This is the view from my breakfast table in the morning. I had to put at least a couple of pics up to make you jealous :P

Ko Samet is a really beautiful island. When we arrived, it was quite dark, so we didn't get much of a chance to see it. We were however treated to a nice lightning show that night. The next day when I got up it was absolutely gorgeous. It was a little windy, so there was a bit of surf, but it was nice and sunny. The sand here is just pristeen, so white and soft. After breakfast, I just went and say on the beach for a while and just tried a little body surfing in the ocean. Once that was done, I went and got a nicer place to stay that night.

Now when I first arrived, I noticed that a lot of the restaurants would play movies at night. At first I wondered, why would you want to watch a movie out here, with so much else to do? It made sense that evening, most people want to take a little break between the tanning/swimming/recovering from the night before and going out that night. The movie that night was Starsky and Hutch, a good movie if you haven't seen it, and then sat down and chatted with a couple of people from Ireland and England.

Around 10 or so, people start heading over to the clubs. Really, they are just bars on the beach, with a bunch of tables uncovered, and a dance floor and a couple other tables covered. By this time, we had met up with Erik, and headed over to one of the bars called the Silver Sands. For those of you who have been to Thailand, or have spoken to people who have gone, you will know what I mean whne I say we had buckets. Aside from the regular Thai beer for sale, a lot of places sell you buckets of alcohol. You can get all different types, most involve red bull as the mixer. What they are are little bucket filled with your choice of drink (vodka, Thai whiskey, gin, etc), red bull, ice to keep them cold, and several straws to drink it through; after 2 of them you are doing pretty well.

I hung out with Mark that night (one of the guys I met while watching the movie), and only saw glimpses of Erik that night (but apparently he had a good night). It was pouring rain outside, and there was another great lightening show that night, around midnight the power went out for a bit, and was on and off for the rest of the night til I left. Only stayed til about 2:30, it was a fun night chatted with people here and there, and did a bit of dancing. I wanted to do a tour thingy the next day, so I didn't stay out too late or have too much.

So, the tour thing the next day, it was basically a 5 hour tour with snorkelling, fishing, lunch and a boat trip around the island. Erik, Mark and I were going to do it. It ended up being only Mark and I, but he was a little rough from the night before. Erik, had given his wallet to Jayden to hold the night before, and he wanted to find him and tale care of that instead. It's probably a good thing he did, the tour was nice, but about half an hour after we left, it clouded over and started raining and we didn't see blue sky again until about half an hour from the end of our trip.

It was still fun though, it was a little blustery, so going down the east coast of the island, the boat was quite rocky. Our first stop was fishing, and were given these round hollow plastic "rods" with fishing line wrapped around it and a hook and weight at the end. You would just throw the weight and hook over board, let it sink to the bottom, and if you caught something, pull the line up with your hands. Well, let me tell you, octopus is either a great bait, or they had scuba divers down there putting fish on our lines. If you didn't have a bite in the first minute chances are your bait fell off. Everyone caught at least one fish, they were pretty small and I'm not sure of the name (another case of that same same but different answer). No pic's though, as it was raining quite a bit while I was doing this.

Next was snorkelling, the water was a little cloudy from the rain, but it was still nice. Tons of fish, some sea cucumbers and all sorts of marine life. After about a half hour of this, we had lunch that included the fish we caught. Next was the turtle and shark farm. I know they did have some purpose other than tourism, but it was kind of hard to understand what my guide was trying to say. There were about 9 tanks a set up in a tic-tac-toe pattern that had all sorts of fish, some sea turtles and little tiny sharks. Getting around the tanks was a little suspect, as the walkway was literally 2 planks side by side. Here is a picture of one of the turtles.

Alright, I'm starting to get a little ansy, I've been at a computer for way too long. Below is a picture of Erik with one of the friendly (and possible stray, but he was really well kept so he probably belonged to someone) dogs on the island.

Erik making new friends

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving back at home. We didn't really celebrate it at all out here, on Monday night when there was about 10 of us out for dinner though. Not sure we realized it was Thanksgiving (curry is an excellent Thanksgiving dinner if it was).

Thinking of You!!

Drew