On our last day in Koh Samui we walked to pier in the morning to hire a scooter from there. We went to a travel agency to get ferry and bus tickets, before we headed off to check out the most popular beach in Koh Samui; Hat Chaweng. We are really enjoying the scooter missions. Jono is an excellent driver, and Maja is a backseat cameraman. At Chaweng we had a drink on the beach, entertained by all the flash expensive resorts and the sunburned, overweight, speedo wearing jetsetters. We also made a mission to the mall to eat dinner and so Maja could satisfy her craving for Dunkin Donuts. The next morning we were going to the pier to catch the ferry to Koh Phangan. Jono made trip number one with his backpack and the surfboard and then drove back to fetch Maja. In the mean time Maja had gotten a phone call (a guy knocked on the door and without a word just handed me a phone) from the travel agency that inform us that she had written down the wrong departure time for the boat on our tickets, and that we basically had 10 minutes to make it to the pier and get on board. Running out of the bungalow with her big backpack, Jonos smaller backpack, the computer bag, and her own bag with a crazy poodle running after and trying to bite her feet (not wanting us to leave) she met Jono coming back from the pier. We almost forgot to pay for our last night in all the chaos. On our way to the boat there was a road block with some typically difficult looking policemen. We pulled ourselves together and did our best to look like decent people (overloaded and speeding), and were luckily not pulled over. Not so lucky were the two westerners on the scooter in front of us who were not wearing helmets. Fun fact: In Thailand, if two people are travelling on a scooter only the driver needs to wear a helmet. We find this (and a whole lot of other things in Thailand) difficult to understand, and instead of getting upset and frustrated we blame it all on what we call A.L (=Asian Logic). Examples of this can be thinking that they are not bad people for screwing a customer over as long as the customer didn’t realize that he was being screwed, adding meat to your food as a bonus even though you specifically asked for the vegetarian dish, putting a fried egg and a handful of chips on every single meal you order (this includes pizza), decorating your sundae ice cream with cornflakes and raisins and laughing at people who are angry (this one is especially frustrating) .
Anyway, we made it to the pier and luckily for us the boat was delayed. We even had time to sit down for breakfast before jumping on board. In Koh Phangan we found a really cool resort on a private beach (yes, again). The bungalows here are dirt cheap, and come with a beautiful swimming pool! We are especially grateful for this since the ocean here has bathwater temperature. We have spent some very relaxing days here, not even having to leave the resort! Today however we got a bit of a cabin fever, so we decided to hire a scooter to check out the island. We had been driving for about five minutes when (going steep downhill) the back tire blew out. Maja screamed thinking someone was shooting at us (we think this only proves that the innocent and naive Norwegian has spent too much time in South Africa), while Jono was struggling to keep the scooter on the road and we just avoided crashing the whole thing. We then had to drag the scooter back up the hill to the nearest ‘motor bike service-restaurant-accommodation-massage-place’. Jono lent another bike there, took Maja back to the resort and took the owner of the scooter back to sort out the situation. These kinds of situations are always uncomfortable since the owner of the scooter is holding your passport as a deposit and thinks it’s perfectly reasonable that you pay for the damages since you were the one on the scooter when the worn out tire blew out (ah, another good example of A.L). We are sure we make it quite clear that we aren’t paying a single cent, but of course you never know. Suppose it will just have to be a surprise when we later go to settle our bill. Anyway, we hired another scooter and had a beautiful drive around on the island.
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