Dallon's Blog: Koh Samui

I took the easy route to get to my next destination, I still wasn't quite sure of the overland/sea travel methods of Thailand yet. In hindsight, that was silly of me, but boat, bus, boat was scary at the time. So...I flew to the island of Samui. It was easy. And I immediately liked Koh Samui heaps more than Phuket. For starters there were other people at my hostel. I made my first friends there, a bunch of Germans who were doing a semester abroad in Malaysia but who were doing a small trip to the Full Moon party on nearby island Phangan. The full moon party is apparently a wildly famous all night beach party. It was evident in all the young foreigners flooding the island. Some of you will be proud to hear that I did not go (mom), others of you will be disappointed to hear I didn't go. Whatever. On Phuket I payed money to do a tour with boatloads of other people, literally. So on Samui I was determined to do it all on my own without booking any tours, and because of that whole $2500 clerical error I am now definitely traveling on a tight budget. So I rented another moped for $5 and armed with a map, drove off.

This is the first place I ended up, simply because I saw it on the side of the road.

The next place I ended up was a bit hilarious. Rocks, in the shape of his and her genitalia! hehe. I will only show the "he" version, for some reason the other seems too graphic. Crazy though, how close they are to each other.

this was just the view from near the he and her rocks.

Then it was off to a type of zoo/aquarium thingy. The aquarium was ho hum, but there was also a tiger show, a bird show, an otter show, and seal show. All of which were pretty interesting. They also had some other little critters, some pools and a nice beach.

Leopard

Sleepy baby tiger

Craziest owl I've ever seen!

Thai squirrel?

The seals were actually quite amazing.

The otters were actually my favorite, I've always loved otters!

Monkey trying to steal my bracelets!

Sleepy otter.

The next thing I saw on my map was a waterfall. So I went there. I drove passed all the jeep safari, and elephant trekking places determined to get there on my own. And I did. On the hike down though, I passed this guy with a baby elephant, at this point in my trip, elephants were pretty amazing to me, so I asked if I could get a picture with the baby elephant. Before I knew what was happening I was on its back, spraying it down, (so it could spray me) walking around a parking lot and of course getting charged ridiculous amounts of money for my experience. I payed the guy, in hopes that he has a small family to feed, not a bar to frequent.

Ok, so taking an elephant to the waterfall would have been cool.

There it is, just where the map said it would be.

A bridge along the trail to the waterfall.

hehe, boobs.

My new unintentional friend.

pouring water down his trunk so he could blow it back at me, funny trick...

The next day I went off to see something from my map that I didn't have time for. The monkey theater! Again, at that point monkeys were still pretty exciting to me, not just pesky little devils that steal anything they can get their hands on. So I went. But when I was one of only three people there, I got the clue that this wasn't a big hit on the island, at least not on the eve of the the full moon party. But the one performing monkey was mildly entertaining. So I enjoyed it.