very smooth, friendly and professional .

The "fusion food"  menu has been created to concentrate on quality and originality, you will find there seafood, meat or vegetarian dishes, a few all time favourites will be  fresh oysters Thai style, baked seafood served in a coconut shell, roast duck curry with tomatoes & grapes, sweet & sour crispy sea bass or Kantok – a menu of five Thai dishes for two people.

Thai fusion cuisine at its best is promised. Wining and dining at The Five Islands Restaurant is a totally unique dining experience even for the fussiest traveller, go there, try it, you will fall in love with the place. Ok, and I forgot to add - it's not the cheapest place in Samui and unless you're staying in Taling Ngam it's a pretty long cab ride, but it is totally worth it.
My advice - visit it on the day when you have a drive around the island, that area is must-see anyway...

See you there soon :-)

28 October 2011

Beautiful, beautiful day! Lots of sun, blue sky, no waves, excellent weather!

There is NO flood on Samui, there is nice sunshine, everything is good, food is still here, small water bottles and also our local water from Samui Deep Well is also here in abundance ( but bottled water in bigger bottles is nearly sold out), so basically Samui is one of the best areas to visit right now, I guess :-)

They may shoot sequel of "Avatar" here :-) The trees are amazing...

27 October 2011

Not a bad Thursday morning... A bit cloudy, but no rain. 

A few shots which I took today at 9 am in Fishermans Village, Bophut.

And another shot we took at about 1 pm in Lamai, while inspecting some beautiful luxury beachfront villa before adding it to our Samui private villas/houses database at www.samuiconnection.com

The sky was clearing out even more, so hopefully there will be no rain today, maybe just a short one, which I don't mind actually - my new lawn in a garden really needs it :-) 

26 October 2011

Different day, different weather.
Miserable, grey, rainy morning.....don't know how long it's going to last but it looks like we are not going to see a glimpse of sun today. Samui's sky looks very dark and generally it's a quite depressing weather...We really hope this monsoon season will be a bit better than the last one ...

Morning shot from my balcony :-(

Beautiful weather

Samui is having absolutely great weather at the moment. Today was an amazing sunny day, very unusual for this time of the year. After some rain on Saturday,  we had two beautiful days on Sunday and today (25 October) . Every day we are waiting for rain and flood, and we are waking up to the sun!

Here are a few great Samui shots captured by my hubby Dmitri Terletski   in the last 2 days, hope you enjoy it.

Hope it stays this way as long as possible, but meantime we are still preparing for the rainy season and possible food shortage, as quite a few types of food have already disappeared from the shelves in our supermarkets due to the flood on the mainland, flooded factories and impossible deliveries.

Here are a few today's shots from Tesco Lotus:
( I heard that the same is happening in Phuket and other areas, even totally unaffected by flooding - it's a disaster of a whole country)

Two things which I really need and which are nearly gone - are good kids' nappies and pets (cats in my case) food. So, I actually would advise tourists with babies bring some kind of a nappies supply. We may not have them here at all by the time you arrive :-(

Sunny again :-)

Yesterday, after some pretty heavy rain in a morning, the sky has totally cleared up and the rest of the day was actually excellent!  We went to Choengmon beach after collecting our son from nursery, and stayed there till late...I asked my husband to take a few pictures to show you.

The only thing which has changed - the sea. Just a day before it was very quiet, and last night there were waves, quite big waves earlier in the morning and afternoon, and then they kind of died down by the evening....The wind has changed...It comes from the east now, so Choengmon, Chaweng and Lamai may have waves...Anyway, have a look:

This morning ( 20 October)  we've woken up to a cloudy sky, which cleared out by 11 am...

Now the weather is perfect again :-)  Hope it stays this way!!!!