To Samui with My Big Brother
Trip Start
Nov 08, 2006
1
130
214
Trip End
Ongoing
Koh Samui,
Thailand
Sunday, May 13, 2007
As I write this, I realize that my sarcasm isn't readily apparent. If you don't know me, you could very well think I'm indifferent toward my brother. But the other option is to say we're really close, and I love him, and he's the best big brother a guy could ever hope to have, and I missed him like crazy. Who wants to read that? Sounds kind of fruity, don't you think?
Now I sound homophobic, and if you don't know me, you could believe it to be true. But if I say I love homosexuals, and support gay marriage, and wish I could have been gay just to teach the conservative members of my family a lesson, but that teaching a lesson isn't quite worth abandoning my affinity for women, not to mention the physical discomfort involved in such a lifestyle choice....I sound more than a little peculiar
Boat Near Koh Samui
. You know what, who cares. That's how it is.So I met my brother at the airport at midnight, and we had a flight scheduled to Koh Samui at 7 a.m. the next day. Still, since we had a hotel room (Lindsey was staying in Bangkok to let us have some brotherly guy time on the island), we chose not to spend the night at the airport. We headed back to the room, which was also a must since my mother had sent a duffel bag of 47 books with Derek, and he assured me he wasn't carrying them another step. We dropped off the extra stuff, hung out for a few hours, then headed back to the airport to fly to Samui. And for anyone flying Bangkok Air, they have a really sweet pre-flight lounge with free coffee, juice, pastries, popcorn, and internet. Nice, huh?
The airport in Samui is beautiful. It doesn't really feel like an airport since the terminal is outdoors, but it looks exotic and flowery and Fantasy Island-ish. Once there, I found out that Samui's pricing structure is radically different from the rest of Thailand. The cab driver wanted 300 baht to drive us 2 miles to our hotel. My bus ticket from the middle of Cambodia to Bangkok was about that much. So Derek spent the next week enjoying my assurances that all the cab drivers and vendors were raping us and that I'd rather walk several miles to our destination and not eat a $2 bowl of rice. Derek loves me enough that he at no point told me to go to hell or abandoned me on the road. See? He's a good guy.
It was the rainy season and we saw a fair share of clouds
Boat Near Samui
. But I still managed to get a nice sunburn, and we saw the only topless women in Thailand, so it was a pretty successful beach excursion. It's interesting, because in the north of the country, you're not even supposed to hug in public and kissing is really frowned upon. But on the islands, nudity and friendly massages are perfectly okay. Call me crazy, but I think it's the presence of Westerners with money that changes to status quo.Nothing all that interesting happened. We went on a cool day trip to a marine park and checked out an island lagoon. We had some decent food, had a few beers, and caught up. We played golf at the nicest course I've ever been to. The view meant that the 93 over par I shot wasn't all that depressing. And the fact that my benevolent brother treated meant that I could actually enjoy myself. Plus, we had really cool female caddies. Mine was a golf genius, Derek's was mildly retarded. Mine always new exactly how far we were from the pin; Derek's washed the golf balls in her mouth. I told him she was flirting with him. He wasn't interested.
We rented a motorbike, which meant Derek had to sit behind me and hold on tight. This is humorous because he's a control freak, and because he's kind of robust compared to the person I usually drove around on a motorbike with - Lindsey. So we almost died a couple of times, and we got a flat. I left Derek on a jungle road while I looked for someone to fix the bike. I think he missed his BMW.
I guess nothing really fantastic happened. We saw some waterfalls, Derek rode an elephant...all the usual Thai island stuff. My favorite part of his trip was when he yelled at the little Thai girl who shaved him. But that was in Bangkok.
