our final destination in thailand is the small island of koh samui. it's famous for hospitality, beautiful beaches and where "the beach" was filmed. it's only 25km at its longest points, and 15 km across so you can really see all of the island within a day or two. part of surat thani province, 60km off the coast of the mainland in the gulf of thailand.we left taiwan aug.1 without a hitch. everything was on time, papers were in order, money was exchanged and all that other wonderful stuff that one has to do when leaving a country. arrived in the land of smiles around 10 pm and it was just as i remembered it...busy, lots of tourists, noisy and about every 5 seconds a thai man would come up and ask "taxi?" sigh. it was good to be back. we quickly decided on a cheap hotel as we couldn't get any transport to our final destination and settled in for the night...not wanting to wait, i ordered my favourite thai dish of mango salad...it was so spicy and delicious, i was weeping but not because of the spice, but for the joy in heart...my cup had runneth over. after noshing, we quickly fell asleep to some thai movie.
had our wakeup call the next day at 4:00am, as we wanted to be first in line at the airport to ensure we got the cheap tickets (its the first and last flight everyday to the island). apparently, everyone else trying to get to koh samui had the same idea and we missed out. we spent the extra money and caught the next flight out as to not waste any more time in airports and happily arrived in samui @ 7:00am. not sure of what our next move should be, we ate some breakfast until the internet cafe across the street was open...we planned on meeting up with corey and anita la
ter that day, but weren't sure where they were staying. after a quick check o'the electronic mail and map, we deduced they would've chosen the largest town of chaweng. we spent a grand total of 28 minutes in chaweng then hopping in another taxi to take us "the hell away" from here. the reason? it was only 9:00 am and we saw about 10 foreigners to every thai person, so it wasn't really the vacation we were looking for. we told the cabbie what we were after...cheap, but not squallor, quiet but not a ghost town and on the beach. he smiled a knowing smile and said...."shambala."the man delivered, that's for sure...shambala is the thai for heaven, or paradise (at least, that's
what the owners told me) and it was everything i envisioned. we had ourselves a nice little house, with a front deck, hammock and beachfront view. it was perfect. after we settled up with the front desk, we crashed for awhile as we were tired from our early-morning excursions and thought we would hear from our friends soon enough. later in the day, woke up and got some beach time in but still no word from our friends...had a great meal full of beef salad, green curry and shrimp cakes then a few beers before bed.the days are a blur after that...pretty much the same routine of waking up, getting breaky @ the resort restaurant, then beach time, more eating, email checking, blah, blah, blah. it was how we wanted to relax, but we still hadn't heard from our friends. we thought
on wednesday we would for sure hear from them, but still nothing all day. thursday morning, we got in a quick dip and then rushed back to chaweng to see if we could scope them out. spent about an hour walking around, but nadda. feeling a little peeved by now at the two of them, we got back on the bike and went to our hotel for some lunch. one of the owners' (jessica) came rushing out and said "your friends have called." cool , we thought. "but, they've been in an accident." insert drop of the jaw here. a quick phone to anita and we were off to the hospital.corey and anita had arrived two days before us. they were staying in chaweng until we got there to see what we wanted to do. the last email i had sent them they'd received, but thought it better to go back to their hotel and check out, then come and meet us. on the way back to the hotel they got into a serious bike accident with a taxi. this ended up resulting in corey breaking his leg in 3 places...one was so bad it almost came through his thigh...there are some other
injuries but are mostly minor. anita is ok for the most part...she has some nasty cuts and bruises on her legs and arms, and is really stiff but otherwise fine. this is why we hadn't heard from them for the last couple of days, because they were confined to a hospital bed. well, we felt terrible that we had thunk bad things about them so resolved to help them sort out different problems that had arisen in light of this accident. i won't go into how much it's going to cost them, but let's just say for the price they are paying for all the medical expenses, changed flights and scooter repairs they could own property in thailand. the moral of the story kids, never travel without insurance.
so, after hearing this news leesh and i felt pretty guilty lying on a beach...they insisted we take time as it was our vacation too, but we really spent the bare minimum of time on the beach and opted to help them out as much as possible. we still managed a few hours everyday on the sand, but would make sure we could spend at least a few hours hanging out. it must have been hard tho, seeing us get a little more tanned everyday.some other points to mention. we took a trip around the island to see what we could see. not a
whole lot in ways of sights, unless you count beautiful beach vistas but that was pretty much it. rented a bike for most of the week as it's the only way to travel around the island without getting gouged by taxi drivers, so that was fun and yes we took it easy. the only really exciting thing to happen was one of the hotel huts were broken into while we were there. as a matter of fact, i actually saw the two guys who did it but didn't think anything of it until 20 minutes later the owner came to me and said they'd had a break-in in the bungalow behind us. this is the f
unny part. the nightwatch man and his buddies, in co-operation with local hotel owners have formed a community-task force, or vigilante group if you will. it consists of 10 men from the town who are paid by the owners to prevent things like the break-in from happening. the police are really ineffective and slow to act when it comes to crimes in this resorts 'cos it happens so often. these guys actually caught two guys after i described the two i'd seen leaving the scene, and then wanted me to identify them! you see, if they think they have the right perp's, they can turn them into the police for even more rewards...nifty, huh? at the end of it, i didn't have to identify them but it still was a little exciting.sunday came and it was time for us to get home...not wanting to pay for the return flight back to bangkok as funds were getting low, we decided to take the train back. leaving our hotel at 12:30 sunday, we caught a bus to the ferry point. then, got on a different bus to go to another ferry point. had to get off the bus and sat on the ferry for 2 hours to go back to the mainland. then, back on the bus for another 2 hour ride to surat thani, the town with the closest train station. waited about an hour for the train then all aboard. spent the next 12 hours on the train...it was
comfortable tho...sleeper, a/c. awoke the next morning in bangkok and went to the main station. then, caught another train to the airport. had to spend 4 hours waiting for our flight, then 3 hours on the plane. after that, oh joy of joys, another bus back to taipei then a quick MRT ride home. time spent travelling and waiting...31 hours...money spent on 5 different methods of conveyance....$50CDN...would we do it again...hell no.There you have it folks, our vacation in a nutshell. I'm still off work for the next week and two days so i get to recover from our holiday...i do miss being in thailand tho...being there again made me question why we didn't choose to live there, but being back in taiwan also makes me appreciate being back...as they say, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
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