koh tao
8-10 septembre

This weekend was the full moon festival in Koh Panghan. Instead of going to that area of Thailand, Anne Jamie and I decided to go to Koh Tao.

Koh Tao is a small island and popular tourist destination. I would recommend this location to honeymooners.

We paid 850 baht for a one-way bus + boat ride to the island. Our bus departed at midnight on Thursday. A punk rock family from Switzerland was waiting for the bus along with us, but we did not talk to them much. They were very interesting. The guy, who could not have been more than 25 years old, had a Mohawk, tattoos, and septum piercing. The girl, around the same age, had bleached hair, a septum piercing, and tattoos. They had a son, who was probably 5 or 6 years old. They were the cutest little family I have seen in a long time.

Anyway, the bus trip was 4 hours long. We made a pit stop halfway between and got some roasted bananas. I dozed off a few times on the bus. Jamie tried. And Anne couldn’t sleep at all so she just stayed up and listened to music. There was a television in the bus, but it was turned off since everyone was sleeping. There was also a foul-smelling bathroom.

We arrived at the boat dock around 5:30am and had to wait around until 7am to sail off to the island. The boat we took is called a Catamaran. I called Brian while we waited, it was 5pm for him and he was just getting off work. It was really nice to hear his voice after not being able to talk to him for 2 weeks. And then my phone card ran out of minutes.

I fell asleep on the boat while everyone else watched the featured movie – Bruce Almighty. A very random choice of movie. The closer we got to the island, the clearer the water became. I couldn’t believe we were going to spend the weekend in such a beautiful area. After we got off the catamaran, the three of us went out to look for a bungalow. We were in the Mae Haad Village section of Koh Tao. Soo Yun (the woman that helps students at WUT with most everything) suggested that we stay at the Queens bungalow. She drew us a little map and finally, after dodging several taxi cab drivers that kept yelling at us to use their services, we found it.

The Queens bungalow sits on top of a small cliff, above a bunch of boulders, overlooking the ocean. It was absolutely gorgeous. We got a room with a bed for Anne and I to share. Jamie said that he could either sleep in the hammock outside the room, or the hard floor. The hammock was very dirty and very high up. If you fell out of it, you would get critically injured. Underneath it, about 15 feet, is where the boulders were. Despite this, Jamie climbed into the thing and almost fell asleep. I got a couple pictures of that.

So, we got in the room, turned on the AC, and changed into our swimsuits. We headed for the beach, only a few steps away. We swam and climbed boulders for about 2 hours. It was kind of like being at Johnston shut-ins, but not really, because.. well.. it’s a beach. And because we couldn’t jump off the rocks, which was a letdown. Water shoes would have done us a lot of good because there was a lot of coral on the ocean bottom. We cut up our feet a little, but not bad. Jamie sat on the rocks most of the time and was deep in thought. We obtained a great collection of seashells. Eventually we got really really hungry.



Food prices in Koh Tao are much more expensive than in Hua Hin. We went to Café de Sol and got some non-Thai food. It was good. Anne got a Mai Thai, I think. There were a lot of little shops around the town, but we didn’t shop much because we were getting really tired and cranky.

Oh, I forgot to add that Koh Tao is also known as Turtle Island. Not because there are turtles on the island, but because the island is shaped like a turtle. I saw the map of the island and I don’t really agree, but whatever. Maybe a turtle with an abnormally small head and huge feet and a big old lumpy shell.

Anyway, before we started to get even crabbier with each other, we went back to the room and took a nap. Jamie fell asleep sitting up in a chair, I think. We all woke up a couple hours later. I was the last to wake up. I found Jamie and Anne sitting on the boulders outside, watching high tide. It was so beautiful. The rocks were sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean. The sun was going down. The weather was gorgeous. I wish I could experience that every day.

We went out to eat again, this time to La Matta (obviously another non-Thai place). I must add that we could have gone to Farango’s Pizzeria, but didn’t, because the word Farango is a play on the word farang, which means foreigner, and by going to that restaurant, we would kind of be making fun of ourselves. I dunno. We thought the name of that restaurant was completely ridiculous.

La Matta was a really great place. Jamie and I got the best Greek salads of our lives. We sat on the upper level of the restaurant, on mats on the floor. It was dimly lit and had no windows so the breeze would come in and out. I got a screwdriver and Anne got another foo-foo drink. The three of us had really good conversation.

Afterwards, we took a truck-taxi to the Sairee Village part of the island. A truck-taxi is where you sit on seats that are built into the back of the truck, and the driver drives as fast as he can and scares you to death every time you go over a bump. Riding in one of these taxis was scary at first, but we did it several more times on the island and we eventually got used to it.

We thought something would be going on in Sairee, something fun, since the Full Moon Festival was the night before. But we think everyone was worn out from the previous night’s festivities so the nightlife wasn’t really that great. We went to the Dry Bar, which is this really awesome place to just sit on the beach on mats with candles and Christmas lights and talk and listen to the ocean. And music. It was very intimate. It’s the kind of bar I’ve always wanted to go to, but never thought existed.

