Koh Samui and Koh Phangan

Not a lot to report in the last week other than good old fashion relaxing. We spent a couple of days in Koh Samui checking out the island by jeep and relaxing on the beach until we picked up our friends, Shel and Andrew, from the airport. We then headed over to Koh Phangan, which is about half an hour by catamaran, for the rest of the week. We ended up at a small beach, Thong Nai Pan, on the east coast of the island which was only accessible by spending around 40 minutes on the back of a ute with our luggage travelling over varying degrees of steep dirt track. All and all, a fun, dirty, and very hot trip. The island was far hotter than Phi Phi and the water was around 30 odd degrees at all times which was a lot like taking a bath. Not at all refreshing. We stayed in bungalows on the beach for $48 a night per couple and had all of our meals at a delicious restaurant on the sand. Fresh seafood was caught daily and all of our evening meals and drinks were supplemented with a Thai DJ blasting Britney Spears songs on his turn tables and fire pois on the beach. We spent Thursday on a day long snorkling trip and explored a number of beaches around the coast from Thong Nai Pan - many of which are only accesible by boat. The snorkling was amazing with millions of fish and vast amounts of coral. We also spent some of the day at a waterfall which had very cold, fresh water - great after the warm warm sea water! The rest of the week we spent playing frisby on the beach, getting Thai massages for $8 an hour and drinking singhas, buckets of redbull and vodka and cocktails for cheap. We even visited a bar called the Funky Buddha complete with massive bong and all although we don't know what was being smoked in it. We went for another elephant trek and were, unluckily, caught in the middle of a lightening storm, which left us saturated and our elephants freaking out and stamping around when one fork of lightening hit trees only a couple of metres from us. That was a freaky experience! We headed back to Samui on Saturday and spent the evening at Chawaeng Beach, the major tourist beach of Samui. We did some great shopping and also took the boys to the local go go bar. Very interesting. We loved Chawaeng Beach, despite the fact that it was quite touristy, there was plenty of great markets and places to eat. We flew back to Bangkok on Sunday, heavily hung over and with only a few hours sleep, said a sad sad goodbye to Rochelle and Andrew and we left Thailand for Vietnam that same night.