Beach Christmas (with the rain...)

Soooo... I think Lucy left the last blog with us heading down south in Thailand on an overnight train. It ended up being one of the more fun train journeys I’ve had. We were in a sleeper carriage and as we headed off from Bangkok we settled down with a few cans of Leo between us –well, to be precise, between Sam and me, more than Lucy. After a couple of hours the guards came round to convert our seats into beds and Sam and I decided to go exploring the train rather than head straight to sleep. (Lucy kindly and dutifully looked after our bags - she was far too concerned about the safety of the Christmas presents to go anywhere!). Lo and behold we found what I later referred to as the 'party bus' (a place to drink, smoke, sing and dance). If the Venga boys ever travelled by train this would be their carriage. American diner style tables with a small bar area with bar stools -all accompanied by a DJ, speakers, and even disco lights I think... My memory is somewhat hazy. Anyway, we met some nice people, Thai and French I think, and it made the time pass quickly. Too quickly in fact. The next day Lucy woke us up at around 7 to disembark and we both felt worse for wear. After a bus (jammed full of holidaymakers – Sam and I ended up on the windscreen) to the port we then had a rather uncomfortable 3 hour boat journey to Koh Samui during which all 3 of us felt pretty ropey - Lucy due to seasickness, Sam and I due mainly to our overindulgence the night before!
So eventually we got to Koh Samui - very tired, and settled into our beach bungalow. Lucy unfortunately continued feeling sick for about 24hours after we arrived in Koh Samui but that gave Sam and I ample chance to explore the island on scooters - finding a bakery selling mince pies and while exploring the island looking for a suitable wet weather activity (it was raining pretty much constantly and rather windy) stumbled upon something that was obviously designed with Sam and me in mind: Football Golf! We went back to inform Lucy of our amazing find and took her with us that afternoon to play the best game ever invented: on a small golf course, with the usual fairways, greens and obstacles, instead of hitting golf balls with a club into a golf ball sized hole, you kick footballs into football sized holes. Due to the clever planting of coconut trees and hedges it was surprisingly difficult to get the ball in each hole under par. Sam and I were joint winners, although I did beat his birdie with an eagle on the play-off hole.

CHRISTMAS DAY!!!
The weather was sadly unseasonably bad during our stay but we had a great time nonetheless and put a lot of effort into having as Christmassy a Christmas as you can on an island in South east Asia. We had a great day in the end- my first with Lucy! Managed to find a 'church' in the morning which was a very strange, but fun experience. It looked more like a shop and was set up by Korean missionaries (Sam whispered to me during the service that he thought he'd read something about them and that they were very evangelical and possibly a bit dodgy - demanding unreasonable sums of money from their flock. They seemed nice to me though!). There was a mix of Thais, Filipinos, Chinese and Koreans in the congregation. They were delighted to have us there, and we brought them some mince pies we had found as a gift (SEE SAM’S account below for other takes on this!). They had little school chairs lined up and then a projector screen at the front. Joint Thai and English service. We had gone primarily to sing carols but most of them had “same same but different” tunes and it was quite confusing for us as most people sang in Thai lyrics whilst we followed in English (both were on the screen) and when we tried to join in with the tunes we knew we sometimes clashed with theirs – rather challenging! At the end they invited us to stay for a buffet lunch, which was very kind of them, although we had a proper English style Christmas dinner lined up for a few hours time. We then made our excuses and left, but just as Lucy was getting on the back of my scooter they ran out of the door to say she was very lucky and should come back as she had won a prize. People had brought presents and we had been asked to put our names in a hat for a raffle of the presents. Lucy won the VIP2 prize- a toaster!! Very generous but not exactly what you need when you're travelling for 6 months!! (We later gave this to one of the cleaners at our hotel as it would have been a bit much to carry around the world for over 3 more months - nice as it was – Lucy still feels guilty...)
After that we headed back to our room and popped open some Prosecco we had sourced the previous day. We then opened pressies and cards (including some kindly sent all the way from our families!). Lucy was very happy as I had covertly managed to buy a stocking in Bangkok and had placed it at the end of her bed for her to wake up to. We got Sam and each other a few small (packable!) presents and he and Visky got us a really nice 'instant' camera which we opened to the sounds of a youtube Christmas mix playing on Sam’s laptop!
We then went to the pub for a delicious Christmas dinner (with all the trimmings-pigs in blankets, cranberry and bread sauce) which we augmented nicely with a bottle of Montepulciano we had also found the day before (Sam and I really were very resourceful, especially given the supermarkets can’t sell alcohol between 2-5pm!), and even had some mini Christmas crackers, Christmas serviettes and party poppers my mum had sent over in a package. Really made it feel like Christmas. We had a fourth set as well (as Visky sadly couldn't join us ) but this meant we could give it to a little girl who was there with her parents - she was delighted! To end off an unusual Christmas, we walk home via a beauty salon where we put our feet in a tank and had them eaten by tiny fish. I'll let Sam describe that below...

The following day, with threats of the weather worsening meaning that ferries weren’t necessarily running and having been told by a dive instructor on Koh Samui that we had little hope of doing the PADI course on Koh Tao, we made a snap decision to change our plans and fly out early: Sam heading back to Bangkok and Visky, while Lucy and I went early to Chiang Mai, where we had plans to meet my dad and Jeewana on 30th December.

One last thing I’ll mention is an amusing episode which Sam strangely leaves out of his description of our Christmas adventures (which I’ve put in below)... it became pretty clear to us all that the manager of our resort had the hots for poor Sam. I think the fact that he was travelling alone with a married couple may have persuaded our host that he had desires for those of the same sex or, at the very least, might swing both ways. The flirting was amusing in its own right, but got even more extreme when he offered (and did) give us a lift into town for a Christmas Eve party. It’s hard to describe what he was wearing (he described his outfit as an homage, not to Michael Jackson – which was the obvious guess from the combination of military references and incredible tightness – but to Madonna who “did it all first”). He also spent about an hour doing his hair and make-up . After some initial flirting I think Sam got scared and we quickly made our excuses when we got there. Anyway, I’ll let Sam have his say...

SAM
Unfortunately our trip was washed out - unseasonable monsoon meant we had to cut it short and miss out on diving (every time I make plans to go diving something scuppers them). But we made the most of it. Si and Lucy like a traditional Xmas, so our plan was to sing carols in the morning, open presents early afternoon and then eat dinner with a film to round it all off. It went amazingly well. Carols consisted of going to a small missionary 'church' (it was basically a shop), but they were so welcoming and charming the whole thing was very memorable and Christmassy - we had to buy a gift since they were doing a lucky dip Christmas exchange thing. Si found some mince pies at a local bakery and decided that would be his gift, but he gave over our share of the mince pies as well by accident. This annoyed him so at the end of the service when we were eating food that they generously gave us, he essentially stole back his mince pies, some poor person's gift. Very seasonal. And then Lucy's name got pulled out of the lucky dip hat and she won a toaster, so we were mince pies and a toaster up.
Then we drank and ate until we could do so no more. On the way back we got one of those fish massages where fish eat the dead skin off your feet. The shop was having a Christmas party so we got free beer. They made me sing karaoke songs, but the problem was they only had one CD with western songs (Boney M) and no words. I tried to get through Daddy Cool and The Rivers of Babylon but was struggling, so gave up. The host of the party got annoyed and kept on saying 'You know this one (Boney M), you sing now' over and over again and I kept on telling her I didn't. We left on awkward terms.