After the Dry Bar, we went to another bar. Just a regular old one a few buildings down. Anne and I played pool with 2 Thai guys that didn’t really speak any English. Jamie fell asleep sitting at the table. After the first game of pool, 2 creepy older guys started playing with us. I didn’t like them. One of them looked Anne up and down, head to toe, in a really creepy way and that really disturbed me. We left.

We got back around maybe 12:30 or 1am. I thought it would be a really good idea to go swimming in the ocean. So I did. I was alone, but Anne was on the balcony making sure I didn’t drown. The water was warmer than the air. The moon was full. I laid half in the sand, half in the water, and looked at the sky for a while. I swam a little, but didn’t go too far out for fear of getting stung by a jellyfish. And then I did get stung.




Just kidding.

Swimming in the ocean at night is one of those things I’ve always wanted to do, but never really got to do. I mean, I’ve been to the ocean before but it’s just always been during the day. It’s a completely different experience at night.

Eventually I went back to the room and fell asleep. When I woke up there was sand stuck to my scalp. I thought that was pretty funny.

We woke up around 9am. We all got ready and met Kelsey, VJ, and a couple other girls whose names I forgot at a restaurant for breakfast. The restaurant was in Sairee Village. I had the best banana pancake of my life. The restaurant was filled with people about to embark on scuba diving trips. They were having pre-dive meetings and were preparing all their equipment. It’s a shame we didn’t get to go scuba diving. There just wasn’t enough time. We went snorkeling, though.

After breakfast, we swam a little and Anne and I met a cute little Thai boy who kept yelling “Superman!” and burrowing in the sand. He enjoyed having his picture taken and he wanted to steal Anne’s sandals.

We left Sairee Village, bought goggles and rented flippers, and went back to the beach by our bungalow. I much preferred our beach over the one we were at in Sairee. It’s much more entertaining. Especially when there are topless women walking around. It was kind of shocking at first, and then you get used to it. I had to fight back my laughter. I mean, the women were attractive and I wish everybody could be as self confident as they appeared to be, but still.. it’s not the norm, therefore, it’s funny. One of the women looked French.

We went snorkeling. With the flippers, we didn’t have to worry about cutting our feet on the coral. We took turns with the gear because we could only afford one set. I took pictures with a disposable underwater camera. I can’t wait to get them developed. It’s really hard to describe the things I saw without having a picture as a reference. So for now, I’ll just say that snorkeling was really beautiful and I will post pictures when I can.

After snorkeling, we washed up and went out shopping. I bought some souvenirs for people. And the bootleg 3rd season of the OC. And I also bought bootleg The Beach and The Descent. All DVDs here are bootleg, and therefore much cheaper than regular DVDs. It sucks, though, because the picture quality, of course, isn’t as good and sometimes the DVDs just don’t work. So you have to put a lot of trust in to the people you buy the DVDs from, and that’s really hard to do. Sometimes they will play the DVD on their player before you buy it, so that you are assured it works. Sometimes, even if it works on their player, it doesn’t work on theirs. Believe me, I know this. It has happened twice now. I hate it and I swear I’m never buying another bootleg DVD again. But let’s get serious.. I probably will.

One good thing about bootleg DVDs is that sometimes the quality is just as good as a regular old DVD. It is only the really new movies that have the bad quality because they are taped from inside the movie theatre. The older movies, the ones that are at least a year old, have a decent picture. And they are more likely to work.

We ate at a really good café. I got a tofu sandwich. Anne got pad Thai. Jamie got an egg sandwich. Then we met Xavier, Jake, Caleb, Hannah, Hannah’s boyfriend, and some other people who came to Koh Tao from Koh Panghan to hang out. They had been at the Full Moon festival and were recovering from their 3-night alcohol/drug binge. But their drug use didn’t really stop in Koh Tao.

Anne and I didn’t want to pay for another truck-taxi so Jake agreed to let us ride with him on his motorbike. Those things can fit a family of four, so the three of us (and Jake is really skinny) fit comfortably on the thing. I sat on the back. Jake was sober so I wasn’t worried about him driving recklessly. It was my first time on a motorbike, though, so it was still quite scary. But we each got there in one piece. It was really a lot of fun.

Everyone else who wasn’t on a motorbike was on a truck-taxi, following our bike. Jake led everyone to believe that we were going to a place called The Lookout, which is a bar/restaurant overlooking the city. Jake has lived in Thailand for 6 years now and is pretty familiar with several different areas of the country. He did not take us to the Lookout. Instead, he led all 10 of us to a bar/drug house so that he could get some shrooms (which they grow in the back of the building). Everyone was pretty pissed off that Jake took us there. To make up for it, I think he paid for a taxi to take everyone to the Lotus Bar, which was about 5 minutes away.

The Lotus Bar was kind of boring. I didn’t feel like drinking or socializing much. Jake and a couple other nameless people got messed up on shrooms and disappeared. We saw the two creepy European men from the pool game the night before. It started raining. There was a fire dancer guy. He was cool. I just wanted to go to sleep. So Anne, Jamie, and I went back to the bungalow. And went to sleep.



And that’s pretty much sums up the Koh Tao trip. We took a catamaran back to the bus station and a bus back to Hua Hin. The feeling of “being home” felt strange to me. I didn’t realize how comfortable I’d become until we returned “home” from the island. It was a good feeling. The kind of feeling I hope to have when I go back to St. Louis.