Beauty and the Beach

We're back from 4 great days in Koh Samui. We bolted from Laem Set resort after a day (great restaurant, but small beach, bad swimming, etc.) and moved over to Peace Resort on the North side of the island. Good move. Great place, great beach, etc.

More pictures and everything to come, but for now, we are just back and getting reacquainted with our house.

But a quick story about the service industry in Koh Samui. It seems that a large percentage of waitstaff, front desk staff, and people hawking things on the beach come from northern Thailand. Northern Thailand, or Issan as it is called, was once part of the Kingdom of Laos, and people from Issan generally speak (or at least understand) Lao, or a language that is extremely close to Lao. Anyway, we were a huge source of entertainment for the staff at Peace Resort and the beach hawkers. Word got around fast that a couple of Falangs (Farang in Thai) spoke Issan, or a clever facsimile of Issan called Lao. Anyway, we made many friends, and made many people laugh hysterically by breaking out our Lao. So that was fun. I guess they don't expect tourists staying on Koh Samui to speak much Thai or Lao, so they were very excited when we did.

Oh, and we went scuba diving which was very cool.