August 2, Day 5

We woke up a little early today because we had booked a trip to Anthong National Marine Park, a series of over 40 protected islands off the west coast of Koh Samui. On the ferry there we met up with a French guy named Chad who had been spending the last month traveling all around Thailand and he told some cool stories about what the mainland was like. It made me want to come back and check out the northern side someday. Anyhow, we took a 90 minute ferry to the park, and no sooner had we got off for the first island we were going to check out, that we saw a big family of monkeys running around. We dropped our stuff, ran over to watch them ‘jumping all nimbly-bimbly from tree to tree,’ and took a couple more pictures. The island we were on was the biggest one in the park, so it naturally had the tallest peak, so we took a cool trail up to the top. It was 500m straight up and it only took us about 45 minutes to get to the top, even with waiting for the people in front of us for a good chunk of that time. Pretty wicked steep, which just added to the coolness of the new flora and fauna I was seeing for the first time. Once we reached the peak, we all just sat and took in the fantastic view. It looked like even more than 40 islands scattered on the perfectly blue water, with no tourist resorts or lights or telephone poles to spoil the view. I could have stayed there all day, it was so beautiful, but there was only one thing that was going to tear me away from this: more monkeys. I ripped back down the trail and found the whole family of monkeys hanging out in some low trees right at the trail head. I just kind of stood there for a little while until they got comfortable and came down to start checking me out. There was one little guy that became captivated with either my face or my hair or something head-related, because after we had gone through the greeting formalities of smelling and trying to chew my hands, he started to get real curious. He got down to the lowest of the branches a bunch of times and let me pet him and that, but then he started jumping at me. Now I’m no expert on monkey behaviour so I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure he just wanted to land on me, it wasn’t an attack. The problem was his target was my head, and like most people do when a monkey jumps at their head, I ducked. Unperturbed, the little guy just climbed up the nearest tree and we went through the whole hand-grabbing, monkey-petting, head-jumping scenario again. Maybe he saw a flea in there, I don’t know, it made for a pretty cool experience though.

From here the group went to a smaller island, where we met up with some British people and did a little kayaking/snorkeling. To be honest, I expected more from the snorkeling, but I think it’s just not the right time of year for it, we still saw some pretty cool fish and coral though. The kayaking, on the other hand, was really cool: the tide was out so we were able to basically go underneath the island, where the water had eroded it, into little caves and such. They were never too far away from the water, but there was a bunch of little cave openings that I’m sure at least on one of the islands you could do a little kayak-spelunking.

This trip took up most of the day, and by the time we got back to Koh Samui, it was 5:00 and Mike and Ben had their flight in an hour and a half, so we said our goodbyes and they took a taxi to the airport while I just hopped on another ferry heading to Koh Penhang, as tonight was the night of the infamous half-moon party. I figured I would just play it safe and stay at the same place we stayed at the first night, ‘Momma’s house.’ Turns out we actually spent quite a bit the first night and that was why we got some really nice rooms, and when I showed up solo and this time a little bit more aware of what to spend, I found out the variety of rooms that Momma had. She was cool about it, she acknowledged from the get-go that it wasn’t a very good room, and gave it to me for 200 baht which is dirt cheap for a solo traveler, and I just wanted a place to throw my bags, so I agreed. In retrospect, it actually wasn’t too bad, the lock was strong and the bed was clean, but having to share my bathroom with the line of ants was a little annoying.

So now that I had already had a second meeting with Momma, I figured I would go meet up with my other Koh Penhang friend, Leo at the Warm-Up Bar. He remembered the names Ben, Mike, and Jon, which was impressive, and he put on a good front, but I’m pretty sure he had no idea who the heck I was. That was fine by me though, I just sat by the bar and we ‘rebuilt’ our friendship, the guy was still just as happy a guy as I’ve ever met. It was also fun to watch his fellow bartenders throw down their best broken English one-liners on the girls as they came by the bar to order drinks, what a fun place.

So I wandered over to the full-moon beach party expecting there to be thousands upon thousands of people, when I realized there was barely any more than there were the first night. I spent the night watching a little more fire dancing and went to the cactus club for a little while in one big state of confusion, thinking ‘this is it?’ the whole time. I eventually wandered over to a quieter bar and met an Israeli guy (can’t recall his name) and we talked about basketball and what-not for a good chunk of the night, after which I went back to the cactus club for a while and went back to my room, I had a pretty fun night overall, but as I drifted off to sleep I couldn’t help wondering what the half-moon party fuss was all about.