Our second day in Thailand revolved around the beach (as would many of the other days in Koh Samui). We had checked the elephant trek from our to do list and now it was time for some rest & relaxation on the beach. In Koh Samui, the best beach was Chaweng so we woke up, ate breakfast and prepared to go to the beach. We had a car pick us up at the Villa and then we dropped off at McDonald’s of all places which was our starting destination to the beach. We walked past McDonalds (not without noticing a few new menu items, the double Big Mac and the Chicken and Ham pie. The double Big Mac….really, and we wonder why people are so fat) and a Starbucks as we passed through a small mall to find the road leading to the beach. We walked down the road and it changed from a paved path to a smaller path through the palm trees and could smell the salt air and hear the waves as we got closer to the water. The beach was exactly what we expected, a very nice sandy beach with good size waves crashing in. We walked down the beach a short while to get away from one of the major entry points (and therefore one of the more crowded sections) until we found a place where we could rent some chairs (50 Baht each, less than $2 for the day…compare that to the prices for beaches in the US) so keep off the sand a little. We moved the chairs into the sun, Tammy put on her basting oil and the kids and I slathered on the SPF 50 stuff so we didn’t get fried. The last time we went to the beach I was lobster red after the first day which I didn’t want to happen again. The beach wasn’t so crowded with people, at least not as many as I would’ve thought so you could get some distance between yourself and the others around you.
Since I am a pessimistic person, I’ll mention the negatives about the beach first;
· The speedos and the bikini bathing suits. I don’t know if the inventor of these articles of clothing ever envisioned the people that would be wearing these things. There were more people in self-denial walking around in these things than you could imagine. Now I know that the Europeans are a lot more “accepting” than the typical US person but c’mon people! This was ridiculous. The old men wearing speedos with the guts hanging over the suit….scary. Even more scary were these older men taking pictures of each other in these suits. I mean what is that all about? I can’t imagine being at the Mrytle Beach with a guy saying “Hey Scott, how about taking a photo of me in the surf?” Um, how about “NO!” I can accept that some people can pull off this look but those that cannot (and you know who you are), why would you subject yourself and everyone else to your illusions. This is also true for many of the women. If your belly is bigger than your boobs, it’s time for a one piece suit (and a robe!). Flabby, out of shape people were not the target market for these items so help a brother out, don’t wear them. If people tell you that you look good in that suit a) check their mental state and b) check their vision. You aren’t 17 anymore (and probably at 17 you couldn’t pull it off) so accept your age. People are staring at you because you are hot, it’s because they can’t believe you are actually crazy enough to believe you look good.
· The beach marketers. On our way to the beach we were stopped by Westerners on a motorcycle asking if we spoke English. They gave us a book of coupons and started in on a well-rehearsed speech about us winning a contest, blah, blah, blah. We didn’t have to buy anything, etc. We listened politely for some time since it appeared we had the option of 3 prizes. Then comes the final straw. “You can pick up your prize by taking a taxi to our offices and listening to a 90 minute presentation”. WHAT!?!? 90 minutes, this is when it went downhill for them. Tammy isn’t giving up 90 minutes on the beach for anyone or anything so this wasn’t going to happen. Bring the kids, we’ll tell the friends you are going to meet on the beach, etc. If you do this, we make 100 Euros (which would be close to probably 7000 Baht), help us out. Sorry folks, ain’t gonna happen! 90 minutes, they had to be crazy. This is the same old time share, high pressure sales techniques used back home. Sorry folks, we’re off to the beach!
· Beach vendors. On the beach, every 2-3 minutes you would have a Thai person carrying some trinkets (jewelry, silk, souvenirs, etc.) come by and slow down in front of you to show you their wares. Now I have to point out that they were very polite, if you didn’t want something you could shake your head and they would move on. There was no pressure to buy anything so although it was somewhat of a nuisance, it could’ve been much worse.
The positive things about the beach;
· The food options that were being made fresh in front of you. There were women carrying a small grill and all the “fixins” to cook food for you right there (they had a wooden “balance” over their shoulders which had the small grill on one side and the fixins on the other side). They had stuff on a stick (whole fish, squid, chicken butt, chicken shoulder) for the grill and other things to eat. They made a papaya salad right there for you, as spicy as you wanted (this was awesome!). They also carried rice and other things to eat. There were other women that had fruit, specifically mangoes and pineapples, cut fresh for you. All of these items were very cheap, delicious and allowed you to remain on the beach and enjoy lunch.
· The twins. On the other side of the spectrum from the people wearing the wrong beach attire were the people that wore limited beach attire. There were two European women that decided that they needed to walk the beach without wearing a bikini top. It wasn’t enough to walk from the North End to the South End of the beach but they also had to make the return trip as well (of course). Now, in the information we had about Thailand it seemed to be frowned upon to expose yourself but I don’t think there was any enforcement of a dress code for the beach. We didn’t see anyone else flaunting it as directly as these women but I am certain that they weren’t the only ones who figured that they could take advantage of the opportunity to get some color. We understood from others that the beaches on some of the smaller, neighboring islands (where they held the snorkeling tours and stuff) that these women would’ve been overdressed for the beach but we never went there so it’s strictly hearsay on my part to repeat this. What was the funniest about this was one day when another family we knew from Suzhou (another small world story) was setting up next to us, the women walked by (in full view of the kids). They walked over to the mom and asked her the time (as you can imagine, even a watchband tan line was unacceptable to these women). It was funny to see this happen and it seems that this episode didn’t harm the kids (although it probably didn’t do any good either). Another lady that was near us on another day had 3 different bathing suits. She would change between the suits for reasons I don’t know but she would do it right there on the beach. She could change out the top without too much on an issue but the bikini bottoms were another matter. She actually would sit in her seat, remove the one bottom and then place on the other bottom. We were sitting behind her so we got the full moon/buttcrack treatment. We were just hoping the kids weren’t looking in from the water to get the view from the other side of the world (and you know what I mean). There was another woman that had on a strapless bikini top that wasn’t quite sized correctly. Anytime she moved around she was in danger of bearing all to the world. Then she went into the water and we knew that we were “seconds from disaster” which is what happened when the first big wave came in and knocked her down. Thanks for the memories!
