Ko Samui - "same same, but different"

Ko Samui has been an interesting experience. In many areas it's breathtakingly beautiful, and it was a really fun place to get to know, but on our last day here we're feeling ready to leave.

After our first adventurous night, Keitlyn and I spent a day relaxing and exploring our hotel and surrounding areas. It felt really nice to be able to bum around a little bit after our first few jam packed days. The following day we decided to book a tour of the island, which came complete with monkey show and elephant "trek," which was actually just a 20 minute ride on a precariously balanced bench on the back of an elephant. Our guide was a funny guy who said "oh my gaaawd" when we went down hills and made us necklaces out of palm fronds.

It was a touristy way to spend the day, but was a good way to see the whole island. Plus, I got sucked on numerous times by a baby elephant. The next day we decided to go to the Ko Samui Aquarium and Tiger Show, where we got to feed monkeys and otters and I enjoyed a short stint as a pseudo bird trainer.

There was also an adorable leopard cub named Fanta that made fast friends with Keitlyn when it ran out of its cage and jumped up on her legs. By the way to my family and other Arrested Development fans - during the tiger show, they played "Final Countdown" and Gob actually would have fit in pretty well with the atmosphere of the show itself. That night we watched a gorgeous sunset at a restaurant on the northern side of the island.

The only negative - albeit humorous - part of our day was an extremely pushy cab driver who took us to the aquarium and insisted on waiting for us until afterwards when he would give us a ride back. Despite telling him numerous times we weren't sure what we wanted to do that day, the man reassured us that he WOULD stay and take us wherever we decided to go. Though it was hard to say no, he seemed friendly and we had a nice conversation with him about working and living on Ko Samui compared to Seattle. With every similarity he would get really excited and exclaim "same same!"

However, he appeared the very second the show ended and started herding us towards the cab. When we told him we wanted to go swimming on the beach there, he told us no, that was too long to wait, and got in the car, motioning for us to follow. We decided to stay and offered him 200 baht for waiting for us, which he took of course but was none too happy with us! His usual post is right outside our hotel, so Keitlyn and I spent the next day avoiding him at all costs. It was worth it to swim at Lamai though - the beach is much nicer than Bo Phut and felt like a hot tub in the shallowest parts.

Yesterday we moved to Chaweng Beach for a night - it's the happening part of the island and as we had 8 hours of downtime between check out and flying to Bangkok, we thought it was a better place to stay. After some beach time and dinner, Keitlyn and I headed to the Star Club, where we saw an extremely entertaining burlesque show. The hostess played the part of Tina Turner impeccably and brought some lucky guys up from the audience and dressed them in drag. I can think of a few friends who I would've liked to see up there too!

Now it's our last day and I'm killing some time at an internet cafe before joining Keitlyn for a beachside lunch. Our stay on Ko Samui hasn't always felt incredibly authentic - the island really caters towards tourists and it's been hard to escape that. We've definitely had a lot of fun though, and some pretty rewarding moments. One of my favorites was the night our waiter chatted with us about working on Ko Samui and taught me hello, you're welcome, how are you and thank you in Thai. Those of you who know me well know how much fun I have with languages.

We fly to Bangkok tonight, meet Uncle Michael on Sunday morning and then head to Pattaya. Then it's off to Vietnam!