Ahhh tropical islands and the weirdos that hang out on them.....

Vanessa and I travelled to an island paradise in between the two biggest beach areas on the west coast of Thailand. Little did she know she would leave Long Island, NY to arrive in Long Island, THailand. THe real name of the island was Ko Yao Noi (Little Long Island), but it's close enough. Yao is Thai for "long."

On such a small and somewhat remote island, you get some interesting ex-pat people. At the beautiful and cheap Sabai Corner Bungalows, we met Colin, a 40s-ish Englishman. Colin had just returned from Laos, and admitted he was drawn by Viang Vang's cheap supply of opium. However, he is employed at Sabai, and his girlfriend Noi is nearby. On our first morning, we found Colin drunk on the floor. He's quite the funny character and he took quite a liking to "the two sisters."

Other characters included Peter, Colin's German friend who was way more together, an Italian guy who refused to speak English, but laughed when we caught him singing along to music in English, Christian, a large German guy with a pirate earring, and others.

Our neighbors, Eduardo and Tamsen from San Francisco, were really cool. They invited us to join them on their chartered long tail boat one the first day but V and I were so beat, it was pointless. On the second day they asked again and we decided to join them. It turned out to be quite the adventure.

We spent 1.5 hours getting to this random remote little island and when we arrived there was a pirate cruise ship with green and yellow jollyroger!! Even worse were the pirate tourists who came off the ship. The Asian tourist acted like five year olds at kindergarten. They were generally tolerable until they started abusing the sealife. THey kept standing on the coral (big no-no), breaking off parts as trinkets for home, and one guy actually dragged a sea urchin to shore!!!!

The idiot pirate-tourists decided it was a play thing and rolled it around and tried to feed it bread. Just what the little thing needs. After they bored of it, they left the little dude to die!!!! Eduardo was the hero of the day. He went over, rescued it from the evil pirates, put it on a plate and carried it out to another group of sea urchins. When it was back in the water, it puffed back up and Eduardo said it nearly smiled. It got to move 'hoods..... we hope there isn't a Bloods and Crypts thing going on between the blue mouths and the red mouths.

Originally, we thought the pirates were Japanese and Eduardo was going to go over and say "kinjiru", the Japanese word for "forbidden". But then we realized that the Japanese guy would go and tell all his buddies that a gaijin came over to him, and all he could say was "forbidden", and walked away, which is sort of weird.

After our little sea urchin buddy was safely back home, I people watched for a while. I will NEVER be embarrassed about wearing a bikini again. THere are some NASTY hogs out there with no modesty at all. This area of THailand has a large Muslim population so a bit of modesty is polite. Of course there are the idiots who run around with no tops on and there was one lady, in her late 50s, who had no top on at all. She looked like the sunbaked roomate from There's Something About Mary. It was SOOO nasty to have to look at her wrinkly boobs and nips. Bleh. Also, there was a woman who was huge and was wearing a tiny leopard print bikini and she looked like a beast. It's making me queasy to even remember it...

All said, we did have some really beautiful snorkelling. The water was the clearest I have ever been in, and I felt like I was swimming in a huge tropical fish tank. The coral was like a forest and schools of fish would swim all around us. One little fish (who was pink and yellow) would charge me and then swim away at the last minute. Unbelievable stuff really.

And while on the subject of fish, Vanessa and I are in the process of editing our little series of still photos of her fish pocketbook doing naughty things to penis carvings in the lounge area of the Sabai Corner. Keep checking back for updates on that one!!!