Day 17 and 18 Ko Samui

Day 17

"breakfast appetizer" - espresso and fruit on our bungalow porch (we ordered at the main restaurant area and took it to our porch). then we hung out at a table in the restaurant overlooking the beach and each had yogurt with muesli and fruit Po: yum!

the beach looked beautiful in the daylight! it's really long with clear blue waters and white sand!

back to the bungalow porch for reading, then i took a nap.

walked down the beach to find a place for lunch. there are surprisingly few bungalows and restaurants on our beach (hat lemai). so we went to the road and searched some more but there still weren't very many!

we came across a huge, fancy, western-style shopping center with a coffee shop, restaurants and shops but those places were too expensive for us. we did go into the western grocery store though! omg all my "expat" friends in korea would have thought they had died and gone to heaven! lol it's amazing all the western foods they had on this little island and you can't even get a plain old block of cheddar cheese in mokpo, south korea lol we drooled around the store some and went looking for an afforable place to eat lol

we came across a really barebones place and got pad thai and a beer. it was good!

we walked down the road some and found a little place called siam art bar. it's really tiny and they have big colorful painting of buddha heads and dragon faces all over...i guess they're for sale, i didn't ask. we noticed the place because it had a sandwich board outside advertising mojitos! that's like our favorite drink so we had to try them. while we were waiting for them a german expat said that place was famous for the mojitos and i can see why. they were great! we hung out on a cushion on the porch and drank them while watching the traffic go by. after a while a dog mosied up and laid down with his head on jens's shoes lol there's lots of fairly large dogs here and they all just lounge about and let you pet them :o) it's great!

after a while we decided to go back to the beach and swim. the water was a bit cold (the sun was going down at this point) but it was really clear! one thing i really like about hat lemai is there aren't many people there. i think we were 2 of 3 people in that water that afternoon lol there were more suntanning on the beach but not too many.

after a shower we walked down the beach to eat at a beachfront restaurant we had seen earlier in the day. they had really colorful, comfortable lounge chairs and long tables between them right on the beach so we grabbed one of those and ordered red snapper with garlic peppercorn sauce. it came with a potato and a trip to the salad bar. it was a pretty simple salad bar but good nonetheless. the fish was great and afterwards we got drinks and just hung out under the stars :o)

Day 18 - explored the island

we got up late and drove a rented scooter to coffee world (which is in that huge western style shopping center) for breakfast. we got a ham and cheese panini and a strawberry belgian waffle with coffee. we ate it all out on the porch in a comfy couch. it was all pretty good. the panini was better than the waffle though. they had free internet there so i checked email and posted the previous entry on this journal you see here.

then we drove to hat chaweng which is the more "happenin'" place to be but we didn't like it that much. it's basically a small city complete with regular businesses like paint stores, furniture stores, a huge tesco grocery store (like walmart), tons of people and tons of scooters and cars. it was a bit hectic. we looked in a bunch of shops for a hammock cuz we wanna get one to take back home but never could find one. i was starving by that point so we stopped at the first place we saw for lunch- it was a falafel stand which we figured out was in the jewish quarter...yes ko samui, thailand has a jewish quarter lol the menu was all in hebrew and they played songs about elohim but the falafel was good! :o)

after that we went to the actual beach. it was pretty crowded. not too bad but definitely more people than at hat lemai. we slathered on sunblock and went in the water. there were some pretty big waves! jens was hesitant to go to this beach because he thought - why not just go to hat lemai since there's less people? but hat lemai has no waves to speak of and chaweng does- so that was a good reason to swim there. we had a ton of fun riding all the waves and were pretty exhausted by the end of it.

on our way back we wanted to search a little more for a hammock and ended up on some bumpy dirt back roads lol saw a water buffalo, some fields and 3 girls crammed on a scooter. then we came across a reggae bar that looked awesome! it was another one of those completely haphazerdly created "buildings" lol completely open to the elements, diff. tables and chairs all over, different levels, a tattoo "knook", columns somehow made of used beer cans and spirit bottles. it was awesome and we wanted to stay for a drink but we couldn't find the owner lol we looked all over and there was nary a soul in sight! so we left. may go back some other time, later in the day lol

we drove back to our place after that, took a shower and had dinner at our bungalow. we got noddles fried with chicken, veggies and basil chili sauce and some spring rolls and it was all pretty good.

now here we are in the internet cafe. it's a really nice one! nicest one i've seen in s.e. asia! lol i don't think it even has a name though...

after this we may go to this party we heard about earlier in the day. several trucks went by blasting music and an announcement for the "freakest party on earth!" lol "we love ko samui!" very weird but we may check it out...it's on our beach!

we just have one more full day here and i think we're cool with that. it's a little too busy for us right now. we're gonna head to ko tao day after tomorrow. it's supposed to be more laid back and have great snorkeling! by the way we bought our own snorkeling gear for pretty cheap so now we can snorkel wherever whenever we want!

after ko tao it's ko pha ngan where we have a beach front bungalow booked. we'll probably just chill and snorkel til it's time to go to bangkok!

goodnight!