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Koh Samui, Thailand

From Delhi at 2am, it was two flights and two boats, 14 hours, one Delhi belly and one horrendous flu before we arrived at our resort on the island of Koh Tao.
Two positives: The journey would have been a lot longer if Bangkok Airways hadn’t moved us to a much earlier flight, and I hadn’t eaten in 48 hours so we have saved heaps and and I’ll be bikini ready. Yea right! I’ll be stoked if I can leave our room I’m so sick.

“Dumbest thing at an airport #25: exiting the plane, and airport staff are checking boarding passes to make sure we were on the plane..if I’d lost it, what would I say… I rode a bird here from India?”

For the last 36 days straight we have been on tour, daily sightseeing, on the go and always with people for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are thankful to have booked a whole 6 days to ourselves before the next 22 day tour starts. Although, we are staying in 3 ports/islands in Thailand over the 6 days! We have been craving this week ‘on holiday’, and not ‘travelling’. The main island of Koh Samui even feels different to the last few months. There’s lots of white foreigners with their bum showing shorts and flat caps. By and large, I haven’t really missed the western culture and am glad we have been travelling off the beaten tourist track. It hasn’t killed us having to wear covered knees and shoulders for two months. I just forgot what all this white flesh looks like.

KOH TAO
Dave was in charge of booking the accommodation in Thailand. I’m very, very thankful he booked us out of the main island of Koi Samui to the smaller island of Koh Tao. As our home for the next 3 whole days is on the other side of the island, we needed to take another boat to get there. Our resort, which has our own private beach has the clearest and warmest water we have ever been in with only two other families staying.Our room is a bungalow nestled on the side of a cliff with breath taking views of Mango Bay. If this is what you get for $50 pn inc breakfast, then this is heaven! Screw you being sick, I’m not going to allow it here!

It’s so good being on holiday, that for one morning, I revert back to old Julia and ordered muesli with yoghurt and fruit – all separated in individual bowls of course! All I can see from our three tiered cliff side restaurant is translucent water. I asked Dave what the huge black section – 12m long in the water was, at first we think its reef, but in fact it’s fish moving in schools. Lucky students! Saying that, I was too ashamed to take a picture of this. Due to a storm with 3m waves the night before it washed a lot of TOURIST rubbish onto the shoreline. At the same moment we started our rubbish collection, 5 big boats and about 150 snorkelers and divers came on to our now not so private bay. Understandably, this bay has the best snorkelling and diving we’ve seen. I’d have liked to have put the tourists in rubbish bags and disposed of them, but we settled for 3 large garbage bags full of rubbish and set fish which were trapped in plastic bags free. ONE of the tourists helped fill u a bag, until the beach was pristine once again. Dave even tracked down their lost jetty and floated it back around to the resort. The best thing about being on holiday and not travelling is those tourists got to enjoy the beach with hundreds for one hour then they left and we got to stay, relax and enjoy our ‘nobodies’ beach, that was now crystal clear for miles.
So, we ventured out for an afternoon snorkel. You know you’re in a place with too many fish when you have to acquire a fish poking stick to get past them. The concept is similar to herding sheep. Swimming in a school of fish so big (20m in distance) where you can’t see behind, in front, sideways or below is fine until they’re getting so close you’re getting fish slapped. Now do you see the need for a fish poking stick? Although I must have looked like a freak to those elegantly bathing on the beach, wearing a life jacket and carrying a defence stick.

KOH SAMUI
After the worst 3 hour bumpy boat ride back from Koh Tao (we have caught the tail end of China’s cyclone so storms this week are pretty bad at times), we ventured out to an Irish Pub for the final Origin game.During game 2 Dave was with our awesome friends in Vietnam. In between beers, we were talking with a Greek, but born and bred in Aussie, who now lives here. I said I was surprised there are only a hand full of Aussies here. He said Russians are the majority of tourists, and lots of Europeans.
The best way to get around the island is by scooter, and it only takes a few hours. You can hire a scooter for a few dollars for the day, yet to go in a taxi anywhere is about $10. There’s also no tok toks or hired drivers. Koh Samui is smaller than I’d expected. It’s not infested with tourists and still has an island feel with beautiful white sandy beaches and palm trees. Couldn’t really do much today though as another storm ripped through. Eating and Thai massaging was what we got out of our day here. Although I couldn’t get a proper Thai Massage as I bruised my spine.. I missed the toilet in the dark and fell on the edge of the seat, then floor. No I wasn’t even slightly drunk, just had a Julia moment. Poor Dave, he was climbed all over by a lady boy, while I had the soft delicate hands of a Thai lady. Speaking of which, I dragged poor Dave unwillingly back across the island to see a ‘must see’ lady boy cabaret show. I absolutely loved it – Dave, not so much. He was the only ‘pure’ male there. I just think it’s so clever how they can transform all of a man into a full lady, even with nipples – I saw them. I can see how easy it would be for a male to be convinced before it’s just all too late.

BANGKOK
We were in Bangkok for one night between Cambodia and Nepal, which is where we ventured out and saw the famous Khaosan Road with Damo and Shazz. Apart from that there was no other sightseeing we could be bothered to do here. It’s a great city but you’ve just got to have the energy to get out and about. The highlight of our trip was catching up with our Aussie friends who moved to Bangkok less than 24 hours ago. Alison, Michael their 2 month old gorgeous baby girl, Emily and Alison’s lovely mum Barb. It was a whirl wind catch up but it was so good to see familiar friendly faces. Makes you realise that it doesn’t matter where you are or how long apart, good friends are there to stay. They’ve chosen one of the best countries in Asia to live. We really like Thailand. It’s safe, its got the beautiful beaches, the vibrant but clean city and the people are welcoming.

As we leave Asia after 2.5 months there is a lot that comes to mind. There is definitely Tourist Asia and Real Asia. Prior to coming here, I assumed much of Asia is very ‘same, same’ but each country is so very different. The similarity though, is many countries have presidents living unreal lives in their mansions while their people are struggling to make ends meet, with no way of escaping a corrupt government. How nice it would be for them to leave their ivory towers and live like a local for a night on a few $ per day.
Interestingly, Asia was the continent we were originally going to skip, but we’re thankful now that we didn’t. The countries where we felt most at ease were part of ‘Tourists Asia’ but the ones we enjoyed the most were a part of the ‘Real Asia’. It’s a bit of a catch 22. A lot of the places would greatly benefit from more tourists but by the same token it comes at the expense of losing the country’s identity and being taken over with bars and souvenir shops.

“Asian food for thought #58: Here’s 3 dishes that aren’t popular and are hard to find in their country: sweet and sour pork in China, butter chicken in India and Panang curry in Thailand. Dumplings aren’t even Japanese and Vietnamese spring rolls in Vietnam are often served in rice paper that is hard, not soft”

…6 flights in 6 days, and we’re off again…

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