Saying goodbye to a Thai island that quietly became home — the last conversations, the last massages, and a final week spent at Royal Muang Samui Villas, Sea La Vie and Lela Spa, before Mr Paparazzi’s World moves on to Phuket and Bangkok, and goes a little quieter for a while.
Why This One Hurts
Well, this one was always going to hurt.
After all the travelling I’ve done, all the hotels I’ve checked out of, all the countries I’ve left and all the places I’ve called home temporarily, you’d think I’d be rather good at leaving.
I’m not. Not when somewhere gets under my skin. And Koh Samui has got under my skin. Deeply.
This wasn’t just another stop on Mr Paparazzi’s World. For a while, this beautiful, occasionally ridiculous, permanently surprising little island became home. And there’s a bloody big difference between visiting somewhere and living somewhere.
When you visit, you photograph the beach. When you live there:
- You know which bit of the beach gets the afternoon breeze.
- You know where to get the massage that costs practically nothing and somehow fixes your entire body.
- You know which restaurant will feed you properly when you can’t be bothered dressing up.
- You know which road will be flooded after the rain.
- You know the people. You know the dogs. You know the sunsets.
- You even know which bloody 7-Eleven has the things you like.
That’s when a destination stops being a destination. It becomes part of your life. And this week has been about saying goodbye to that life — at least for now. Not dramatically. I’m not being deported. Knowing me, I’ll probably be back before the island has had time to remove the pink hair from the swimming-pool filters.
Living Differently
There have been some pretty deep conversations this week, about:
- Relationships.
- Friendship.
- Getting older without necessarily growing up.
- What happiness actually looks like when you strip away what everybody else thinks your life should look like.
- And something I’ve probably spent much of my life doing without ever properly defining it: living differently.
My life has never followed a conventional blueprint, and thank Christ for that:
- I’ve made extraordinary decisions and some genuinely terrible ones.
- Trusted people I shouldn’t have.
- Loved people who deserved it and occasionally people who absolutely didn’t.
- Built things and lost things and started again more times than I can count.
- Made money, lost money, made headlines, survived them.
And somehow, after all of it, I’ve ended up sitting on a Thai island looking across the Gulf of Thailand thinking: I actually rather like who I’ve become. Not perfect — God, no, that would be unbearably boring — but comfortable. And Samui has had something to do with that.
There is something about island life that strips away an enormous amount of bullshit. You wake up. The sea is there. The palm trees are there. The sun is usually there. Occasionally the heavens open and dump half the Gulf of Thailand on your head. Then twenty minutes later somebody is ordering a coconut and behaving as though nothing happened. Same same but different. That’s Samui.
The Last Week
And what an extraordinary final week it has been.
There was Royal Muang Samui Villas in Choeng Mon, which became the perfect place to spend these last days:
- Peaceful. Beautiful. Enormous rooms.
- My own plunge pool.
- A magnificent main pool looking across one of my favourite beaches on the island.
- Excellent food. Wonderful staff.
- And a spa carved into caves that looks as though somebody designed a wellness centre for James Bond after swallowing a handful of psychedelics.
Royal Muang Samui Villas: ★★★½ Black Diamonds. Very close to four.
Then came Sea La Vie on the other side of Koh Samui. Dressed up, sexy, expensive, beautiful — an entrance so long and glamorous it became a tropical catwalk. The setting was sensational, the sea bass excellent. The bill? ฿7,000 for three, with service nowhere near good enough for that money, and winds strong enough to launch the tablecloth towards Cambodia. A wonderful night because of the company. But the Black Book doesn’t rate your mates. It rates the restaurant.
Sea La Vie, Koh Samui: ★½ Black Diamonds.
If ฿7,000 for a windswept tablecloth isn’t your idea of a good night out, here’s where I’d actually start looking for a dinner reservation that doesn’t come with a Black Book warning label.
