Day 65- Thanks Asshole. I Could Have Used That Money For My Thai Sex Slaves. Instead I'm Stuck With A $300 Repair Bill.

One of the many beaches off of Koh Samui

 The morning of January 22, was one that I was dreading for multiple reasons.  One of these reasons was not the fact that I would no longer have to deal with the breakfast buffet staff at the Salad Buri Resort.  Now I am sure all of the employees are fantastic people away from their workplace, but never have I seen such a bunch of grunters.  I swear this was the only way they knew how to communicate.  It was as if the restaurant employees were all a bunch of constipated mime-porn stars.  

What I WAS not looking forward to was having to return my severely damaged moped that I had crashed a few days earlier.  The guy I had rented it from had taken my passport as a deposit and had made me sign a shit ton of forms that I did so quite hastily without reading them over.  Once I finally pulled my testicles down out of my stomach, I made my way down to the hotel lobby to face the inevitable.  There was no chance I could hide the damage as I had successfully done when renting an RV a couple of years earlier in Australia or that they were not going to inspect the moped as had happened a week or so earlier in Ban Krut.  Yup, I was going to have to bend over and take this one.  Fast forward a few minutes and two dudes are going over the bike with a clipboard and making feverous notes while I stand by helplessly.  After the most ridiculous inspection ever, I am called up to the lobby desk and they explain that I have to pay for all new replacement parts for every piece I have scratched on the bike.  Keeping in mind that all I have really done is scrape a bunch of plastic covers and such, I try my best to argue with the non-English speaking holders of my passport that this is simply not fair.  They basically tell me to fuck off and that I owe them  8100 Thai Baht ($282 Canadian).  Or as I like to look at, forty-five times the cost of the actual bike rental for a night!  At this point there was not much I could do as I needed my passport and really just wanted to get the fuck out of there so I begrudgingly handed over my Visa card and contented myself with the fact that I least I would receive 282 Aeroplan miles for the transaction.  Eventually we were on our way, although Colleen was actually more pissed off than I was.  I tried to calm her and down and tell her there was nothing we could do and it was my own stupid fault but the woman was out for blood I tell ya!


Sounds like my kind of club!

With my wallet now a bit lighter than I had originally intended for it to be, we headed over to the ferry dock and made our way onto the ferry towards our next island stop, Koh Samui.  Koh Samui is the biggest of the three tourist islands in the Gulf of Thailand and it takes under an hour by boat to get there from Koh Phangan.  Thankfully, our ferry ride was significantly smoother than the one we had experienced a few days earlier and there were no barf bags needed. 

"Bangalow" you say? Sounds intriguing.

Once we loaded our stuff into a taxi, we headed on our way to our hotel/resort where we would be staying in the Lamai Beach area of the island.  Driving around the island, I couldn't help but notice just how tourist-driven the whole place was.  There were mega resorts everywhere and it was extremely well developed.  The island could easily hold its own against some of the big Caribbean tourist-powerhouses and some of the tranquility and genuine island feel of Koh Phangan now seemed like a distant memory.

The sensory overload quickly changed into confusion as we were dropped off at our resort and it was not the same resort that I had remembered booking online a couple of days earlier.  The driver assured me that we were in fact at The Grand Thai House Resort.  (Note: I would later discover that there were two almost identical named properties in the same area, the other one being The Thai House Beach Resort and that there was a mix-up with webpage links, images, reviews, etc with hotels.com and tripadvisor.  I am never one to really complain, but I did write hotels.com a quick e-mail explaining what had happened and was given a $50 voucher. I was quite proud of myself for this.)  Naturally we were in the least nicer of the two resorts although it provided us with an excellent location as it was right in the heart of Lamai Beach.  Not so excellent was the fact that it appeared as though someone had left our hotel's patio door for an extended period of time prior to our check-in and our room was full of mosquitoes.  Oh well, nothing like a mosquito killing spree to get your daily cardio!

Following the funeral procession for the nine million mosquitoes I massacred we decided to check out Lamai Beach and its nighttime offerings.  It became apparent to Colleen and I almost immediately after stepping foot outside of our resort that Lamai was the center of the "girly bar action" on the island.  You can do your own research on what those are folks!  Despite me wanting to investigate the girly bar scene, the wifey and I opted for the safer route and spent the evening drinking at one of the many overpriced Australian themed bars in the area.  Between foreign owned bars, bars with stripper poles in the middle, and the greatest concentration of massage parlors on the planet, there wasn't much room left for anything else.  Apparently, many of the massage  studios/parlors/stores (?) are used as fronts to launder money for the local crime syndicates, and 'mI sure the same can be said for the girly bars.  With our overpriced drinks resting firmly in our stomachs, we did what every North American does after they have a few bevvies... hit up the local Subway for a delicious foot long!

