Since Charlotte is soon celebrating her 60th birthday and has been a devoted fan of the TV series White Lotus since season 1, I just looked up what it would cost for us to stay a few nights at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui in Thailand, where the latest season (3) was filmed.

Well, it turns out that at $10,000 per night, we won’t be staying there anytime soon.

The first time I visited Koh Samui was in the fall of 1988 – almost to the date two years after my father Ernest had passed away in his small apartment in Los Angeles. I had received an irresistible job offer from a guy named Peter Forsberg, an acquaintance from Göteborg, Sweden who turned out to own a simple bungalow place on La Mai Beach on Koh Samui, near where White Lotus was filmed, an island in the southeast of Thailand. Peter wanted me to be informally in charge of guest relations. In return, I’d get a bungalow by the beach, free meals, and a small monthly tab at the hotel’s bar.

In the fall of 1988, a bungalow at Golden Sands cost a mere $5 per night, including a basic English breakfast.

There was no airport on Koh Samui at that time, just a rickety ferry from the mainland town of Surat Thani.When you finally stepped off the boat – on shaky legs – and onto the concrete pier in Nathon (Koh Samui’s only real village back then), a small armada of dusty old Toyota pickups were waiting to take visitors to the island’s various beaches.

“Laa-Mai! Laa-Mai! Laa-Mai!” “Cha-weng! Cha-weng! Cha-weng!” shouted the hurried ladies collecting the fare. I think it was 10 baht (about 20 cents) to get from Nathon to La Mai Beach.

Once the backpacks were tossed onto the roof of the Toyota and all of us passengers had climbed into the back – gripping whatever we could while the truck sped over the island’s bumpy dirt roads – our island adventure could begin.

I ended up staying at Peter’s bungalow place for six months before returning to Sweden.

In 2005, Charlotte, Elle, and I lived on Koh Samui for half a year, with several friends visiting us at our little rented house. Charlotte says we paid about $500 per month for the house. The owner, an older American guy named Gary had retired in Thailand after a career as an engineer at General Electric in Chicago or Detroit. I still remember Gary vividly, but mostly for his struggle to pronounce my name: “Joe-Kim? Joe-Chim?”

It strikes me now that if I add up all the times I’ve been on Koh Samui, I’ve spent about one year of my life there and I feel eternally grateful to have experienced Koh Samui when the island was still just a backpacker’s paradise. And even if I probably won’t ever be checking into the Four Seasons, there is still a fair chance that I will one day revisit the lush island of Koh Samui – and while there, stop by for a refreshing drink at the hotel’s bar, without breaking the bank.