One thing I've noticed when traveling is that people will talk to just about anyone and form temporary friendships. Or in our case your temporary friendships can extend for longer than you'd like. After we left Bangkok we thought we had seen the last our Jon and Laura but we were wrong. At 10pm the first night, as we were settling in to the room and heading to beds there was a knock on the door. Surprise surprise it was them. Now we had a lot of fun with them in Beijing and Bangkok but after a while our differences were starting to show and we were looking forward to just being in Koh Samui alone. But fate had other plans.
Our first day at Koh Samui was pretty unremarkable. We woke up around 11 (partially due to the loud techno and fireworks going on right outside our room that kept us up til 2), but this being our relaxing time we didn't mind. We had already ignored one knock at our door by Jon and Laura. We sneaked out of the room to Burger King for lunch then decided to hit the beach. I got sun burned, of course. The beach is pretty nice except that there are not many chairs and not much of a beach as the chairs that are there come down to the waters edge at high tide. But the water is pretty clear and warm, and because of where we are on the beach at low tide it forms a lagoon of sorts between the beach and the rock reef. We sat around for a couple hours just wading in the water and watching people come by, with Jon and Laura popping by every once and a while to see what we were up to. Laura was trying to convince us to do a trip to the Elephant Trekking park on the island. I was not to keen on it since it would take the better part of a day but after a while I just gave in figuring riding an elephant might be cool. That night we headed out to a local bar to have a drink or 2 and play some pool. Nothing special about the bar except that we met Andy and Lucy, two Brits who are doing a bit of traveling themselves. They had just come from India and had some good stories and were all around funny people. We made plans to all grab a drink the next day after we got back from the Elephant Trekking. We made it back to the room and were rocked to sleep by the lullaby of the techno playing next door.
Early the next morning (9 am early) we awoke and headed out to meet the air con minivan for the trip. When an off road pickup truck who had bench seats in the back showed up to get us I knew we were in for trouble. The truck had no gauges of any kind, just a steering wheel, stick and pedals. The back looked like someone had welded in bench seats with little padding and welded bars around the side to hold on to. It was hotter than hell even at 9 am and being mildly hung over did not help. After picking up 2 more groups of people (who looked as confused as we did by the pickup) we headed out to the Elephant Trekking park. Along the way we ran into another pickup for the tour that had broken down on the side of the road. After they tried to slam their 8 people into the back with our 8 people (16 people in a small truck bed doesn't work) a third truck showed up and decided it would push the broken down truck. So they loaded that truck back up and put grill to bumper and off they went. Very classy and even more safe.
When we got to the elephant park we found it was actually a "zoo" of sorts. Our trip was supposed to be 9-2:30pm and we thought we would be hitting many parts of the island. But in fact we spent 75% of the time at the "zoo". The elephant trek was shown in the brochure as being a walk through the forest of the island, up a river away from civilization. What we got was a ride around the park showing us the cage with the crazy monkey from the monkey show who just does back flips over and over, the alligator park with the alligators that look half dead and the "river" that looked like run off from a hose. At one point the driver offered to take our picture, so he jumped down and had us take turns sitting up by the elephants head. The pictures came out well but afterwards the driver wanted 200 baht for it. We gave him 150. Side note, elephants are not comfortable so never ride one longer than 30 minutes.
After the elephant we were treated to the elephant show, which was baby elephant trained to do circus tricks like kick a ball, play a harmonica, bark on command and dance. It was really kind of sad. After the elephant show was the alligator show with 2 people doing the regular head in an alligators mouth, etc. The gators barely even moved the entire time and if not for the breathing I would swear they were dead. At one point the guy put his entire arm down the alligators throat and it did nothing at all. The last show was the monkey show with Robert the monkey who would show us how locals used to use monkeys to get coconuts. Robert wasn't in a good mood and refused to do most of what the trainer said to do which was the only funny part of the whole day. They had to cut the show short and Robert was unavailable for pictures. Other things that would have PETA up in arms were the chained tiger cubs, leopard cubs in cages the size of a box and just the general look of the elephants. I know Thais cherish elephants but this place pretty much pimped them to tourist. It was the worst kind of tourist trap possible and we were greatly regretting even coming. But it was only 11, we had 3 hours to go.
The next stop was the waterfall. The pictures showed a huge waterfall with people swimming all below it. In reality it is a big waterfall and people did swim, but the swimming was actually 30 yards down stream from the waterfall. And the 100 other people there kind of ruined that you and nature type of feel. Safe to say I did not swim and counted the minutes til it was time to leave. Next stop was the mummified monk, a guy that died 30 years ago and his family had his body mummified and put on display to encourage others to meditate. Kind of creepy. After that it was to the off road adventure. I already said how uncomfortable the trucks were but then they took us off roading with the 3 trucks in the caravan racing around each other, bumping each other and the camera man swinging all around the trucks from hood to roof to side to back, grabbing video (of yeah they made a video of the day you could buy for 600 baht). At the top of the off road mountain was lunch, which was not to bad. It had a great view, food tasted decent and it was much cooler up there. But the servings were tiny and anything besides water cost extra. By this point we were just waiting for it to be over. The last stop on the trip was the Magical Buddha Garden which is a bunch of statues a guy started making 20 years ago and arranging in a man made garden and creek. Most of them look silly and the concrete lacks the historic quality of marble or granite carvings. But that was the last stop and then home thank god. I took a 3 hour nap after that hoping to forget the days events.
That night we met up with Laura, Jon, Andy and Lucy to go out. The first stop was the Ice Bar where everything is made of ice. But they want real money, 375 baht just to get in, which was more than were willing to pay for a place to drink beer. Instead we ended up on a beach bar sitting around drinking with the rest of the backpackers. Other than the techno blaring all around it was it pretty nice. Clear skies, slight breeze and the site of the ocean all around you made it pleasent. Around 12 Jon and Laura called it a night since their plane left the next day. The rest of us moved down the beach to Ark Bar. It is the place that plays techno music late into the night that is right next door to us. Here we got to see the standard backpacker society which was a bunch of really drunk aussies, brits and irish. A girl sat/laid down behind me and had a dress so small her entire thong covered ass was showing. As she wiggled around making out with a guy her entire dress came up to her waist giving me more of a show than I wanted. All the locals were laughing and even taking pictures of her. At one point someone told her and her reply was "that's awesome". Then she treated everyone by stripping to her underwear and going for a swim in the ocean. Another girl had to be carried off the beach by the friends and I think a few people were passed out on the beach. Around 2 we said good bye to Andy and Lucy and headed home, looking forward to one day by ourselves.
Koh Samui is pretty nice. Knowing better now I would stay at a different beach on the island to get away from the backpacker/party crowd as well as the vendors. Every day on the beach we get harassed by 30-40 vendors trying to sell useless junk and ice cream. Always ice cream everywhere in Asia. The relaxation I was looking for didn't really come so hopefully over the next 2 weeks before Africa I can find some where to chill out for a bit. We're off to Hanoi tomorrow to wrap up our Asia tour.
