Late Thursday night, Shannon and I arrived in Koh Samui, Thailand. Koh means Island in Thai. It's on the eastern coast in the Gulf of Thailand. We booked a beach bungalow just south of all the loud partying in Chaweng near Lamai.
Our bungalo is small and perfect. It has the bathroom outside open to the air so you can shower and pee in the wilderness. Just as I'd always wanted! I imagine my dad staying here and have to laugh out loud.
Perfect minus the monstrous moth that was sitting above our door when we got back from dinner. We stood staring at it, staring back at each other and then staring at it again. It was SO SO big. I am not talking about a tiny moth. From afar it could be mistaken for a bird. So finally after some deliberation, I opened the door slowly and darted in. Shannon followed but did not have such a lucky dismount. She screamed, slipped in her wet flip flops and caught the edge of the door with her side. We clearly disturbed the tranquility that everyone else was enjoying up until our arrival. Shannon still has a nasty scab reminding her that moths are not just another harmless creature to not be feared.
Shannon's birthday was the next day and it was a bit overcast. We donned our bathing suits and set out to eat our free-with-reservation breakfast on the beach. We ate eggs, yogurt, museli and fruit. We then headed to the beach for the morning. I'll skip forward to lunch. Am I talking about food too much? Well that was about all we had to do betwee breakfast and lunch: decide what to eat next. We ate at another beach bar and I had Tom Yum soup (traditional spicy Thai dish) and ice cream (traditional fat American in Thailand dessert). We then swam over to a rocky area of the beach.
The beach. It is a little inlet surrounded by jungle and hills on each side. All the islands off of Thailand are igneous rocks and have a lot of large rocks on the shore yet smooth white sand for beach-goers to swim and stand on. Works out well for nature and us. It's beautiful. We climbed around and jumped off (first carefully checking how deep) into the clear, warm, smooth water.
We then ventured into a more rowdy area of the island - Chaweng. We walked around and saw full fledged pigs roasting and men cutting slabs of their hind legs off for tourists to gnaw on. When we had our fair share of that and "you are very pretty, can I kiss you?" and "where are you from pretty lady?" we decided on a beautiful spot on the beach for Shannon's birthday dinner. It was called Eat Sense and was reviewed by a bunch of white people. Sounds good to me. Wait, did I just write that? It's the same thing as looking to make sure white people are eating at food stands before you decide to eat there too, in other parts of Asia. I just decided to write it down and admit to it. I'm not ashamed. I didn't want any GI trouble this trip. I have already had enough hospital visits for a while.
They sang the Happy Birthday song to Shannon and it went a little something like this:
Waiter: what is her name?
Me: Shannon.
Waiter looks blank.
Me: S-H-A-N-N-O-N
Waiter: Okay.
Team of singers: Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear . . .
Me: --SHANNON!!!!!!
Team of singers: . . . Happy birthday to you!!!!!
It went over well.
We had a traditional cake. And by traditional I mean not traditional at all. It was fruit, waffles and some other nonsense on a plate and it was delish. We then went to a bar that had little couches and makeshift bungalos to sit at to drink and we chose a thick wide couch to sit and have Thai beer. Good end to a great day to celebrate a fantastic friend on a beautiful island.
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