Koh Samed

This weekend was pretty fabulous. On Friday we went out to actually celebrate Dylan's birthday. It was a fun night with great people and much dancing. I love that pretty much everyone in our group is not only willing to, but is enthusiastic about going to clubs to dance to pop or techno music. It is great!

On Saturday we left very early, 6:30am, to load into two mini buses we had rented (really 15 passenger vans). We drove about 2 and a half hours and then took a 30 minute ferry ride to Koh Samed--that is to say, the beach. It was beautiful and the water was so warm. We laid on the beach and played in the water all day.

A few of us took a walk down the beach and then decided it would be a good idea to scramble over some rocks to get out to one particular rock in order to take pictures of us acting like Ariel from The Little Mermaid. However, some of those rocks had unavoidable barnacle-esque remnants that sliced open my hands and feet some and having not broad appropriate bandaging material/having another 24 hours or so of walking either barefoot or in sandals on sand, the cuts may be mildly infected/they hurt a lot.

Later in the evening we went to dinner and stayed for the "Fire Show." Basically some really cut teenagers and twenty-somethings perform various silly hobbies like baton twirling, poi balls, that game with three sticks, etc. except everything is on fire. The whole show is set to techno music and they stand on one another's shoulders and dance around. It's pretty great all around. Then there's the audience participation part where we all got to play limbo with a flaming limbo stick. About halfway through that I left to go to the bathroom, put my water bottle away, and take a walk down the beach. Evidently in my absence, they brought out a big ring of fire that people could jump through. One girl in our group, having already made a successful leap I believe, decided to do a round-off through the ring. She knocked the ring down such that it was kind of stuck around her and it took her a bit to get it off. She has some pretty nasty burns on her leg now, but was totally fine then and continued to dance the night away. I really wish I had witnessed it for myself.

The rest of the night the restaurant plays pop/techno music (in fact, several songs they like so much they play them way too many times) and everyone was dancing and there was blacklight paint. I did not get painted and was for a majority of the evening trying not to dance. My feet really hurt and I was trying not to get them too disgusting so I kept off the stage and took long walks through the salt water which made them feel better. I was also trying to help people in our group find their things that had gone missing for awhile, etc. I did end up dancing later in the evening when one of the fire dudes had gotten a whistle and was just blowing it and dragging people onto the dance floor. Oh! Funny things to note. The fire people that spoke English did so with a thick Thai-Australian accent meaning with the loud music, they were essentially incomprehensible.

Throughout the evening, down by the beach, small children like 5-10 year olds would give fire twirling demonstrations/practice for themselves I guess. They were pretty freaking awesome. Near the end of the evening, there was a break dance show wherein some of the fire guys, but also some other kids break danced on the stage. They were ridiculously good and I am always happy to watch dance, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sunday morning, Amanda and I got up to watch the sunrise...and by watch I mean photograph. Yes we only got a few hours of sleep for the second night in a row, but it was definitely worth it. Then we had to hangout until breakfast opened. When we did get it, we had a delicious coffee, juice, eggs, meat and toast breakfast. The great thing about beach areas is that though they may be comparatively expensive, they have widely available Western food.

The rest of the morning it rained a bunch. I walked up and down the beach (I was really enjoying being outside in a non-urban environment) in the wind and rain and got soaked, but it was great.

In the afternoon we ventured home where I, sunburned and cut up and exhausted, showered tried to clean my cuts as best I could, and then went immediately to sleep.

I'm now at work and still tired, especially after teaching 6/2 this morning--6/2 being a bunch of rowdy clowns. I will write again when I am better rested, I have finished cleaning and organizing, and/or there is something worth writing about.

'Til the next!