We wanted to go zip lining in Koh Samui and decided to do the Big Boop Boop tour as it included 4 cable rides as well as a visit and chance to swim at two waterfalls (Na Muang 1 & 2), lunch, jungle water slides and a visit to a fruit market. The listed price for the tour is THB 1600. In comparison, the Sky Fox cable ride (which is run by the same company) includes 7 cable rides and a swim at one waterfall for THB 1700. Thus, the Big Boop Boop tour seemed to offer good value for money!
Now a word on pricing before I get to the review: The listed price is absolutely negotiable and you should ensure that you check at a few agents before booking the tour. We had a limited number of days and didn’t want to waste our day so decided to book with Rinny (they have kiosks all around Chaweng) and were offered THB 1400 and told that the agency was only making THB 50 so we decided to book. 5 minutes after booking, when we went to a large agency in the main market (I forget the name!) we were straight away offered the same tour for THB 1100 (that’s a loss of 600 for 2 people) When we went back to Rinny, we were told there was a 30% cancellation fee and decided to just stick with our booking and put the loss down as Thailand tax! Lesson learnt.
We were picked up in the afternoon in a big open to the elements safari truck and the drive to the cable ride station is about 45 mins – 1 hr. First stop was the cable rides. You’re kitted out with the equipment, the cables, a helmet and gloves, it’s a bit worn for wear but safe, though the gloves are extremely tattered. There isn’t any training other than one person who demonstrates how to stop (I didn’t get a word and had trouble braking every time!) and then you’re off. The cable ride itself on each cable is not very long but it’s an exhilarating experience nonetheless, albeit the issue with the breaking and there is always someone on the next platform to catch you and set you up for the next course. Because of the trouble we were all having with braking, after the second cable ride, the attendants told us not to brake and started to pull the cables before we got to the next platform to slow us down towards the end and that made it a whole lot easier. There’s also a long rope bridge high up between the trees to the last platform which was quite fun to go on! Overall, the cable rides were fun but don’t expect a “Go Ape” sort of experience.
We were then taken to the waterfall (it wasn’t rainy season so not very fast) and there were 4 large slides in the mountain which ended in natural pools. 2 extremely fast rides and 2 slower ones. All of them had a pretty high drop into the pool. With our tour, we could have unlimited goes on the slides. We decided to try the “slow” one first since the fast one was pretty intimidating and it definitely wasn’t slow, infact, it was very zippy and ended in a hard fall into the water. We were told by the attendant not to try the fast one as people had reported injuries previously and after the “slow” slide, we really weren’t willing to try the fast one. We had two rides on the slow slide but decided against any more as my husband hit himself hard on his second slide down due to the large drop. It was a fun experience but probably not the safest!
Food was surprisingly very good, 4 different chicken and vegetable dishes as well as fresh fruit to polish it off and we bought ice creams as a treat.
After this we were taken to the second waterfall where you could take a dip and then it was time to head back. On the way back, our driver stopped at a small street side shop with fruit lined up outside and said it was the fruit market and invited us to buy fruit. I guess they have a tie-up with the shop because it was most certainly not the fruit market but none of us wanted to buy any fruit anyway so we carried on without getting out. I think we crossed the actual fruit market about 5 minutes after the shop.
Overall, it was a fun day out in Koh Samui but don’t go with very high expectations! Our driver was a very nice guy who two of the boys on our tour sit on top of the truck and gave them quite a few jolts just for fun! Just make sure you check for the best prices before booking the tour.
