Koh Samui in gorgeous Thailand

Mike and I landed in Koh Samui on the 14th after 12 hours of flying and waiting around airports (Jakarta and Bangkok). The airport is so cute here! When you land, a fleet of open-air busses greet you to shuttle you to the terminal (there's only one). The baggage claim conveyer is under a little palapa, and it took only minutes to get our bags and be on our way. It's much hotter here than Bali, so we now have an air conditioned room! It also has HOT water! ...I don't think I mentioned, but we've been living without hot water in our hotel for the last month. I didn't really miss it, especially since it's warm in Bali. You come in from breakfast and you're hot, so a cold shower is quite refreshing. Having hot water seems to be a bit of a luxury. We're staying at the Bangrak on Big Buddha Beach, which has a huge golden Buddha statue just east of us. We're gonna check it out in the next couple of days.

Yesterday we drove around the island in our rental car I like to call "Hairy Boy"...it's actually called Carryboy or Ladyboy or something like that...it's a cross between a jeep and a teeny pickup truck. Just enough room for our kites, boards and a pony keg. We ended up stopping in Chaweng Beach to buy a much-needed t-shirt for Mike and tank top for me - our other ones are starting to show the wear and tear of being worn every other day for 2 months. One of mine had a permanent funk from sunscreen and from lying on my wet kite (stinky!). So Chaweng according to the Lonely Planet travel books is the most popular beach on Koh Samui. It is definitely busy, though it wasn't very popular with us...when we stopped and got out of the Hairy Boy, the sewer smell almost knocked us over. Everywhere we walked, it smelled of poop. Not nice. I don't know if it was just a particularly hot day, or there was a problem with the sewer, no matter. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. We found our shirts and a couple inflatable rafts for the sea and hauled ass outta there.

Aside from that little hiccup, the island is stunningly beautiful. I'll upload some pics at some point, though we're without internet at our hotel, so who knows when that'll be. We tried to visit a snake farm and a butterfly farm, but couldn't find them yesterday. I had an image in my mind of what a snake ranch and snake rancher would look like...itty bitty lassos and cowboy hats? Yep, that's what I thought too! ...we may never know.

We're learning a bit of Thai which is cool...so far I haven't learned a stitch of any other languages. I now know how to say hello and thank you. I know, always the overachiever! =)