Advertisement
Published: April 14th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Lush Gardens
at our room on Koh Samui Saturday, April 11th
To be honest, Koh Samui isn't what we thought it would be. There's none of the things you'd think of when dreaming about a tropical island getaway. No "white sandy beaches", no "clear blue water", no "cheap bungalows". Also, the fact that diving is so expensive here really took the wind out of our sails and we had to fight real hard to stay up-beat. Disappointment can be a hard pill to swallow.
But wait... We seem to have missed the point here. We didn't come on this trip only to dive and have a good time. We came to have experiences, both good and bad. We travel for the love of traveling. We travel for the love of adventure. We travel to see new places. We travel to learn about God and His creation, about each other, about life and love and patience and kindness and freedom. These are the reasons for our travels, not only to dive. Not "white sandy beaches", not "clear blue water", not "cheap bungalows", nice as these things are.
How easy it is to lose perspective! How easily we lost our joy at the first real disappointment of our trip.
But so we learn and so we grow and, hopefully, in the process become better human beings.
After a rainy morning we checked out and moved to Big Buddha beach on the north shore of Koh Samui. We had planned to spend a night here then move on, but when our ride dropped us by the pier, we decided to immediately move on to Koh Pha-Ngan, an island 15km north of Koh Samui.
We had lunch and Ferdi realised that he'd forgotten his hat in our ride. Oh well, too bad. At 13:30 we got on the ferry for the half hour ride to Koh Pha-Ngan. We arrived at the pier on the west of the island and after making our way past the many touts and taxis we started walking south. Not too far away we found a very nice place right on the beach with little bungalows and a pool.
We decided to go exploring the north-west coast the following day because rumor has it that there is some great reefs to snorkel right from the beach.
We spent the rest of the day swimming, reading and laying by the pool. After dinner we
walked to the nearest 7/11 for a few supplies then turned in for the night.
Today's highlights:
1. Rainy morning in bed.
2. On-the-spot decision to move on.
3. Getting a nice place with a pool to spend our first day on Koh Pha-Ngan.
Sunday, April 12th
Ferdi woke with a sore throat so we decided to take it easy today and go exploring tomorrow. The day was insanely hot even at 9am. We got 3L of OJ and some Vitamin C tablets at the "super-market" and spent the day reading and napping in the room. Uneventful but necessary and good.
Today's highlights:
1. Recovery day in bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.095s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0487s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb