August 1, Day 4

We all had a relatively decent sleep that night, all of us sporting an ache or bruise of some sort but getting through it anyhow, and a pretty cool morning. Mike and Sofia and I went for a nice bike to a secluded beach, with probably about 5 or 6 other people there. We took advantage or the privacy to take some stupid pictures (towels tied around our backs, superman style) and did a little more swimming. I got my feet resliced open, this time by coral, in an attempt to get out to where there were decent waves, while Mike frolicked in them and Sofia walked the beach picking up shells. By the time we scooted on back to our resort, it was time to check out from the resort, as the girls had a flight later that day.

So we took a ferry back to Koh Samui, said our goodbyes to Sofia and Won at the pier, and hopped in a cab for Hat Lamai. We had a hectic journey getting to our resort, which we had picked from the lonely planet guide, but turned out not to exist anymore. So the cab driver was driving around aimlessly until we finally just said alright let us off here, next to the beach. We had a long walk down the beach with our bags until we found a resort that looked cool. No more than 5 minutes after we had chucked our stuff in, another freak thundershower had begun, close call.

It was now time to really take advantage of the cheapness of buying stuff here, and went out t-shirt/cheap gifts/crappy sunglasses shopping. I got one of each and got a little taste of bartering for the first time since China, which I find is more fun than the actual getting of the stuff. I also bought a pair of board shorts that turned out to be way way too small for me, so it just got added to the cheap gifts pile. It shouldn’t be hard to find a Korean friend with a smaller waist than me. The shopping didn’t last too long, and it was time to finally do a little swimming in more-than-waist-deep water. It was pretty wicked, we tossed the football around, worked on the floating technique (which was even easier in the extra salty water), Mike and Ben played on my fear of sharks, and we tried our hand at the underwater breathing training thing of running along the bottom holding rocks to keep us down.

As we were swimming, I saw a big tube-ish rock out on the south side of the beach, and was reminded of the Grandfather rock I had heard of while I was looking up stuff on Koh Samui, which is basically just a big rock that looks like a penis. I pointed it out to the guys and me and Mike decided to go check it out. There was awesome rock climbing in the area and we spent a good chunk of time shimmying our way around. And then as we rounded the bend, there it was: The Penis Rock itself! I had no idea where it was, so it was really cool to just stumble on it like that. So our rock climbing lasted a little longer as we maneuvered our way to the top of it. Not quite as wholesome as the meditation rock, but we still got some cool pictures on top of it. During this whole experience, three Thai girls had seen us and sat down to watch us and shout their encouragement. It made for a really wicked experience, I didn’t know rock climbing was such a spectator sport, but it certainly made it more fun for me.

We were pretty beat by the time we got back to the resort and it was getting a little dark, so we grabbed some dinner at a restaurant on the beach, where I had some really good duck. Then we figured that after all the talking we had been doing the last couple of nights, it was time for a little entertainment. Tonight was the night for a little bar hopping.
Bar 1: the supposed foam party bar. While we were shopping, we noticed a bar with a huge banner hanging from it saying Foam Party Tonight! Despite the bad rumours we had heard of foam parties actually being real dirty, we decided at least to go check it out. Turns out they just leave the sign up all the time, and we had missed the party by a couple of days. There was still a pretty cool jungle ambience to it, so we kicked back, had a beer and moved on.
Bar 2: the outback bar. As we were scoping out where to go next, the sound of dire straits ‘sultans of swing’ came to our ears. Turns out it was a really good cover band, but they played it really well, so we had a seat at the bar and listened to a couple classics. It was like turning to 101.1 back in Van-City for a little while. So we kicked back, had a beer and moved on.
Bar 3: The Longhorn bar #2. This was one of the plethoras of ‘working girls’ bars/huts that scattered the streets of Hat Lamai (and pretty much everywhere else where there are tourists). Why it is that we chose this one, I’m not really sure, as every single one of them had girls running out to grab us. Go figure that three young guys walking around without a girl would be their target customers. Anyhow, it was actually a pretty good time, we played connect 4 and jenga with our respective ‘hosts’ at the bar while we sipped on some more drinks. In the middle of this particular group of bars was a Muay Thai boxing ring, so me and Mike hopped in and did a little sparring. At the end of it all, some guy tossed a big python onto our backs (presumably for a photo op and to make us pay for it) while we were playing, and Ben’s reaction was just to turn to Mike and I and say “There’s a snake on us.” We both kind of nodded and continued with our jenga game. We had hardly kicked back here but we had had our beer so we moved on.
Bar 4: the Irish pub. We heard some more live music as we left the longhorn bar except this time it was nirvana, so we ‘instinctively flocked to it like the salmon of Capistrano.’ The band that was playing here had a lot of character. There were a couple good musicians and a cool crazy energetic little Thai guy, headed up by two long-haired crazy punk chicks, one with a tambourine and the other playing lead guitar. They really put their long hair to use and were waving it around all crazy rocker-style and jumping off chairs and generally going nuts. They played a little bit of everything, from smells like teen spirit to stairway to heaven, and of course, another version (though this time a little rockier) of hotel California. We had had our fill of that song, so we had a beer and moved on… to bed.