She seems to be enjoying her martini.

~Brentski~
 

Day 60- Look The Staff Are Handing Surprise Bags And Free Cocaine! Wait, Those Are Barf Bags And Smelling Salts...

Waking up, it was fair to say that we were slightly excited to get out of Chumphon and head out to one of Thailand's (and arguably the world's) most famous islands, Koh Phangan . We arranged a van shuttle through our hotel to get to the catamaran-ferry port.  Now, if you are anything like me, when you hear that word catamaran, you don't think of monstrous boats a few hundred feet long that hold hundreds of passengers, but that is exactly what these were.  When our shuttle bus driver dropped us off at the ferry terminal, we handed him 300 Thai Baht ($10 Canadian), as we were told to pay the driver by our hotel.  We couldn't figure out why the driver was looking at us and the other couple who had taken the shuttle with such a delightful look on his face when we handed him the money.  I'll let you guess.  A few minutes later while we were purchasing our tickets for the ferry we were informed that we were supposed to pay them (the ferry company) for the shuttle.  Naturally my complaint that we had already paid the driver fell on deaf ears and I was forced to pay again for my glorious van ride.  I can only assume the van driver's family was going to be eating steak and lobster that night at my expense, or at the very least some fine ass noodles!

Within a few minutes of boarding the ferry, it became quite clear to Colleen and I that it was going to be a rocky couple of hours on the high-speed catamaran.  Almost the minute the boat left the dock, the staff were handing out barf bags and smelling salts to any and all takers.  There was an older lady sitting in front of us who was physically sick and was sweating like I imagine people perspire after they get some weird ass disease from the bugs in Africa.  Add to this that Colleen and many of the other people in our vicinity were holding on to their barf bags for dear life, and well, you get the idea.  Colleen repeatedly kept saying that she wasn't going to make it,  to which I loving replied "you've got nowhere to go dear, we are in the middle of the FUCKING OCEAN"!  True love is a beautiful thing.  I kept encouraging the wifey to hit the smelling salts as if it was pure Peruvian coke, and before you know it we eventually reached Koh Phangan with our  stomachs barely intact.

Offloading at the ferry dock on the island was another adventure unto itself.  Seconds after we got off the boat and collected our luggage we were swarmed almost instantaneously by what felt like hundreds of taxi drivers, tour operators, hotel staff, etc that were all vying to get a piece of our Western wallets.  The whole thing was quite overwhelming and we eventually stumbled upon some guy who was holding a sign with our hotel's name on it.  While we had no idea what his taxi rate was or if he secretly liked to kidnap white folk, by this point we just wanted to get away from all the other annoying vendors outside.  Fortunately, he was a van cab driver who was rounding up people who were all staying at hotels on the same part of the island.  Since we were staying quite a distance from the ferry terminal, we got a first-hand look at the beautiful, windy roads and gargantuan hills.  Oh, and we also got to pick up our van driver's kids at some random bush house along the way! 

Haad Salad Beach aka Colleen's idea of Thailand.

Slightly nicer than Chumphon.  Ever so.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived at our destination, Salad Buri Resort that was located on Haad Salad.  Instantly, it was fair to say that the views were the best we had seen on our trip so far!  The resort was nestled into the northwest corner of the island, which was one of the quieter areas on this notorious party island.  Most of the rooms, were actually small villas that appeared to be balancing rather precariously in the hillside.  Ours was naturally at the top of said hill, and over the next few days we would have many a good walks up and down the European-inspired cobblestone steps.  Once we were settled in, we decided to just have dinner along the beach at our resort's restaurant.  Unfortunately, the staff were the most over-bearing/obnoxious waiters I had ever experienced and we couldn't eat our food fast enough.  Eventually, we were able to shake our waitress and made our way down the beach to one of the other local beachside restaurants where we nestled in for some drinks with a view.  Despite almost barfing her intestines out earlier on the day, it all seemed worth it to Colleen now, as she remarked, "this is my idea of Thailand".  Slightly more expensive than my idea, but hey I won't complain!

Looking out our villa's window.



Where the hell am I supposed to sleep?!

No jungle huts for us...sadly.

 

~Brentski~