Thailand Day 7

We got up super duper early and got picked up for our day at the beach. The drive took 3 hours (again). I have to say that a lot of day trips take about a 3 hour commute from Bangkok which I think is a bit much (6 hours spent on the road a day)
We got pretty lucky and the trip consisted of us, another couple and the tour guide. Our first stop was Kudi Island. The whole island is basically a Thai national park. Maria and I walked around and took lots of pictures. We went to the cliff, the cave and the cove. All were beautiful, and all were a little hard to get to. We should have brought shoes other than flip flops but that’s what made it an adventure. Maria was also being eaten alive by mosquitoes, but she fought them off and lived to see another day. Once we were done with our hike we were both very hot and sweaty and were ready for the next activity... SNORKELING!!
The boat took us a little away from the island and we got in the water. First of all there were a lot of really beautiful yellow and blue fish by the water so I took a couple of minutes to just swim around with them. Everything was lovely until I realized that the little bastards were biting me! No worries, I swam away and joined Maria who did not take the time to play with the fish. The coral reefs we were swimming by were absolutely beautiful. I kept trying to figure out what to compare this snorkeling trip to and I finally came up with a good description. It felt like we were swimming around a Salvador Dali painting. It was just unreal. Maria and I both decided that the black spiky things on the reefs with iridescent blue beads were our favorite. Maria thinks that the black spiky things were "morskie yeji" but I am not so sure.
Having gotten our fill of the beauty we were transported to the island of Samed to lounge around on the beach and eat an absolutely delicious meal. Throughout my whole stay in Thailand I have not finished a single meal that I was served, except this one. It was all sorts of seafood and a fish that was grilled over an open flame. We had crab, mussels, shrimp, just the works. Yummy. Over lunch we started talking to the other couple from the van. The man is from the UK and his wife is Thai. They met while the man was still married but the marriage was "on the rocks". He promptly came back from Thailand, divorced his first wife and was married again within the year.
This seems to be a common thing here. In fact, on the beach there were either gross Russian couples where the man is fat, ugly and old and the woman is gorgeous and could be his daughter or there was a Thai woman with a white guy. Apparently there are two groups of the Thai/white couple. If the woman is young, then she is the vacation girlfriend, however if the woman is a little older then she is the second wife. That’s just how it goes. We spent our time on the beach reading, people watching, and periodically taking a dip in the ocean. Lovely - and I didn't get sunburned at all!!
Our trip back was uneventful until we got back to the hotel. There were flowers there for Maria from her boyfriend (they met in India where he lives). Maria was in heaven and I left her gazing at the flowers and smiling and went to take a shower. Through the course of the shower I heard her scream and then the door slammed. When I came out of the shower there was no one in the room. Maria came back a couple of minutes later and told me that Asef, her boyfriend flew in for a day to see her because he missed her so much already. Very very sweet.
We all went out to dinner to a high end restaurant that served Japanese, Indian and Thai food and was absolutely delicious. We had a mix of food and some alcohol and went to a high end club. The cover was almost 20 dollars which is pretty steep by Thai standards even if it does include 2 drinks. In the club we again ran in to the old man with hot Thai woman combo. In fact, we counted 10 couples that were of that variety. The club had a trance room and a rap room and wasn't bad at all. We left when I could no longer feel my feet.