Koh Samui, Thailand
An experience you will remember forever.
Weddings, corporate gatherings and wellness retreats on Koh Samui, run by the family who lives here.
Your hosts
Eralp & Bekir
What is The Other Thailand?
One house on Koh Samui that designs and runs the whole of a large group's time here, instead of selling you a venue and a schedule.
Three specialisms, one team. Each gets its own place, because a couple planning a wedding and a company planning a conference need different questions asked of them.
Samui is a meyhane
A meyhane is not really a restaurant. It's a long evening at a shared table, plates arriving without ceremony, nobody looking at the time, the conversation getting better as it goes.
We ran one in Istanbul for years. When we found this island, we recognised it.
That evening is the thing we build. The size changes, the feeling does not.
Who we are
Two people who ran a room full of people every night for years, and then moved to the island they could not stop thinking about.
Eralp and Bekir
Eralp
The anchor
Eralp saw a good deal of the world before he chose one island. He fell in love with an American writer, Lauren Üngeldi, then with Samui, and then he moved his whole family here. When someone hands us their wedding, or their company's week, that is the measure of how seriously we take it. He staked his own family on this place.
Bekir
The chef
Bekir cooks. He has worked in world-class kitchens around the world and in Istanbul, and he holds a table of eighty to the same standard as a table of eight. The food at your event is not catering. It is his.
What you get
The captain, the cook, the florist and the musicians are people we know by name. Not vendors from a listing with a star rating next to them.
The island, not a version of it
Our groups get Samui the way we get it, because these relationships are ours and we are there when they happen.
One team, one plan, one number
The same people design it and run it. Nothing is handed to an agency on the week.
The day, on everyone's phone
Everyone in your group carries the plan, so nobody comes to you asking what happens next.
His kitchen, not catering
Bekir holds a table of eighty to the same standard as a table of eight, and he is there.
The base gets you here. The experiences build the memory.
What people remember afterwards is rarely the ceremony or the agenda. It is the boat, the dinner that went on too long, the afternoon nobody had planned.
We'll go through all of it with you on the call.
We run it, you attend it.You will be your own guest.
Come to the thing you planned. Do not spend it running the thing you planned.
We hold the plan, the suppliers, the timings and the problems. Bringing a large group somewhere none of you have been is not one decision, it is four hundred of them, and every one of them lands on the person who suggested it. That is the part we take.
Nobody has to negotiate in Thai, judge whether a boat is sound, or find out in November which road floods. We live here, and we are there on the day.
What we have learned, written down
Honest notes on planning something big in Koh Samui, from the people who do it here.
The first pieces are being written now. They will appear here as they are finished.
Real groups
This is where the groups we host will appear, with their permission and their own photographs.
We would rather leave this space empty than fill it with somebody else's wedding.
Tell us who you're gathering, and for what
A few questions, then a call with a real person who knows the island. No obligation, and nobody will chase you.
Tell us what you're planning