Is KOH TAO, Thailand worth visiting in 2023?! Our first impressions

Hi, we're Jordana and Grant from Shot in the Dark Travel. Come join us on our epic adventures around Southeast Asia. Hey guys, welcome to our Koh Tao vlog. We've been here for a few days already, but we've mainly been relaxing and catching up on a few bits of work, because we've not been doing any filming. So we're still here for a few more days now, so we're excited to get out, do a bit more exploring and show you what we get up to. We had a couple of weeks in between different countries that we're visiting, so we decided to come to Thailand so we could relax on a nice beach. It's super easy to get to Koh Tao. We flew into Koh Samui, which has an international airport, and then we got a one-hour boat the next morning to the island. We definitely recommend getting your tickets to the boat the day before, because the tickets can sell out. If you've booked your hotel in Koh Tao, you don't want to be left not able to get to the island, because there's only usually a couple of boats a day. So I thought I'd just show you guys our hotel room. It's called Wind Beach Resort. It's really nice. It's fairly cheap, so it's 970 baht per night. So yeah, that's pretty cheap, so we can't really complain. It's nice enough, pretty big. What I'll do is I'll show you outside first. So you can see we've got two big sliding doors. The only issue I would say about this is it's not airtight, so I've had to get a mosquito plug in because I keep getting bitten. But yeah, a little table, somewhere to sit. You've got a little hang rail to put all your beach towels and bikinis and stuff to dry. And as you can see, just down here is just the road down to the beach. And then I'll show you the rest of the room. So Grant's just chilling there. Nice big bed. It's pretty comfortable. I asked for some extra pillows because the ones that we were given were like flat as a pancake, and they were fine with that, so that was pretty cool. You get like two chairs and a table, flat screen TV, a fridge, a desk and a mirror, nice big wardrobes. I won't show you because it's a mess, all that stuff's in there. And then the bathroom. So you can see it's pretty basic. Working shower, sink, big mirror and toilet. The one thing I would say that's a negative about the hotel is that the bathroom can smell pretty sewagey at times. I think it's when it's really hot, it just kind of smells. But it's pretty cheap hotel, so you just kind of deal with it. But yeah, it's pretty good. You go straight down the road and you're on Sari Beach. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but I'll pop it in the video. It's such a nice beach. I think it's probably one of the best beaches here. So we're quite lucky that it's just literally down the road and there's a beach. So I'm just going to show you the outside of our hotel. So I'll just turn the camera around. It's like our room is that one there. And yeah, that's our balcony. But this is just like the way to the beach. So just at the end of the street is just the beach. And there's loads of restaurants, bars. It's really cute. So this is our hotel pool with a little doggy. And then as you can see over there, that's the bar. And over here is the restaurant. Whitening Bar was easily one of our favorite bars in the whole of Thailand. It was right on the beach with a cool vibe, delicious food, tasty cocktails, and an incredible view of the sunset. We did get sat down in the sun and we were sunbathing and then we were getting in the pool. But then it started raining. So we decided to get dressed and walk along the walking street, which runs parallel to the beach. There's like lots of bars and restaurants. There's also like shops and everything. I bought myself something, of course, and grabbed sulking because I bought a dress. Yeah, I'm not sulking because of that. I'm sulking because I'm not sulking at all. But my point was, my point was that she bought so many holiday clothes before we set off, she physically couldn't bring them all. The bag was too heavy. She couldn't put it all in. She had to abandon loads of stuff. So I'm not sure why that. I just don't understand how you'd go from that to then buying more clothes on holiday. You've got so many you can't bring in. You've got enough. I mean, it's not for you to understand. But yeah, he's mainly sulking because it's not on the budget. It's not on Grant's spreadsheet, so I shouldn't have bought anything. But we're gonna slap a smile on and we're gonna enjoy the rest of the day, aren't we? Exactly. Let's not let a £30 outfit overpriced that we don't need get in the way of us having fun. Yeah. So we're now just gonna go and play some Monopoly Deal and a bit of Uno Flip in one of just the bars along the beach. So we'll let you know where we end up going. You both look amazing. We would highly, highly recommend this drag show. It was easily one of the best shows I've ever seen. If you're up for a fun night and lots of laughs, get yourself down to Queen's Cabaret. So far, we really like it in Koh Tao. It's got soft white sands, clear blue water, loads of cool bars and restaurants, and it's got loads of snorkelling and dive spots as well, if that's your thing. One thing that's really cool about Koh Tao is that it's quite a small island. So when we're travelling, we never rent scooters. So sometimes it feels like we can spend half our life either walking quite long distances or sat in the back of a taxi. But because Koh Tao is quite small, we've found that we've been able to walk to pretty much everywhere we've wanted to go so far. So within maybe two minutes walk of our hotel, there's absolutely loads to see and do. So I think between us, we've been to most of the main Thai islands over the last few years, and I'd say this is like right up there with the best. If you want to see what else we get up to in Koh Tao, check out our next video, where you'll see us exploring Koh Tao, eating more delicious food, and you'll see the highs and the lows of our time in Koh Tao.