Chaweng Beach: Koh Samui, Thailand

Bridget:

The first couple days we spent on the island of Koh Samui, which is located in the Gulf of Thailand. After spending the first night catching up with Bryan, we decided to get up early the next morning and go elephant trekking in the jungle.  Finding an excursion like this was easy; we sat down on the beach and talked to a lady who kindly took our money and said to give the handwritten receipt to the driver who would pick us up at our hotel in the morning.  The booking part went quite smoothly, except for the pesky little Thai girl hanging around who kept insisting we buy her flower necklaces for 20 baht each.  Despite our polite and steady “no thank-yous,” she persevered and resorted to just repeating, “Gimmie 20 baht! Gimmie 20 baht!”    Little did we know this would be the first of many encounters like this.

The next morning we headed out to the jungle in the back of a truck bed that passed for a taxi cab and met our elephant and guide/photographer/elephant tamer:

Not only did he let us take turns riding the elephant’s bare neck (Swiss Family Robinson, anyone?), but he also took about 200 photographs of the experience.  Here are a couple of the better ones:

After returning our camera and insisting we look at the pictures right away, he managed to say in broken English, “Ah…you give me good tip, yes?”   While waiting for the taxi to take us back, we moseyed over to do a little waterfall sightseeing and trinket shopping:

That afternoon was spent getting $10 Thai massages on the beach, throwing around the Frisbee in warm waters, eating grilled corn (below), and warding off the hoards of souvenir peddlers pacing the length of the longest beach on the island, Chaweng.

Chaweng Beach is world famous for its nightlife, so we ventured out that night to see what all the fuss was about.  All the beachside bars and restaurants expand their seating areas well into the sand, and they string up enough lights to light up a small village during Christmas season:

Some of the highlights of the evening were trying hookah for the first time (don’t get the wrong idea, folks…this is flavored tobacco heavily filtered through water):

getting conned into taking pictures with monkeys (we later found out that these animals are most likely stolen from the wild and drugged by their masters):

and having a half hour conversation with a suit maker about the deal of a lifetime (especially for tall folk like Craig and Bryan).  

As much fun as it was, Craig and I had quite a bit of culture shock after spending a week immersed in the much more passive and self-respecting Japanese.   We were exhausted!  We decided to call it quits for the night and rest up for the next day when we would catch a ferry to Koh Tao, a smaller island about 3-4 hours away by boat. 

Next Stop:  Koh Tao