July 9-10 – Evening flight and arrival at Koh Samui

After a sad goodbye at the Pacific Club Resort, we had a wild taxi ride (they all are) to the airport where we hopped on a flight to Koh Samui. This is another fairly large island, but is on the opposite side of Thailand in the East.

Here we had a brief stay at the very nice Lamai Wanta hotel on Lamai Beach.

This is the second favorite beach in the area, with Cheweng being the most popular. Our strategy worked out again as this beach was very nice and not too busy.

The area in town was nice and we had some authentic Thai food. Jen had a chicken/veggie dish on rice and I had a crab curry that I wasn’t quite sure how to eat. The crab was very thick and they didn’t provide anything to break it with. It did provide a nice flavoring for the soup.

We then wandered to a bar/restaurant where there was a chick rock band playing. Their singing voices could have used a little work, but they really rocked it out on their guitars and were fun to watch. The lead singer at one point was doing the Chinese splits across two chairs, banging her head, and playing guitar while singing. Very entertaining indeed.

I also discovered that here I could find on tap my favorite beer, Kilkenny, which you cannot get in the US. It’s an Irish beer that I discovered in New Zealand.

The next day we did a bit of Jet Skiing on the water. We switched drivers midway through our time out there and had a blast.

Our hotel had a nice restaurant and we probably had one of the better serviced meals we’ve had in Asia.

The location was also stellar. It was just 20 yards or so away from the water and there was a real nice atmosphere. Jen had spinach ricotta ravioli and I had a delicious mix of asparagus and prawns.

That night we caught an illegally shown movie at a movie theatre (“open air bar/restaurant”). Let me explain. There are a lot of illegal copied VCDs and movies on DVD that are sold around Thailand. In fact, I’m not sure I saw any legal selling of movies around. You can get movies that have just been released in the theatres. So anyways at this place they project up the movies on the screen. We just popped in, bought drinks and enjoyed a free show. We watched ‘What Happens in Vegas’.

I should also comment on the Thai shopping experience. There are lots of small stores up and down the streets that have things on display on the outside sidewalks. The shopkeepers are very aggressive and become quite annoying. They try to guess where you are from, become your friend, and then try to sell you something. So as we walk down the street we here “G’day mate – you Aussie? Hello friend? Nice couple! You come look inside! Massage Massage! Very cheap! So annoying these people! I would actually go look in stores where we WEREN’T harassed into coming in.

Additionally annoying there were only 5 types of stores repeated up and down the streets:

1. 7/11 (same as US-convenience store)
2. Tailor (Sir! Madame! Come look, very nice, Armani!)
3. Knick/knack shop with various Thai things, magnets, postcards, clothes, bags
4. Massage places (Massage! Massage!)
5. Travel/Tourist bureaus

Then if you got through all this mess and wanted to actually buy something ,then you have to negotiate. They will give you the “White Man” price at whatever price they come up with. Then you have to start to work them down. You might offer them half the price, then they come down some …and so on. It’s an annoying process and we’re not very good at it.

So that’s about it for Koh Samui.