· The surf was very nice, the water was clear and we had large enough waves to get out there and get knocked around a little. We don’t really go into the water to swim as much as just have a little bit of fun and the big waves that would crash over you would do just that. Being on the chair, it was just nice to hear the sound of the ocean as you laid back and relaxed in the sun. It was hot so every 20-30 minutes you had to hit the water to cool down a little.
· It was the beach (as my wife continues to say, there are no negatives about the beach).
· The food options that were being made fresh in front of you. There were women carrying a small grill and all the “fixins” to cook food for you right there (they had a wooden “balance” over their shoulders which had the small grill on one side and the fixins on the other side). They had stuff on a stick (whole fish, squid, chicken butt, chicken shoulder) for the grill and other things to eat. They made a papaya salad right there for you, as spicy as you wanted (this was awesome!). They also carried rice and other things to eat. There were other women that had fruit, specifically mangoes and pineapples, cut fresh for you. All of these items were very cheap, delicious and allowed you to remain on the beach and enjoy lunch.
· The twins. On the other side of the spectrum from the people wearing the wrong beach attire were the people that wore limited beach attire. There were two European women that decided that they needed to walk the beach without wearing a bikini top. It wasn’t enough to walk from the North End to the South End of the beach but they also had to make the return trip as well (of course). Now, in the information we had about Thailand it seemed to be frowned upon to expose yourself but I don’t think there was any enforcement of a dress code for the beach. We didn’t see anyone else flaunting it as directly as these women but I am certain that they weren’t the only ones who figured that they could take advantage of the opportunity to get some color. We understood from others that the beaches on some of the smaller, neighboring islands (where they held the snorkeling tours and stuff) that these women would’ve been overdressed for the beach but we never went there so it’s strictly hearsay on my part to repeat this. What was the funniest about this was one day when another family we knew from Suzhou (another small world story) was setting up next to us, the women walked by (in full view of the kids). They walked over to the mom and asked her the time (as you can imagine, even a watchband tan line was unacceptable to these women). It was funny to see this happen and it seems that this episode didn’t harm the kids (although it probably didn’t do any good either). Another lady that was near us on another day had 3 different bathing suits. She would change between the suits for reasons I don’t know but she would do it right there on the beach. She could change out the top without too much on an issue but the bikini bottoms were another matter. She actually would sit in her seat, remove the one bottom and then place on the other bottom. We were sitting behind her so we got the full moon/buttcrack treatment. We were just hoping the kids weren’t looking in from the water to get the view from the other side of the world (and you know what I mean). There was another woman that had on a strapless bikini top that wasn’t quite sized correctly. Anytime she moved around she was in danger of bearing all to the world. Then she went into the water and we knew that we were “seconds from disaster” which is what happened when the first big wave came in and knocked her down. Thanks for the memories!
· The surf was very nice, the water was clear and we had large enough waves to get out there and get knocked around a little. We don’t really go into the water to swim as much as just have a little bit of fun and the big waves that would crash over you would do just that. Being on the chair, it was just nice to hear the sound of the ocean as you laid back and relaxed in the sun. It was hot so every 20-30 minutes you had to hit the water to cool down a little.
· It was the beach (as my wife continues to say, there are no negatives about the beach).
As I may have mentioned before, there were dogs all over the island and this included the beach. Now these weren’t packs of wild dogs (or didn’t seem to be such) just domesticated animals that were left behind. These dogs would come by and sit near you whenever you ate. They didn’t give you the patented stare and drool as we knew from Shadow. They would just lay down somewhere near you and if you wanted to drop them a morsel or two, they would take it. Sometimes when we were just walking down the street from the Villa, we would attract one dog that would follow us to our destination. It would then sit there for awhile before deciding that we weren’t going to feed it and it would head off to another destination (or find another sucker). You felt badly for the dogs (being dog lovers) but there wasn’t much you could do about it. We actually read in the local paper that the previous year they were trying to reduce the dog count on the island. They were using blowguns with poisoned darts to kill off many of the dogs (think about it blowguns and poisoned darts, sounds like something that would’ve been done a long time ago). It wasn’t really anything you wanted to read about but it was what they had to do to try and gain control of the situation. Recently they opened a dog shelter to try and work another angle to the same problem. Everywhere you went you saw dogs and 7-11 stores.
Now we visited three beaches while in Koh Samui and saw others on a trip around the island. We went to Chaweng and it was the best beach on the island. From the other family that stayed on the Lamai Beach section of the island, it was a nice beach but very small. We also went to the Big Buddha beach (where we stayed), it was okay but it was also a small beach when the tide was in. Finally, we went to Bo Phut beach. This was a very pebbly beach with very calm water. Again, it was okay but Chaweng was the best beach and the one we went back to 3 times during our stay. From a general standpoint, the beaches went as follows, the Southern beaches were very rocky and not beaches where you would go out on the sand (because there wasn’t any sand) to get a tan, the Western beaches were more muddy and dirty. The Northern beaches were pebbly and the water was calmer and the Eastern beaches were where you wanted to be to get out and get a tan as well as get in the water.
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1 comment:
Very good. It sounds like a nice place to visit. Say hi to everyone and we love you all
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