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We arrived at our next destination, Koh Samui, by boat and braced ourselves for the upcoming ritual duel with taxi drivers at the boat dock… the only problem was that instead of encountering the usual throngs of taxi drivers vying for your business, we found the opposite… tumbleweeds and crickets. To be more specific… all the locals on the ferry cleared out and about 15 of us tourists were left in a vacant parking lot… the only people around were about 5 drunk taxi drivers at the back of the lot and they found our predicament borderline hilarious and started quoting outrageous prices for a ride into town. Luckily there was a restaurant open nearby and I walked over to see if we could find a decent ride to Chewang Beach, where we would be staying. The owner of the restaurant had some time on his hands and wanted to make some extra money and through some pigeon English and scrawling numbers on paper I got him to agree to take 4 people at 200 baht a head to town… by the time I made it back to the ferry parking lot the drunks had called a friend and they were
in the process of squeezing about 10 people into a minivan that was built for maybe 6… I gave a roll call for 2 more that could fit in our truck and a Swedish couple jumped in with us… not sure what happened with everyone else but the Swedes were really cool and we ended up hanging out with them later on.
Chewang Beach
We enjoyed our time in Koh Samui but I wish we had spent a little more time doing research and finding another beach to stay at. In Chewang you will find hotel after restaurant after club after bar and repeat… the whole place is built up and you cannot even access the beach without walking through a hotel and/or restaurant. Come nightfall and the place can turn into kind of a madhouse as the beach seems to attract drunks that like to hang around other drunks… it’s not that the place is really bad, but it’s the kind of place where you can walk downstairs in the morning and listen to a tourist (reeking of alcohol) try to haggle with your hotel’s receptionist for an hourly rate as his new “friend” stands none too sheepishly
beside him… neither will be put off by your presence as he just turned… briefly acknowledged my existence and went back into his “ I just need the room for 3 hours spiel”… oh Chewang!
On a lighter note, while we were there we rented a scooter and drove around to different places on the island… Venny finally got to ride an elephant (check that off the list) and smiled from ear to ear the whole time and on our “play date” with the Swedes we went to a kickboxing match in town (check for me & I hope that last guy regained consciousness at some point). My luggage broke (always happens at least once) so I had to do some knockoff Samsonite shopping on our new scooter/pickup truck. We only did a few nights here before we were off to one of my favoritestest places in the world… Koh Tao.
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