Hainanese coconut farmers built Samui before tourism did
Koh Samui's modern character was shaped by Hainan Chinese migrants who arrived through the 19th century and turned the island into a coconut economy — for most of the 20th century Samui shipped coconuts to Bangkok rather than receiving tourists. Fisherman's Village in Bophut still preserves the row of Sino-Portuguese shophouses the Hainanese built; the surnames on local restaurants and the temple architecture in Bophut trace back to this migration. The coconut industry has declined steeply since the 1990s as tourism land values made plantations uneconomic, but the cultural layer underneath the resort strip is Hainanese, not generic Thai.
Pre-1989 Samui had no airport and no ring road — the tourism era is one generation old
Until the late 1980s, reaching Koh Samui meant a night boat from Surat Thani; the ring road around the island was completed in stages through the 1970s–80s, and Bangkok Airways' private USM airport opened in 1989. Everything riders see — Chaweng's hotel strip, the Lamai bar scene, the Bophut boutique conversion — has been built inside one generation. This is why development feels uneven: Chaweng overbuilt fast and chaotic, Maenam stayed quieter because the road reached it later, and the inland areas still hold rubber and coconut smallholdings.
Big Buddha, Hin Ta and Hin Yai — the island's Theravada-and-folk-belief layer
Wat Phra Yai's 12-metre golden Big Buddha (Phra Yai), built in 1972 on a tidal islet off the northeast coast, is the island's defining religious landmark and the namesake of the nearby Big Buddha Pier. South of Lamai, the Hin Ta and Hin Yai rocks — 'Grandfather and Grandmother Rocks' — are unmistakably phallic and yonic formations that locals frame through a folk legend of an elderly couple lost at sea. Theravada Buddhism is the formal religion, but the folk-belief layer (spirit houses outside every business, offerings at the rocks, full-moon ceremonies) runs underneath it.
Chaweng vs Maenam vs Bophut — three islands inside one island
Samui doesn't have one personality, it has at least three. Chaweng on the east coast is the high-density tourist strip — long beach, hotel towers, nightlife, the most overbuilt corner of the island. Lamai south of it is the smaller, slightly rougher cousin. Bophut on the north coast holds Fisherman's Village and the Hainanese shophouse layer — boutique, walking-street market, the 'cultured' end. Maenam further west is the quietest of the developed beaches and the closest to the kite zone — long shallow beach, low-rise, more long-stay residents than package tourists. Khao Hua Jook viewpoint above the airport is the standard photo of all of it stitched together.