Central Festival Samui is the largest lifestyle shopping complex in Samui with three storeys and around 90,000sqm of retail space and a huge car park underneath. The open air shopping is all arranged around central garden spaces and is where you find Samui's high end shops. The shopping mall has more than 160 shops of international and local fashion brands, bazaar and restaurants indoors and out. There is also a Wine Connection and Tops Supermarket for those harder to find western food products.

Fisherman’s Village Walking Street brings Bophut to life every Friday from 17:00 to 23:00. It sees the narrow Beach Road and adjoining streets crammed with market stalls with a diverse range of wares found in markets throughout Thailand, including T-shirts, jewellery, handbags, sunglasses, beer cosies, souvenirs, watches of questionable mechanical soundness, branded clothes of dubious origin and electrical goods of suspicious provenance. A certain amount of judgement and measured expectations is necessary when selecting your purchases. With restaurants either side of the street and a fantastic bean bag / cocktail / music beach bar at the end, you can spend a whole evening here.

The nightly walking street market in Lamai sells Thai handicrafts and clothes and is right in the middle of the restaurant and bar area. Haggle hard with a smile and you will be surprised at the discount you get. There is a much bigger Saturday Night Walking Street in Lamai when the road is closed and filled with food and cocktail vendors as well as a huge number of craft and other produce stalls. A definite must do on Samui and not too far from the house.

It is probably no surprise that Samui has not escaped the relentless 'progress' of the supermarket chains. There is a Tesco in Lamai and a Big C in Chaweng where you will find everything you need and quite a lot more you don't. Not my idea of a good day out, but I understand we all have to eat. Just a shame these shops force so many local business to fail.....