Koh Samui

Hey there, just finished my tour of the islands with the last stop being Koh Samui, the biggest and the busiest of the three. Rented a moped and did the sights like the big Buddha, a Buddhist temple and a lovely waterfall I had to walk through a jungle for to get to. A very peaceful place and and after the 20-30 min hike, mainly going up, I had a very refreshing swim there.

But I'd have to say the highlight was the Tesco's I spotted during my tour of Samui. It was like any other Tesco's except that there were only Thai people working there and of course a lot of the products were different. But the whole layout was exactly the same. The stuff in there was so cheap, they were practically giving it away! Tesco's proved to me what others had already told me; the people here really rip off the tourists. Only that the tourists don't know or don't care. The Tesco's was in a shopping centre that had many other shops and a food court.To name a few, they had Boots, dunkin' donuts and KFC. But most of the food places were Thai and the cooked or rather fried the food when you ordered it.Leaving Samui was rather complicated. I had booked a boat to mainland and an overnight bus to Bangkok and included in the ticket was a mini-bus to the port on the island. That mini-bus came alright, only to bring us all to another bus, which was totally overfilled but took us to the ferry. We were told to get off the bus, leaving our baggage on the bus, and walk onto the rusty old ferry. The bus followed empty. After the crossing there was a second bus waiting for us to take some of the people from the crowded bus. Well, that's what we all thought. Instead they overfilled the first bus and left the second one half empty. And both buses did go the same way. I was lucky to be on the empty one. As I was looking out the window, enjoying the view, we passed a big car, not a van, just a car with about 30 little school girls squashed inside it, including a teacher at the back holding on to all the little school bags that were lined up neatly. After about an hours drive we got dropped off at this little cafe type place from were we got picked up by a taxi about two hours later. During that taxi ride we saw a car driving along with a dog standing on the roof. After about a 15 min drive through the town we finally got dropped off at the place the bus to Bangkok is was to leave from. We arrived in Bangkok just after 5 am. Heading for Laos next...