Welcome back to Thailand! So I am back in Thailand but this time I have migrated quite a bit south to the east island of Koh Samui, the start of my Thai Island Hopper East Tour! I’ve been enjoying the more relaxed pace of this tour,  just a shame the weather has been on and off the first couple days .

Vlog #1: Contiki Thai Island Hopper East : Koh Samui, Thailand

httpvh://youtu.be/KtIeySRngI4

4×4 Island Tour

Yay for crazy vehicles in foreign countries! For one of the days on Koh Samui we took a 4X4 tour of the island.

The first stop was to a monkey trainer/handler. I don’t know his official title so for the sake of this blog I will call him that. Here we learned all about the working monkeys on the island and how the Thai people use them to farm the coconuts from the trees. I am a little torn on whether or not this is:

A: a form of animal cruelty
B: an extremely efficient, natural way to farming coconuts
or  C :simply how they do things in Thailand

After our rather humorous experience with the monkeys, it was over to another animal visit: Elephant rides. I didn’t have nearly as much fun on this ride as I did on my  first elephant ride in Laos. This was mainly due to being stuck with an extremely rude handler whom made our trip less than pleasant since we politely declined to have him snap photos of us for 400 baht. He was genuinely dumbfounded that we didn’t want any photos taken. He then proceeded to make the rest of our trip a nightmare and even ended up dropping us off at a completely different location then everyone else.

After the animal planet part of the tour we drove up to a lookout on the island. Not nearly as impressive in photos, as it was in person.

Then it was off to a lovely waterfall followed by lunch.

After lunch it was time for the Giant Golden Buddha!

Then Temple Time!

At the temple I got my fortune read. The universe must be telling me something because I basically got the best fortune you could get. No joke! I swear not everyone’s was like this.

I don’t know what else to say after that. I am even a bit suspicions since all that good fortune cannot come to one person! Either way, I’d say things are looking pretty good for Nadine in Thailand.