koh samui.

To get away from the stresses of figuring out what to do with our jobs and because we were having an unexpected extended holiday, Stephan and I along with our new group of friends decided to head to Koh Samui, one of Thailand’s beautiful islands. Trouble was, we still had all of our stinkin’ luggage. Two of our friends had an apartment outside of town at the university they are teaching at. They offered to let us keep our luggage at their place for the weekend away. This was nice and all, BUT we were still going to have to figure out how to get the luggage 30 minutes away from where we were staying and where we needed to go. This turned in to an all day ordeal. We packed our bags and hauled all of our luggage in to the lobby of the hotel we were all staying at. Kirsten and Julie volunteered to grab a songthaew for us. We thought it would be easy peasy, but after about half an hour of no success we were beginning to feel discouraged. We were basically taking up the entire lobby of the hotel with all of our stuff. Luckily after sitting there a man came up to us and asked us if we needed help, or where we were going. He spoke perfect English. Come to find out he lives in Maryland, but he is Thai. His sister owns the hotel we were at and he just happened to be visiting. We asked him if he could call a taxi, but he said that this town did not have taxis. He said he would try and hail a songthaew for us. About a minute later he came back saying that he would have one there for us in 30 minutes. FINALLY, the songthaew came and we headed out of town, just to drop our luggage off. We met up with our friends at their apartment and proceeded on our adventure to the island. We took a van to Surat Thani (another southern province) and then a ferry from there to the island. It was already evening by time we got on the ferry, but this meant that it was a much cooler temperature AND we got to see the most magnificent sunset (well, really every sunset here is amazing). 

We arrived at Koh Samui around 7 or 8. We then had to figure out what part of the island we wanted to head to. Once we decided we hopped on another songthaew and the driver dropped us off at the main part of the island called, Chaweng. He pointed to the beach and right there in front of us were some cute little bungalows that we decided to rent for the two nights we would be staying. They were basically on the beach and they cost about 20 dollars a night! We hurried and showered off the days sweat from travelling and hauling luggage and walked out on to the beach to find some dinner. Just a short walk from where we were staying, we came upon a restaurant with bean bag chairs and the most amazing Massaman curry. Delicious spices in our mouth, sand under our toes, sitting on bean bags staring at the ocean, watching people send lanterns in to the sky, hanging out with our new friends—it was just what we needed. 

The next morning Stephan and I went on an early morning run around the beach. This was the first time we saw the beach in the sunlight. The water was crystal clear blue with white sand. It was picture perfect. After our run we found a delicious breakfast place with REAL breakfast! We had a yummy veggie omelet and toast. It was as if we had left Thailand and went back in to the western world for the weekend. There were SO many “farangs”! Anyways after stuffing our faces for breakfast we had a most relaxing day on the beautiful beach.   

The weekend was full of relaxing and eating and we enjoyed every single minute of it. We almost forgot that we still had no home and maybe no job, but hey it’s Thailand and we were slowly realizing that everything would fall perfectly into place.