Ko Samui Continued

Well, I hate to say it, but our guided kayaking tour of the marine national park was rather disappointing. For one thing, the guide did not come across as particularly knowledgeable about the marine park and the wildlife that lives there, which was a shame. A lot of the other guided trips we've taken have had a guide who could really tell you all about what was around you and how the area was formed. Downer #2 was that we didn't have nearly as much time in the kayaks as we would have liked - all together, we probably only had about an hour out of the whole day to kayak, a half an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the afternoon. Then, when the first time we got into the kayaks in the morning, we were surrounded by these strange looking "sea bugs" for lack of a better word, which were floating around in the water. they were about an inch to two inches long and oval shapped with with a fringe of legs surrounding their bodies. They would slowly swim through the water and when you scooped one up with the kayak paddle, they would curl up like a rolly polly bug. Too weird! When I asked one of our Thai guides about them, he thought they might be some kind of leech - gross - and our main guide had no idea what they were. Regardless, this quickly deterred us from getting in the water to do any snorkeling! Besides, the water quality wasn't that great anyway. Finally, the food on the boat was the worst we've had the whole trip, and we thought Thai food was pretty hard to mess up! So that's how the cookie crumbles I guess......enough complaining right?

Yesterday, we took the scooter out again and went back to a spa across the street from the cooking school we attended. We had been there the day we had our cooking and carving classees for a wonderful foot massage between classes and when we noticed they offered all kinds of other spa treatments, we decided to go back. Jim got a rejuvenating facial while I had a pedicure, foot massage and scrub. The prices are so cheap here it's amazing - my two hour foot treatment cost the equivalent of about $30!

Well, as Carol Burnett said, I'm so glad we've had this time together.......tomorrow we fly back to Bangkok where we'll overnight at a hotel attached to the airport then bright and early on the morning of the 21st we'll be flying back to Dallas. Thanks to all of you for following along with our travels - this has truly been an amazing and rewarding experience for us. While we have enjoyed almost every minute of our travels, we are also really excited to get back home where we can be around our family and friends again. So best wishes to you all and when more fun travel opportunities come our way, we'll definitely fire up the blog again!