Back in 2019, hunting for waterfalls on Koh Phangan, I’d already learned that looking for them in the dry season was a fool’s errand — so on Koh Chang, Krabi and Phuket alike, I simply ignored the whole attraction outright, rather than waste my time on it. Especially after Bali’s waterfalls, which make it genuinely hard to be impressed by much else. But Samui managed it. Samui impressed me plenty.
It poured every single night on the island, and often during the day too, so a slightly reckless thought crept in: “Maybe the waterfalls actually do exist here?” So I picked out the most beautiful one — and, as it turned out, apparently the most inaccessible too — and my husband and I set off.
We were still driving along the coast road towards the waterfall when the rain began hammering down without mercy, though further inland the sky looked clear, giving no hint of trouble ahead. Besides, it was only meant to be an hour, there and back.
The road climbed steadily the whole way, and a couple of kilometres before the waterfall, we started passing other tourists coming the other way, all wearing the same slightly dazed expression. “Probably just stunned by the beauty of it,” I thought, half-expecting something close to Bali’s near-mythical Aling-Aling. But a little further on, I realised their dazed look had nothing to do with the waterfall at all — it was the road. It had turned into a steep, brutally rutted downhill stretch. I badly wanted to get off the bike and simply walk. But since we still had a long way to go, I gritted my teeth and stayed put.
About 500 metres from the waterfall, we passed a local man who shouted, “No water!”
Come again?, I thought, soaked through by the downpour lashing everything around us. What do you mean, no water? There’s water absolutely everywhere!
About 100 metres further, the road gave out entirely, and I carried on on foot. Another 400 metres on, it gave out a second time, and we had to abandon the bike altogether, walking the rest of the way together. That’s when the rain from the coast finally caught up with us. Well, no matter — we were already soaked, we had rain jackets, and the waterfall wasn’t far now, so onward it was.
We splashed through streams already running across the path, on the verge of turning into proper little rivers, while the heavens poured a tropical downpour over us with all the generosity of a shower head turned up full. At one point, we even had to wade through a puddle that, within the hour, threatened to become a small pond in its own right. I didn’t film any of this particular stretch, since I only had the one phone, and had no interest in drowning it under the rain.
Another 300 metres on, we arrived at a genuinely picturesque spot — which, for the same reason, I didn’t film either — and, looking closer, I realised what I was looking at: rapids. The rapids of a waterfall. A waterfall that wasn’t there. It had rained round the clock, non-stop, for days, and yet there was no water in the waterfall itself. How? HOW is that even possible?
Well, fine — no waterfall, but a jungle adventure was still an adventure. So we turned around and headed back.
The little pond kept growing, and the streams had, by now, genuinely become small rivers.
The way back took us first down, then up, along a road that was every bit as bad and wet as before, then finally downhill the whole way, over a stretch paved with concrete slabs. We were riding a big Honda scooter, mind you, but the Japanese have this rather unfortunate habit of fitting weak rear brakes — weak enough that, back when I owned a Honda sportbike myself, there were moments I genuinely wondered whether the rear brake was there at all. Which meant the ride back stood a real chance of being not just difficult, but downright impossible.
I walked part of that bad, wet stretch myself, since a passenger willing to use their own legs makes life considerably easier for both rider and bike — and, in my case, for the passenger too. But I couldn’t walk the entire way, so at some point I had to climb back into my rightful seat. To say I was frightened would be putting it mildly. But I also knew a passenger needs to stay relaxed and calm in exactly this kind of situation, since any tension only produces extra, unwanted movement — movement the bike itself immediately feels.
The trouble was, I desperately needed somewhere to put all that tension! So I invented what I now call the finger grip. Instead of clinging on with my hands, legs, or my whole body to the bike or to my husband, I dug my fingers straight into my trainers — my little toes especially. They’re something of a speciality of mine, actually; I use exactly the same grip on a wakesurf board.
And it worked! As a passenger, I performed admirably — all my fear drained straight out through my toes and into my trainers, and we made it safely to… one more thoroughly shocking discovery.