And then came one of those discoveries that explains the entire philosophy behind Mr Paparazzi’s World. Lela Spa. Hidden away, confusing signage, ramshackle surroundings — the sort of place where you look at Google Maps and think this can’t possibly be right. It wasn’t wrong. Inside I experienced one of the best afternoons of treatment I’ve had anywhere on Koh Samui: around ฿2,500 for roughly three and a half hours of massage, body treatment and an extraordinary facial. I walked out, took a photograph of myself and genuinely thought I looked five years younger.
Lela Spa: ★★★½ Black Diamonds overall. That facial specifically? ★★★★. Full marks.
| Venue | Type | Price | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Muang Samui Villas | Hotel, Choeng Mon | — | ★★★½ Black Diamonds |
| Sea La Vie | Restaurant, Koh Samui | ฿7,000 for three | ★½ Black Diamonds |
| Lela Spa | Spa | ฿2,500 for ~3.5 hours | ★★★½ overall (★★★★ facial) |
Between the three, Royal Muang Samui Villas was the one I didn’t want to check out of — and there’s a full review of Royal Muang Samui Villas if you want the complete breakdown: the pool, the Tom Yum, the honest trade-offs, rather than just the highlights reel.
And maybe that unassuming little spa perfectly represents what I’ve loved about Samui. The best things here aren’t always where you’re told to look. You have to explore. Turn down the wrong road. Talk to somebody. Get lost. Try somewhere that looks completely unlikely. Sometimes it’s rubbish. Sometimes you discover magic.
If you’d rather skip a few of the wrong roads and start closer to the magic, this is where I’d actually go looking for things to book.
The Black Book
Over this period, Mr Paparazzi’s World has become much more than me wandering around with a camera and a strong opinion. We’ve eaten the meals, slept in the beds, tested the spas, driven the roads, found the best beaches in Koh Samui, paid the bills, made the mistakes — and tried to turn all of that into something useful. The Black Book. And now Black Book Premium takes that further.
Because the point was never simply to tell you where I’ve been. The point is to help you have a better bloody trip. Save money. Avoid rubbish. Find the places that aren’t paying influencers to call them wonderful. And occasionally send you down an obscure Samui side road for a facial that leaves you wondering where five years of your life went.
I post more on Instagram than I ever get around to writing up properly — where I’m eating this week, which villa I wouldn’t book twice, the beach nobody’s found yet. If you want that before it turns into a full article, follow @darrynbig.
The End of a Chapter
I rather like television seasons. They understand something social media seems to have forgotten: not everything has to run continuously. Sometimes you reach the end of a chapter, roll the credits, and come back with better stories. That’s roughly where Mr Paparazzi finds himself now.
There’s still a little more Thailand ahead — I’m leaving island life for the bigger smoke of Phuket and Bangkok. After that, I’m going to become rather less visible for a while. Mr Paparazzi’s World isn’t disappearing. The Black Books remain. The team remains. The recommendations remain. That Was the Week That Was remains. I’m simply going to stop broadcasting every movement as it happens. Some adventures deserve to be lived before they’re posted. Travel first. Tell the story later.
Wherever Mr Paparazzi’s World lands next — Phuket, Bangkok, or wherever comes after that — the first thing that goes in the bag before I even leave the villa is a working SIM, and this is where I sort mine.
But before any of that, one last look over my shoulder. At Koh Samui. The beaches. The sunsets. The extraordinary people. Bubble Beach. Choeng Mon. Chaweng. The massages. The restaurants. The occasional bloody hamburger. The rain. The heat. The palm trees. The sea. And those evenings when the entire sky turned red and orange and purple and reminded me that the best show on the island happens every night and doesn’t charge admission.
I came here to travel. Somewhere along the way, I accidentally lived here. And that’s why leaving feels different.
So this isn’t goodbye, Samui. It’s see you later. And knowing me, probably sooner than you think.
Next stop: Phuket and Bangkok. After that? Travel first. Tell the story later.
Giddy up.
Mr Paparazzi’s World 🌍
— Darryn Lyons
