A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Ko Samui, Thailand

Ko Samui is the largest and most upscale o f the three islands of the Samui archipelago. Ko Pha Ngan, the next in line, is a mecca for budget travellers and is well known for its "Full Moon Party" bacchanal, in which grubby (I'm assuming here) backpackers get massively drunk and/or high and dance (and whatever else) on the beach all night long. Frankly sounds like a nightmare to me, as I wouldn't have fit in even as a 22 year old. Koh Tao is the third and smallest of the islands and is known not for its beaches but for the fabulous diving and snorkeling along its coral reefs.

But Samui is the island in question. Maenam, a lovely sandy crescent with coconut palms, is one of Samui's northern beaches, far less populated and developed than Chaweng on the east coast. Chaweng bears an unfortunate resemblance to Ko Phi Phi (which will be described in another post) in terms of overdevelopment, but is slightly more upscale and comes complete with traffic jams in the high season. Maenam was more our speed, certainly, and we were staying at an excellent resort with air-con bungalows and a fabulous pool, due entirely to the fact that Amanda and Geoff were paying. I owe them big time.

While I did absolutely nothing our first day, Amanda and Geoff did accomplish one thing -- both got a massage next door to our resort, where a local woman named Sao had set up a little massage/manicure/pedicure business right on the beach. Really there's nothing like a massage enjoyed on a padded platform in the shade of the coconut palms with a view across the empty beach to the Gulf of Thailand. This initial contact with the massage folks proved fruitful on our second day, when after breakfast we began exploring opportunities to do a tour of the island. Amanda had expressed strong reservations about motorbike rental, and the travel agent at the Coco Palm Resort couldn't take us around until the following day. Since Amanda and Geoff were of the opinion that Sao could be the font of all Samui knowledge, we headed next door.

After three minutes of conversation and a couple of cell phone calls, we were installed in Sao's own pickup, driven by her boyfriend (whome she had forgotten would be visiting from Pha Ngan that day) and guided by Sao herself.

It proved to be an excellent day, and the commentary from Sao was far more entertaining than the average guide. First of all, she hadn't really done a proper tour of the island in some time, though she was a native. Consequently, she was constantly surprised by things she saw, peppering her conversation with "oh my God"s as she spotted a new bungalow development, hotel, or commercial street were once there were only palms and huts.

Sao's tour was also enlivened by many gory tales of the island's murders, grisly deaths, and hotel ghosts. We drove past a bend in teh road where she had seen a body, and were told the sad tale of the German who had killed his 4-year-old son, wrapped him and the windows and doors in plastic to delay discovery, and fled the country. She described how in the days before organized tourism foreigners who found their way to Samui would be robbed and murdered by the locals, never to be seen again. Probably not a history that's played up in recent tourist brochures.

Sao's highly complicated personal life was perhaps the most intriguing thing about the day, however. She had never been married, but had two kids by a guy who was terminally unfaithful. She was something of an outcast in her respectable, upscale, and very Catholic family. They considered her entrepreneurial beach massage and roving souvenir sales businesses to be highly suspect at best. Massage doesn't only have the reputation it does among Farang -- respectable Thais share the view that it's largely based on prostitution in Thailand. Not the sort of career a well-brought-up Catholic girl should undertake.

Then a year or two ago she began to build a house, and everything was going wrong. As the house was being constructed on land purchased from a Buddhist temple, she was advised to make peace with the spirits by becoming a nun for two weeks. Though this seems a bit weird to western ears, it's not at all unusual in Thailand to become a buddhist monk or nun for a couple of weeks or months. The problem for Sao was that in order to become a nun she would have to shave her head, which would be bad enough in itself, plus it made the problem of discovery by her parents a real possibility. AS devout Catholics, she felt she would probably be effectively kicked out of the family if they discovered her flirtation with Buddhism.

What followed was pure farce. For three months Sao holed up at her apartment in town, hiding from her family. She told her mother that she was visiting her sister in Germany, and her sister in Germany that she was waitressing in Malaysia. After an additional three months of travelling in Myanmar and Malaysia, she returned to Samui with at least a respectable length of hair, and the secret persists to this day.

Now that I've skimmed through what I've written about our actual tour of the island, I can see it's pretty boring to read in its present form (my fault -- we had a great time, but I didn't give any thought to the writing on this one), so that's all you get on Samui. Here's the rundown of our tour and our remaining few days, and you'll just have to imagine how entertaining the text might be if I actually wrote it well: jungle temple/blessing from abbot/waterfall/king cobra farm/monk mummy with sunglasses/obscene rock formations/Chaweng shopping district/Big Buddha/double-engine speedboat/snorkeling/An Thong National Marine Park/cave (did not enter)/massage/endless hours by the pool. Now, isn't it more fun to use your imaginations? I may never write again.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 1:31 AM