Ko Samui: beautiful, mysterious, priceless

By Preeti Verma Lal

   

When the gods fitted their easel and pulled out their camel-hair brushes and started painting Ko Samui, they perhaps were trying to do something of a Mona Lisa - beautiful, mysterious and, yes, priceless. How else do you explain this gorgeous island, the third largest in Thailand?

There's the emerald green of the sea, the large palm fronds that line the shores, the gleaming red of the bird's beak plant and the air that is laden with the heady fragrance of the champa. As if these bounties were not enough, there's a Buddha at every bend, shopping temptations at every corner and food so delectable that you would wish that not only the dining hours but even stomachs were expandable.

But the gods were not the only ones munificent in Ko Samui. When the gods packed their easels, there came along one man who would bring down heaven for the mortals on this earth. On Ko Samui, actually. And it is to that heaven that I was heading on a bright spring morning. I was booked at Six Senses Hideaway, the heaven that one Indian-born Eton-Oxford educated Sonu Shivdasani has created. As the aircraft wobbled on its wheels on the airport dotted with gazebos and a million red hibiscuses, I pinched myself, "Was I in heaven?" But my heart was throbbing and my skirt was billowing, so I sure was still on earth. Thankfully.

Before that feeling of being mortal sunk in, pampering fell my way. I should not have been so surprised because if Tatler Spa Awards (UK) honours Six Senses in its World Best Spas for Pampering list, there sure has to be something about it. Well, you do not have to drive past lush green fields and boulevards that look straight out of a postcard, the red carpet is unrolled at the airport itself where a man in a sorrel linen outfit welcomes you graciously and offers chilled towel to wipe the grime away. With that done I head to the resort where large glass windows open to an unending sea, a teddy waits on the four-poster bed and the table is laden with fruits plucked fresh from the garden. And yes, there is the personal butler who chops the succulent passion fruit daintily and shows around the villa that has a pool, a bathtub sunk in the wood-panelled bathroom and yards of batiste hanging from a canopy over the fluffy bed. If this is not pampering, what else is?

I wanted to curl up in the bed and forget the woes of the world, but I knew someone was waiting. The Big Buddha - the gleaming golden Buddha who lords up in the skies. You need to take a long staircase up to him. Thankfully, I had abstained from my usual sartorial quirks, for at the foothills is the warning "Please Polite Dressing". In Ko Samui, you meet piety everywhere, there are Buddhas and Laughing Buddhas; interestingly, there are other gods from the Hindu pantheon - Lord Shiva and Parvati being the most popular. There are gods and their slanting abodes and they say, in Ko Samui the Buddha never disappoints anyone.

If you are looking for wish fulfillment, there are innumerable alibis in the island - you can feed the fish, stand on an imprint of the Buddha's feet or kneel in front that statuesque tree to "get married to a foreigner." Or, you can just close your eyes and invoke the gods for there is a certain aura about the statues dotting the stupefied skies.

I could fathom that aura, what I could not comprehend was the artistic innuendo of Nature - the Grandfather Rock at Hat Lamai that looks like a man's tool in eternal erection. Before I could count the number of thonged girls thronging around the humungous Rock or men picking up smelly aphrodisiacs, it was time to twirl on a boat in the Gulf of Thailand. As the skipper unfurled the sails and warned me of sharks, I dipped my feet in water the colour of jade and sailed away. When the burnished sun dipped in the blue sea and the salty water on my toes dried up, I knew I was falling in love - with the island!

That love would grow further as I walked into the Six Senses Spa to slough off urban malice with a dip in the champa-laden tub and soak my sore feet in the earthen bowl full to the brim with milk and strewn with rose petals. (Pampering, you see). As the spa attendant rubbed oil into my tired skin, I wished the hours would stretch to eternity.

However, it is not just the spa that has organic drinks and essential oils, all the 66 villas in Six Senses sport eco-friendly design; within the 20 acres there is no pollution, for you either walk in the verdant patches or take the electric-run buggy. Everything is like a pie out of nature - the Dining on the Hills opens into a wide expanse of the placid sea while the Dining on the Rocks sits smug at the tip of the headland and offers a 270 degree view of the island. And the dinner, rated the best in the island, is something worth dying for.

As I leave the island and the Six Senses Hideaway, I feel a tug in my heart - I think of all the Buddhas that I bumped into, of the colours that the gods picked from the palette for Ko Samui, of the man who recreated heaven on the island at Six Senses Hideaway…
I sure do not know what the heavens look like but next time someone poses that teaser to me, I would talk of the Six Senses Hideaway, for that perhaps is the closest approximation to it.

Fact File:

Ko Samui is a 50-minute flight from Bangkok.

For reservations at Six Senses Hideaway

email: reservations-samui@sixsenses.com
website: www.sixsenses.com