Not sure if you noticed it or not, but we did a lot with John and Laura (the couple from Beijing) while we were in Bangkok. In fact every night we were there we did something with them and during that time Chris did such a fine job talking up Koh Samui they decided to come down to the island and join us. Nothing against them at all, we had our fun hanging out, but I was looking forward to getting back to the two of us and getting to relax before we embarked on Vietnam and even more so Africa. No such luck and not an hour after I wrote my last post they were knocking on the door of our hut seeing if we wanted to go out. Seriously, they had looked on the list at the receptionist desk to find us and then walked down to the room to see if we were there. Nothing like being stalked.....
Day 1:Relaxing.. sort of
Day 1 in Koh Samui was pretty uneventful. We woke up to a loud knocking on our door, which we ignored because we were sleeping. We knew who it was and we knew we could find them next door so we elected to stay in bed and stick to the plan of taking it easy for a few days. After getting up at noon we grabbed some Burger King and headed for the beach to just hang out. As soon as we got to the beach we spotted John and Laura getting massages right next to our place. Not to keen on doing much we just sat in the water for a few hours getting roasted. Around 5 we went in and showered and pretty soon after John and Laura stopped by. They wanted us to sign up for a tour with them, which neither Chris and I were too keen on. It was an elephant trek and a bunch of other stuff, but all we really thought would be fun was riding an elephant up the river like the brochure said. Just the elephant was about 10 bucks cheaper and did not require us to get up early so it was our option 1. Of course we got sucked in, we are suckers, and we ended up with a group rate of 1200 baht for the half day trip John and Laura wanted to do.
Once we had paid for our trip it was dinner on the beach... another fine date on our gaycation. About the only thing of note after dinner was that we met another couple traveling from the UK. John had asked him the rules of cricket and we pretty much spent the rest of the night talking They were cool and we made plans to meet up with them the next night after our tour. We left the bar around 11 and got convinced to stop one more time even though we had an early morning. A beer or two after later, around 1am, we headed for our mosquito filled shack to crash; with a 8am wake up looming far to near.
Day 2: Mr Ung's Magical Bullshit Tour
Woke up yesterday feeling like crap on just 6 hours of sleep. Drinking here is bad news... it dehydrates the crap out or your all ready dehydrated sunburned body. Feeling like crap we walked out to wait for the van that was supposed to pick us up. It never showed. In the place of our van with AC was a truck with seats in the bed. The only thing I was thinking is "let the scams begin," this was going to be a long day. From there we picked up a few more people who were all equally surprised by our vehicle, apparently they had read the brochure too. As we baked in the back of the truck on the way I felt worse and worse and so did Laura. Of course I had no sympathy... it was her fault in the first place we were on this damn thing. Once we were there we got right on the elephants. The river trek to the waterfall I anticipated was a 10 min walk in a circle around a so called zoo... After that we were ushered into the zoo area for an elephant, crocodile, and monkey show. It was a complete tourist trap and at this point feeling bad, turned into just being pissed off. It was a 100 baht, sometimes 200 baht for a picture with some animal chained up to a tree. It was so bad that there were leopards in cages no bigger than themselves. I am no PETA activist, but this was pretty awful. All three shows were equally as bad. The elephant crapped all over itself while doing ridiculous tricks, the crocks barely moved in the heat of the day, and a monkey name Robert refused to do anything other than tug at the chain around his neck. Who could blame him, if I had something around my neck I would pull on it too. Continuing on from there we walked to a lame waterfall and then to the mummified monk. For about 2 hours all I did was ask Chris what time it was, all the while wishing that 2:30 would come sooner. Lunch was next and honestly it was the best part. I don't really like Thai food all that much, but it was pretty good and it was the first thing that had gone as expected. While we were eating they hit us up to buy a DVD for 600 baht. I am not sure how they actually sold one, but suckers are born every day (as evidenced by the fact we were even on the trip) and some people bought them.. including John and Laura.
Finally at the end of the tour we drove back into town and to our place. We got back to our hut around 3:30 and Chris and I just crashed. We slept till around 5:30 until we heard pounding on the door... again. In no mood to answer we both went back to sleep for another hour. We got up around 6:30, showered and then walked out to get some food. Just around the corner from our place we saw John and Laura at a restaurant. We thought we might be able to sneak out and get some food, but there they were and there was no way we were getting by them. They had eaten, but we sat down and ate with them anyway. While we were eating Andy and Lucy showed up (the UK couple from the night before). After a few drinks there we tried out a place called the ice bar. Of course it was another scam.. it cost 12 bucks a person just to see it and then the drinks were ridiculously priced. With no luck there we did our own version of a bar crawl... 2 bars back to the beach where we sat until around midnight. At that point John and Laura left to go to bed and Chris and I continued talking to Andy and Lucy. Honestly its funny, we have met several people on this trip, seen tons of people our age and the guy we have the most in common with is a 40 year old guy from England. Since we were having a pretty good time we decided to go check out one more place and we certainly got more than we expected. The place was called the Ark bar and there was a huge group of Irish and British people drunk and falling all over the place. At one point Chris looked to his right and this girl was making out with her boyfriend with her whole ass hanging out right there next to him. She either did not notice or did not care. She even used Chris as an anchor to stabilize herself as she pushed up on to her boyfriend at one point. People were carrying on laughing and a cop was shinning a flashlight on her ass while people took pictures.... This was the closest we would get to a fool moon party her at Koh Samui and honestly it was good enough for me. One thing I will say is that she was a pretty shameless girl. Even after she found out her ass had been all over the place she really did not care and just carried on. The fun continued when her and a couple others decided to go swim. It was off with the dress and her, her boyfriend and her thong ran down to the beach. A few more joined and that was about all that happened since the bar closed down at 2am. By that point we had had our fill, said goodnight to Andy and headed back to the room.
Day 3: Beach and Sleep
Today we slept in till John and Laura came to say goodbye. That was around 11. Actually they came back twice once to say goodbye and once to give us their internet card for the place next door. At that point I was up so I convinced Chris to get out of bed. We walked down the street and grabbed lunch. After that we went back to our place. It was around 1:30 so we headed for the beach, which is where we sat for the rest of the day. We will probably meet up with Andy and Lucy tonight, but it should be an early night since we need to be up by 7am to catch our ride to the airport.
Tomorrow it is off to Hanoi via Bangkok. Hopefully the 7 hour layover will not be too painful.
