After a wonderfully filling meal of garlicky Mackerel we went to a festival. The night before we heard a huge party going on, also, we heard about a festival that was coming, but due to most bars having raging parties every night we didn’t put the two together. A person from the dive shop told us we should check out the Save Koh Tao eco-festival. After dinner the three of us, minus Scott since he had an upset stomach, thought we’d check out what all the fuss was about. It was a full-on festival, with loads of food, drinks, two stages, Thai rat betting races, and really great display of information about ecological efforts to preserve sea life around the island. 
Technically it’s supposed to be dry season in Thailand until May…not the past few days. Our ferryboat to leave Koh Tao on Sunday morning was 2.5 hours late. We saw ragged, pale travelers getting off the boat saying it was the worst boat trip ever. Standing and waiting to jump on the boat, someone in charge said, “The boat is cancelled due to bad weather.” At that very moment, and not a second later, the sky open up with a downpour in a characteristically theatrical sad-part-of-a-movie way. “REALLY?!” Fortunately, we eventually found a boat that was to leave several hours later and it was the last ferry out of Koh Tao – all the other ferries were cancelled due to the weather. Of course it was delayed, and they gave out Dramamine and barf bags when we got our tickets, but we got on board and away we went for a 3-hour torrid ride through the 12-foot swells. Russ put a short movie on youtube about our difficult voyage. Click here to see it.
We made it to Koh Samui to our beautiful flooded resort; I don’t think they intended to have an infinity pool. We made the most of the situation and went ahead with plans to celebrate Scott’s birthday by going to an all-you-can-eat Brazilian meat lover’s paradise. Lee-Anne was happy to see they had several seafood options. They also had beautiful Brazilian dancers (who may not have actually been Brazilian) who playfully beckoned us to dance with them. Which made everyone happy.
Monday, today, we are calling Monsoon Monday. We were suppose to catch our flight to Bangkok then to Chaing Mai. Before we got to the airport we knew that it was going to be delayed, but for only 2 hours and we got another flight to Chaing Mai to make up for the difference. Not to get too excited though our delayed time came and went, other flights to BKK were cancelled, more planes delayed and the rain fell. Sure enough our flight was cancelled too. No flights out for two days, most were already booked. We scrambled to change flights, hotels, get new accommodations, and our luggage. I know that I, Lee-Anne, felt utterly defeated at that moment. However, just as quickly as the tides change from bad to worse, they can change back again. We were able to get a beautiful hotel near the airport on high ground, important with all of the flooding on the island.
In fact, it has been declared a disaster zone in five Thailand regions including Koh Samui, the island we are stuck on. One of the five regions had it’s worst flooding in 30 years. Click here to read more about the flooding.The past several days, it’s rained on and off. However today the rain started at 8am and has not stopped for over 13 hours. This is INSANE!! Man we hope we’ll be able to escape the island (& our hotel room) soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment