OK, apologies for the late post.  I wrote this one back in June but then had trouble uploading photos and then forgot about the whole thing.  I’ll work on a new one next week.

June post:

We’ve been here a week now and have accomplished much.  So far we’ve found a long-term rental and signed a lease (two bedrooms so come visit us!), found the local shopping spots and stocked up on supplies, and located and purchased two used scooters.  All this while Jennifer is working full time.  Only one visit to the beach so far, but we’ll be living exactly a mile from the beach so I hope to hit it frequently in the future.

So far we’ve been living in an Airbnb, and on the first night Jen saw the cats acting spooked and looking up at the wall.  There was a giant Tokyo Gecko on the wall staring down at us.  Some of you are familiar with Geckos and might think us unduly alarmed, but this was no ordinary gecko.  He was a good 10 inches long and fat as a sausage.  Check it out:   

We convinced him to leave through the window by smacking him with a towel, but he was there again the next night.  This time he was less willing to move, and I had to grab him with a towel and chuck him out the door.  I have a feeling it won’t be our last wildlife encounter here.

In fact, coming back from the supermarket the other day we found this fellow right on our path:

Someone replied to our Facebook post of it and said the black one’s are good to eat grilled, but to watch out for the white ones as they are dangerous.  Does that mean the black ones aren’t dangerous?  Hopefully we won’t have occasion to find out.

The next three days we spent looking at places to rent.  They all had pros and cons, as they do.  I was a bit partial to one that was just steps from the beach, but the major downside was that between the house and the beach was a huge construction site and they had only just laid the slab.  It would have been many months of noise and construction workers everywhere, so not very relaxing.

We finally settled on a newly-built house with a great view of the mountains from our porch.  It’s built on stilts, so we’re hoping to get some more breeze up there to try and beat the heat.  And yes, it’s hot!  It’s actually not that hot, between 80-90 F. pretty much always, but it’s the 90% humidity that makes it feel so hot.  Sweating is the norm pretty much always, except at night when we have the A/C on in the bedroom.  But hey, it’s the tropics, it comes with the territory.  Here’s the new place:

We even have our first guests this week.  When I was living in the Republic of Georgia, I had a Czech couple couchsurf at my place for a few days.  They had actually hitchhiked all the way from the Czech Republic all the way to Georgia and were couchsurfing and camping the whole time.  We had a great time hanging out and swapping travel stories while they were with me in Georgia.

In the time it took me to go back to Tajikistan and then back home to San Diego, they traveled to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Oman, Iran, India, and Nepal.  They arrived in Thailand about a week before we did and spent some time in Krabi, on the West coast.  Once we arrived, they made it over to Koh Samui and are staying with us again for a few days.  Really cool!  They just received working visas for New Zealand, so they are going to make their way over there to earn some more money.  I’m hoping we can stay with them some time in that amazing country.

First impressions of Koh Samui?  Tropical beauty – of course.  Tropical heat – hard to miss.   A serene paradise – not so much.  It’s actually a lot more crowded here than it was on Kauai as it has roughly the same population on an island less than 20% of the size.  There’s one main road that gets you everywhere and it’s quite busy.  Navigating through the traffic on a scooter can be a bit of a harrowing experience.  Along the road are endless shopfronts that all tend to look the same while scooting by and trying to avoid cars, so trying to find specific side roads and destinations is a challenge.

The one beach we’ve been to (Treehouse Cafe at Silent Beach) was lovely and good for swimming, but apparently that’s not always the case.   Nice view too (on the left).  

The Czechs went out yesterday and walked to the beach at Fisherman’s Village and found it to be too shallow for a good swim.  I think it might be that way just this time of year, but we’ll see.  We viewed the beach in front of Jennifer’s Santiburi Resort, and it was gorgeous, lined with swaying palms and a view of Koh Phangan off in the distance.  The Czechs ended up paying a hotel 100 Baht ($3) to use their pool for the day.  They said it was quite nice and a good alternative to the beach.  Of course, there’s tons of beaches here so we’ll have to do some exploring to find the best ones.

Fisherman’s Village is an interesting area to explore.  It’s no longer for fisherman, but is a tourist strip full of hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops all along the beach.  That’s where we stopped for a fancy cocktail on our first day:

As you can see, not too shabby of a view.   We’ll move into our new house soon so we’ll have a new area to explore.  It’s north of Mae Nam town so traffic should be a bit less chaotic and it’s closer to Jennifer’s resort.  Hopefully we’ll find some good restaurants nearby.  Food at the local places is dirt cheap and tasty.  A typical meal is $2-3, which is about what it costs for a can of beans at the supermarket, so most people just eat out all the time.  Makes sense, and I think I’ll do the same unless we get sick of the local food at some point.  What we didn’t expect is how hard it is to find vegetarian food.  As the population is Buddhist, we expected there to be less meat.  However, it’s in just about every dish on the menu.  We’ll have to explore some more restaurants.  Poor us 🙂

I had an interview at a hotel to teach English to their staff, but the HR lady said she has three other candidates, so I’m not holding my breath.  You never know though.  In the mean time, more adventures forthcoming.