Our last half day at Ko Samui was spent at the beach. The sun was shining and Michael Jackson was blasting from the resort down the beach. I should probably take a moment to comment on Southeast Asians being absurdly obsessed with MJ. I was in Singapore when he passed away and I only was able to watch news about and relating to Michael Jackson for the duration of my trip. Forgive me if I'm a little slow with current events but I could catalog MJ's family members and life timeline in my sleep if you asked. Anywho, back to the beach. Ya know what - since I'm ranting let me move onto the Europeans on the beach. Before traveling most do some research about what is and isn't appropriate behavior. One such inappropriate behavior a googler might come across is going topless on a beach in Thailand. Europeans clearly didn't do their research. Our beach was littered with topless women and thier beaus. They didn't just lie there on their beach and keep their disrespect to themselves. No. They frolicked in the water, on the sand and sprawled out on rocks for photoshoots taken by their significant others. It wasn't just the nakies either; in town and on boats and basically anywhere there was good lighting the men of European descent wanted to take picures of their women looking seductive. And not one picture - an entire shoot with many, many a picure. Who knew elephant riding was seductive? For Etienne and Francois it was. I almost felt that I should have asked Shannon to take my picture in the setting sun with my hair blowing in the wind to fit in.
We left our beautiful semi nude-beach on a ferry to Ko Phangan (pronounced Pan-yang, after MUCH difficulty). The ride was filled with sunburned backpackers and it was a short 30 minutes; You can see the island's mountains in the distance off of the coast of Ko Samui. And there were some serious mountains. We arrived and took a van to our bungalow on extremely hilly and windy roads;I really think at one point I could only see directly into the sky as our van was at a 90 degree angle up one mountainous road. We met some Irish guys on our van ride who just got off the ferry and found a woman with a pamphlet in broken English for a hostel and were on their way there. Just listening to their trip (no planned hostels, no planned stays, missed airplanes, etc.) made me break out into a type-A sweat. When talking about their lack of planning, they asked, "What, you guys have your whole trip planned out already? Even the hostels?" I cooly replied that we still didn't have the hotel for the last night in Bangkok; I thought that maybe one fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants night might make us a little cooler. Wrong. They got off at their run-down hostel with their tiny bags that probaly contained two pairs of dirty underwear and a 6-pack of Guiness and waved goodbye to the neuroticly prepared American girls and we were on our way.
Our Bungalow was at the Cocohut Village, which is in Haad Rin, the southernmost peninsula on Koh Phangan, where the infamous Full Moon Party is. We were on the western/sunset side - Haad Rin Nok - and the party beach on the eastern/sunrise side of the peninsula - Had Rin Nai, was a 5 minute walk away. Our bungalow was one of the mountainside villas and you had to trek up quite a number of stairs to get there. Getting up there in our backpacks in the scorching heat we were nothing short of winded (too many Nutella pancakes? Maybe.) Cocohut Village was much larger than Promtsuk Buri on Samui - and it had an infiniti pool that overlooked Leela Beach and the ocean. We took a lounge chair and looked out at Ko Samui and I finished my book while the sun set. We trekked up, winded again, to shower for dinner.
We were greeted by a billion huge red ants. Surprise - the mountain bungalows come with holes in their walls! We learned quickly to walk around in flip flops and step on as many as possible. Probably not the Buddhist way, but it's the American way and old habits die hard. We went to Haad Rin Nai for dinner and found that all the open-air restaurants that boast Thai, "western," and Israeli food play movies all night so you don't have to talk to your miserable travel partner or even worse, your life partner at the table; you can watch a movie and enjoy your Pad Thai and Chang Beer in peace. You're probably wondering about the Israeli part - I was. Cocohut should be renamed Little Israel. I thought it was a fluke at our place but when we ventured into town we soon realized that Koh Phangan is to Israelis as Cancun is to Americans. We ate a meal of sweet and spicy shrimp while watching a movie for 6 bucks. Afterwards we walked around to find something to do and saw buckets - legitimate buckets that you used to build sandcastles in (you know, the kind that are bright blue or red and have a yellow handle) - with a bottle of alcohol and a can of soda being sold as a package for the equivalent of 2 US dollars. This sounds great but remember it is 90 degrees with 100% humidity. And this brings me to the dilemma that we've been having since we left sanitary Singapore: to ice or not to ice? A mixed drink bucket filled with jack and coke doesn't sound appetizing without that bucket filled with ice too. Poison ice? No. But is it poison? That is the mystery. A lot of other backpackers and tourists are drinking mixed and frozen drinks; do they not know the fate and will they have horrendous nights ahead of them filled with illness? Are we the only crazy Americans walking around with liters of hand sanitizer and saying "water, no ice please?" We just don't know. So long story short, we did not get a bucket of alcohol sans ice. We settled for a large safe beer on the beach and watched a fire show.
We went home full of beer and noodles and slept well. I woke up with two ants on my arm and didn't care. I'm so backpacker-y and daring!
. . .
Alas, even in my early morning sleepiness I was quick to reach for my bedside hand sanitizer, though. Sigh.
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