More Island Adventures

So our resort has a few interesting rules: 1.) No sunbathing topless.  Hrm. That one's hard. Really hard.  I mean, that's really all I want to do all day long is walk around topless.  That didn't stop some people that we saw along the beach, but everyone at our resort respected the rule.  2.) If you bring someone back to your room for the night (that is not a guest of the resort) it costs 1200 Baht and they must leave the next morning by 8am. WOW. Aka it's gonna cost you 40 bucks a night for any one night stands you may wish to have on the island.  That's pretty steep!  I wonder if all resorts have the same rule? It could really put a cramp in your style...

People getting beach-side massages.  The one guy posed! lol

Wednesday, we decided to get up and wander around the beach town surrounding Chaweng Beach (the beach on which we are staying).  Most of the vendors are exactly the same as you wander through the town - and also pretty much the same vendors we saw in Chiang Mai.  It is really hard to find authentic Thai crafts because the vendors will bill everything and anything as authentic Thai.  Leave it to my mom to find an authentic Thai craft store across the street from our resort, called Cool Crafts.  They were so super cool.  And my mom managed to find more than a few to purchase!  This entire trip, I have felt like her sugar daddy because I've been paying for everything...the irony being that I'm paying for everything using her money -- it's oddly gratifying.  We probably spent three or four hours simply wandering down the one street that exists in our vicinity.  It was, at times, quite smelly and generally pretty dirty, but we passed a McDonald's, a Burger King, and a Swenson's ice cream, before reaching heaven: Starbucks.  I was kind of amazed to find a Starbucks on the island of Samui, but there it was -- and from the inside, you wouldn't know you were outside of the States!  We wandered back to our hotel along the beach -- ditching the smelly, hot street for the only sometimes smelly, slightly less hot beach.  Because it was almost sunset, it was almost cool along the beach, and I was able to walk in the water for part of the way back.  That night there was some pretty incredible thunder (although no rain).  I've never heard thunder that loud, and I figure that's due to the fact that the island doesn't offer much in terms of infrastructure to absorb the crashes.

The next morning, we decided to get up early to watch the sunrise, so at 6am, we got up and headed down to the beach.  One thing I hadn't considered prior to this vacation was the effect that the humidity would have on my digital SLR camera.  Because it spends a significant amount of time in the air conditioned room, whenever I take it outside, the lens fogs up immediately -- so I've had to have more foresight about when and how I'm going to use the camera.  The sunrise itself was gorgeous, despite the clouds that obscured a good portion of it.  A couple of hours later, we embarked on an island tour.  We crammed into a small tour van with ten other people, none of whom were Americans.  There were people from Germany, Iceland, Denmark, and Yemen!  The guide took us to see the biggest temple on the island, as well as the Big Buddha statue, a mummified monk, Grandma and Grandpa rocks, a monkey show, a gorgeous view of Chaweng Beach, the Na Muang waterfalls, and the fishing village of Na Thon.

Big Buddha

The so-called Grandpa Rock

What our guide said the REAL Grandpa Rock was

So-called Grandma Rock

Mummified Monk - in Raybans

NaMuang Waterfall

Leaky pipe supplying above falls with water

Monkey opening a coconut

According to our tour guide, there are about 200,000 people living on Koh Samui, and about 30 percent of them are actually Chinese people.  This is because Samui was settled by the Chinese.  Samui is actually the name of the Chinese boat that first landed on the island.  The tour itself was pretty hokey.  For example, the Na Muang waterfall was far from impressive.  We actually saw a hose leading up to the top of the waterfall that was filling the basin from which the water was falling, even though the signs all claimed that the water flowed from the center of the island.  Ironically, the hose filling the waterfall was leaking pretty badly.  I was waiting for the waterfall to run dry!  But that didn't happen before it was time to leave.  The mummified monk is significant because he predicted his own death three months before he died (he died in 1973).  Apparently, he self-preserved, without anyone doing anything (our guide was nice enough to tell us that he was never disemboweled like most mummies).  But I don't know, I'm kind of skeptical.  The guy was wearing Ray Bans after all (pictures to come later!).  The Grandma and Grandpa rocks were possibly the most ridiculous part of the tour -- they are rocks that look like male and female genitalia! No, I'm not kidding.  And yes, there are pictures.  And I know you won't believe me until you see it, so show you I will!

After returning to the resort, I left Mom in the room to rest a bit, and I went for a run along the beach.  Now, most people think that this is a truly idyllic experience.  I will be brutally honest: it was hot. Really hot. Glad I did it, but I honestly didn't know I could sweat more than I had been sweating until I went on that run.  It's theoretically gorgeous though.  After the run, I indulged in a beach-side massage.  It was pretty awesome, and only cost me 7 bucks -- pretty great!  Massage was followed by a dip in the pool and then dinner.

It is true that by the end of these five or so days on the beach, I've come to appreciate it a lot more!  Even though I am definitely ready to leave, I'm really glad I spent these few days relaxing and exploring.  And now it's onto the next adventure -- I will be in Vietnam by tomorrow morning.

Quick reminder that I don't know what my computer/internet access will be like in Vietnam, but I will at the very least update the blog once I get to India! 

-- Priya/Pri/P/Preesh/Pixi/LPJ/P-Money/Baibiya