Operation Ko Samui

Place; Ko Samui, Thailand

Language: Thai
Hello: Sàwàtdii (khráp/khâ) If you are male, you add khráp to the end to show respect. If you are female, you add khâ. (sa wa dee crap/sa wa dee kah)
Thank you: Khàwp khun (khráp/khâ) (ka pun crap/ka pun kah)

I thought about posting a blog written entirely in sarcasm like this:

Ko Samui sucked. Big-time. Man, the weather was sunny the whole time. The beaches had this awful soft sand and turquoise waters. Plus, there were Thai ladies that would massage you for $10 (US) and it felt terrible. Our trip to Ang Thong was a huge disappointment with redundant scenery of mountains, tropical islands and the most boring blue water you've ever seen. Plus, the elephants were big and hairy.

But, fearing that the sarcasm wouldn't translate well into the written form, I'm just going to have to revert to talking about how great everything was.

We disembarked our "speedboat" (another 2 hours getting back) on Ko Samui and took the complimentary shuttle to our hotel. Funny thing happened on the way, see, we were on a group shuttle and had to drop off some other people at another hotel before ours (this becomes important in a minute). When we pulled up to our hotel, Marc got his bag off the top of the shuttle van and I waited patiently for the driver to get mine. Um, except mine wasn't where they put it when we arrived. In fact, it wasn't in or on the shuttle anywhere. I said, "Where is my suitcase? You know, the BIG RED one that you can't lose?" The driver looked at me sheepishly and said "Oh, Anantara." Yes folks, they left my suitcase in the driveway of that other hotel where we dropped off the other people. Luckily, it was only 5 minutes away, so I checked in while Marc rode with the driver back to the hotel to get my bag which, remarkably was still in the middle of the driveway and not in the couple's room.

Crisis averted, we asked the hotel front desk lady about transportation on the island. We had read and witnessed first-hand that most people on the island get around on little motorized scooters like mopeds or small motorcycles. However, I had also read the fine print about the dozens of drivers and riders who die each year on the death-mobiles. Apparently, mothers see fit to scoot their ENTIRE families around on one moped. Usually, a kid in the back, one riding in front and one strapped to her chest. People even take their dogs around for a little scoot! But the front desk lady assured us that if we drove safely and slowly and didn't let the "real cars and trucks" bully us off the road, we would be fine. The guy that usually rented out mopeds was around somewhere she said, so she went and got the key from him. We didn't have to fill out any paperwork or get insurance or anything. They didn't even need to see our passports or identification of any kind, nor did we actually have to show a drivers license or certify that we even knew how to drive. So, nerdy helmets in hand, we rented our 2-person moped for a mere $8/day.

Man, was it fun! After I got over my fear of other mopeds zipping dangerously close to us, the steep hills and sharp curves, and released my death grip on Marc, we had a blast! We rode that thing everywhere on the island, including the middle of the island where we met Nicole.

Nicole, the big, hairy elephant, was awesome. She took us on a ride through the jungle in the middle of the island. The guide even let Marc and I take turns at the driver's wheel, er, head. We stopped every once in a while to let her eat grass (she has to get her 500 kilos every day somehow) and drink water, then she led us to the Na Muang waterfalls. Nicole was really docile and when Marc dropped his water bottle, she even picked it up for us. I think it (the elephant trekking, not dropping his water bottle) was the highlight of Marc's trip.

Next up, we scooted into town where we putzed around and bought touristy t-shirts and walked through a local market. I was intrigued by the local "cuisine":

In the first two bins, those are caterpillars with spinach leaves, the bin she is scooping out contains what looks like larvae and the last 2 bins are fried grasshoppers tossed with more spinach leaves. That kid you see in the picture? He couldn't stop eating them! I saw him eat 3 just while standing there taking a picture. Marc said he would have tried a grasshopper but there were bugs flying around the "food."

Seeking out more conventional food and sanitary conditions, we made our way back to the hotel where the front desk lady praised us for not dying on the road and gave us a great restaurant recommendation. We walked down the street about 5 minutes to a little place called Starfish and Coffee. Strange name, I'll admit, but Chef Ming prepared our calamari appetizer, a silver pomfret fish with mango chutney for me and a lemon pepper pomfret fish for Marc in front of our very eyes:

Oh man was it tasty! Then, we had the best dessert ever: mango with coconut sticky rice. I've been having this dessert at every restaurant we've been to that has it on the menu ever since. Diet? What diet? It's rice and fruit, which is what skinny Asians eat anyway, how bad can it be?

While we were eating dinner, I noticed little balls of fire behind Marc's head and I realized that I had seen these things before on the travel channel. Somewhere north on the island, people were setting off these little tealight hot air-balloon things and they were alighting into the starry night sky. In India, the Locals do the same thing except, they put the tealights in these tiny floating boats and make a wish on them as they send them down the river. This picture doesn't do it justice but we watched those little candle balloons go way up until it seemed they were going to reach the moon:

The next day we woke up early for our day-trip to Ang Thong National Marine Park. For those of you who have seen the movie The Beach, you might remember that this is where the mythical Beach is supposed to have been. Yes, it actually exists but there is no community of rastafarians living in the middle of them and you don't have to fend off machine-wielding marijuana farmers, luckily for us. The national park is an archipelago of islands and no one is allowed to live on the islands. In fact, you can only snorkel on one small part of the ocean around the islands and there are certain islands that you are allowed to visit if you pay the park fee. Some of the filming took place in Ang Thong while most of the scenes were filmed on other islands off the west coast of Thailand. We're going to seek them out and report back.

