When I opened the curtains today this greeted me! At this port, we will use local boats as our tenders to get to shore. It was quite an interesting development for our tour. Each boat had two level of seats. It was a fun ride for about twenty minutes to get to the dock.
Our ship as we travel towards shore. She sure is a beautiful one!Our tour today is to be a four hour beach day. There are shops nearby to wander in and out and since Koh Samui is famous for its sand beaches, we are looking forward to relaxing in the sand!
We transferred into 8 person vans for our drive to the beach.
Driving through a business area. It was hard to take pictures due to the van windows but what I could see was typical Asian markets. What I did see was the huge number of Westerners or Europeans walking or driving. This is definitely an ex-pat area of the world. Think I only saw very limited Thai people the entire day! 
As we drove along I had our first view of a beach
Many homes and businesses had a set of three alters in front . Each had different items on it as offerings but almost all included a bottle of coke or soda of some kind
After more than an hour through traffic and road work,We made it to the beach! Chaweng Beach is one of the prettiest beaches in Thailand, except today when the wind is quite strong and there is a red flag warning….
We still tried to smile but the wind pushed the sand into our teeth!At least it wasn’t raining and the temperatures of both the air and the water was perfect.
The beach had the usual roaming vendors trying to sell us anything to wear…and the massage tables set up under the shade. We did manage to enter the water for a while and play a little. The waves had such force that it eroded the sand from under your feet. 
Al braving the waves!
Shortly after I took this picture we noticed a man’s head bobbing in the distance. After some looking by our tour transportation people, the rescue team was called. Sure enough, someone got stuck in a rip current and couldn’t get in. The amazing quickness of a rescue jet ski and a two man team managed to get the man to safety. 
After only an hour, we decided to call it quits and head back to the ship. There wasn’t much use trying to walk the beach into the wind and I wasn’t hungry for lunch or a drink. Back into the 8 person van heading to the ship. By the time we returned to the tender, it was on board time…so much for exploring close to ship.
Looks intriguing doesn’t it? 
Even the bow of our ferry ship had an alter on it.
Looks intriguing doesn’t it? 
Even the bow of our ferry ship had an alter on it.We made it back to the ship and left the port shortly after. It was a frustrating day and I’m looking at our future stop in Phuket and adjusting what we do so we don’t have a repeat of this day. I imagine part of my reaction may be due to the experience in HCMC where we had to spend an hour each way on a bus to get into the city for our tours… three days of that seemed to really wear me out. Today the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a van for over an hour and be late to our destination….Oh Well, time to suck it up and put on my big girl panties….traveling means adapting to conditions than aren’t always what you plan!
No comments:
Post a Comment