Originally Posted by
TRAVELSIG
Car rental company will pick you up from the port- or even easier, get the hotel to pick you up, and have the car delivered later in the day (more relaxing and the car rental companies will deliver to your hotel free of charge). The major operators all have operations at the airport- what I usually do though is:
-arrive in the afternoon and get the hotel to pick me up
-get a car delivered for the next morning after breakfast
-leave the car at the hotel the morning of departure
-get the hotel to take me to the airport
It works out usually to the same or lower total cost and is far less stress.
The logic here makes sense w/r/t stress. However, for us it wasn't terribly stressful picking up a car at the airport and driving ourselves to our hotel. (Was our first time driving in Thailand) The added benefit there is the ability to immediately pickup beer/alcohol/food at tesco on the way to the resort. We love to play frugal while staying at higher-end properties.
For those interested in exploring Koh Samui a bit, you may find the $10 e-book at
http://www.kohsamuisunset.com of interest. We found it invaluable. Admittedly it was a bit hard to leave the luxury of our room/resort (W Retreat for us) to explore, but we enjoyed tooling about, particularly knowing that pool villa was waiting for us when we returned overheated.