Koh Samui is the idyllic tropical island located in the Gulf of Thailand. This emerald island has been charming its visitors ever since the first tourists arrived in the early of 1970's. Those who experience Koh Samui are rewarded with an idyllic tropical retreat with little traffic, white-sand beaches, a sapphire-blue sea, an abundance of tantalizing Thai cuisine and unusually warm and friendly people. Koh Samui is gifted with such an incredibly rich variety of beaches and bays, capes and coves, which it seems like several islands rolled into one. This Thailand's third largest island also consists of forest hills of limestone and granite, and the shoreline is made up of countless coconut palm-fringed beaches and bays. Despite the mass of resort development, Koh Samui still maintains the classic image of a tropical beach fringed by coconut palms.