Now, Marc and I aren't exactly the tour group types, we like to explore on our own and find our own unique forms of transportation and itineraries. However, since taking a tour boat to the islands is the only way to get to Ang Thong, we really didn't have a choice. We boarded our speedboat along with about a dozen other tourists to start our day-long journey. First stop, we passed by "James Bond Island" (JBI). I'm using quotation marks here because this is not actually James Bond Island, it is a replica of the real James Bond Island off the west coast of Thailand (again, another place we hope to explore on future trips). Next, we pulled up to a small island next to JBI with a thin strip of beach where we spent some time on the beach, wading in the crystal clear water and exploring some really neat caves made out of cut-outs on the island. It is sort of hard to describe, so here is a picture of the cut-outs I'm talking about:

We horsed around in the caves produced by these cut-outs for a while and, what else? We took pictures:

As part of the tour, we also got to go sea kayaking around the island for about 45 minutes. Can you guess who was doing all the work?

After our scenic work-out, we were taken to another part of the island which is actually part of Ko Samui and where people are allowed to inhabit the island. There, we were served a sumptuous Thai lunch with the rest of the folks on the boat.

It is at this point where I'm debating whether to tell you about a couple that we noticed on the boat. I'm always afraid of offending anyone but Marc said that anything we witness on vacation is fair game, so here goes.

Our boat was a melting pot of nationalities, there were Asians, Brits, Spaniards, Aussies, Americans, you name it. But one couple in particular just seemed like they didn't belong, not in the group mind you, but together. The female was obviously Thai and, once he spoke, we are taking an educated guess that the male was Dutch. His English was great, while his "partner" didn't speak a lick of English. They were traveling with another Thai/Dutch couple and it was clear that the men knew each other and the women knew each other. Every once in a while you could hear the females talking amongst themselves in Thai. The other couple actually seemed together, like they were married, but the couple in question looked like they just met the previous week. The female, let's call her Sue, was young and dressed to the nines. I'm talking fancy stilettos, short shorts with a flashy belt, sparkly top, designer sunglasses and a white straw hat that had "Amazing Thailand" written on the band. She looked like she was getting ready to walk the strip in search of a rich John. The man, let's call him Bob, was older than her by about 20 years and dressed more appropriately for a boat ride among the Thai islands in a t-shirt and shorts but had a matching "Amazing Thailand" hat. He was really outgoing and spoke to us a few times making funny remarks but Sue was having nothing of it. Sue looked extremely bored to be on the trip and even fell asleep at times on the boat. She went along with the motions of kayaking but she didn't even acknowledge that Bob was in the kayak with her or even that she was supposed to be with him. It was very strange. And Bob just looked like a kid in a candy store, like he has just won the lottery with Sue. He kept looking over at her with this love-struck glimmer in his eye while she obviously ignored him. It was painful to watch just how much she detested being with him. Yet, they had obviously been traveling together at least for a few days because we later saw those hats in Bangkok.

Since we couldn't outright ask them what the deal was, we came up with a story of our own but I have a feeling we are very close to the truth. Again, not trying to offend anyone or create any stereotypes about Thai women, so here goes. We think Sue is supposed to be Bob's mail order bride. Thailand is known as a place where men can come to find beautiful Thai brides, so we're not actually going on a limb here. We think that they met a few days before and that the other couple was also a product of the mail order system. My guess is that the girls knew each other and the first bride told Sue that her husband had a great friend for her, so they set it up (not a true mail order scenario but that Bob came to meet her, take her home and marry her). Now, I don't know why she wasn't more excited to have a sugar daddy taking her on a tour of Thailand, but why else would they be together when it was very clear that they didn't know each other? Marc's more sinister hypothesis involves monetary compensation but I'm not so sure about that one. I think Bob just wants a PYT (pretty young thing) to take home, show off and "take care of." We'll never know for sure, but I will say that we saw another couple later on in our trip that fit the same description so who knows...

Back on the boat, we rode around the islands and Marc took about 5 pictures a minute. More beautiful islands/water/scenery, blah blah blah. We docked another island where we hiked up some rocky terrain to see the Emerald Lagoon, the place where The Beach was supposed to be. The Emerald Lagoon doesn't actually have a beach, so the rest of the filming took place on other islands, but that didn't stop Marc from taking 47 pictures of it from different angles. The lake itself is entirely surrounded by mountains so that there is no exit to the sea directly from the lake. However, the water in the lake is sea water that percolates from an underground tunnel. Marc was kind enough to take a video for your viewing pleasure:

After that, the boat took us to the place in Ang Thong National Marine Park where you are allowed to go snorkeling. We had brought our own gear so we were able to use our fins to get away from the rest of the group who had been given loaner masks and snorkels but no fins. With our new-found freedom, we were able to go exploring in some caves that even the boat driver didn't know about. The caves opened up into cavernous rocky rooms that were 30 feet tall. At the top of one cave, there was a cenote, or an opening where the sun was able to shine in. It was really neat. Sorry, no pictures because our digital camera isn't waterproof.

After a day of excitement, we were dropped off near our hotel. We had a drink by the pool and then got ready for dinner. As we didn't have any recommendations for dinner that night, we did a dumb thing and went to a place that we recognized because we had seen many billboards advertising it. The place was called the Happy Elephant and it was terrible. Honestly, the fish I ate tasted awful and made me ill the next day. The entertainment was a father/son duo who couldn't carry a tune a bucket, and we were seated right in front of them. The only applause they got from me was when they went on a break. However, I figured that if the only bad thing about Thailand was the Happy Elephant, I could live with that.

We retired early to bed as our flight the next day left at 6am for Bangkok. We only had one day in Bangkok and we were planning on making the most of it.

Stay tuned for One Night in Bangkok, coming up in a few days, I promise. I can't put it off any longer since we're going to China on Friday, so I can't get behind on my blog posting!