Ko Samui

On our tropical island, we spent the first day on Koh Samui swimming in the ocean, walking the beach, taking a dip in the pool and watching the stars. What a wonderfully relaxing day! One thing we did learn today--- when you are back on the “tourist trail,” they won’t make the food as spicy so you need to ask for more chilli.
The next day, we rented motor scooters for $6 each and cruised around the island. I don’t even know how many wonderful waterfalls we swam under! At “Waterfall #2” (its actual name), we climbed up to the top and definitely took the long way up… in flip flops, through briers, spider webs and mud all at a 45% incline. We were so happy to reach the water!
The next day, we did our own thing—I volunteered at a dog shelter and Mike went to the ______ Marine National Park, a place dotted with lush green islands in the middle of the Sea of Thailand. This was the area that The Beach was supposed to have taken place. He had to climb this one mountain to be able to see all the islands at once, and when he got to the top, he was greeted by a number of Thais on holiday from Bangkok. They all became friends for the day and enjoyed the day together in such a beautiful and unusual place.
Now let me just tell you that I was so excited to be working at the dog shelter that I forgot to take even one picture! The dogs here are a mix of strays, owned dogs, and abandoned dogs from all over the island. They were in a large enclosures and each area had their own pack. Oh and they also had cats. The two vets, 2 recent grads from England, let me do medical stuff with the dogs which was just great. A lot of the dogs have this eye infection, so my job was to wipe the gook out then put some antibiotic in their eyes. For the most part, the dogs were very good and let me do what I needed to do. None of them bit at me. If anything, they would just run away when they saw me coming with the medicine. While I was cleaning out icky eyes and putting medicine on wounds, I noticed that there were a few with incredibly nappy hair. They were so knotted up that they looked like they were sick, mangy and on their death bed. So I took a few snips, cutting out some of the knotted hair and they looked a bit better. So I got this one sad looking dog and spent over an hour snipping out the knots, evening out his coat, giving him a flea bath and brushing him. I even dulled the scissors! After I finished all that, he looked like a completely brand new, healthy dog! I can’t tell you how gratifying it was to give this dog a makeover. This hot weather isn’t made for long haired dogs, and it must have felt so nice to get rid of pounds of dirt-laden hair. After that, I got to assist the vets make their rounds to clean out wounds and make sure the dogs were healing correctly. Today gave me an added boost of confidence to working with dogs in the future. I felt very much at ease with the dogs and they responded well to my commands. It was such a great day working with the dogs and I look forward to doing this again somewhere else.
On our last night, we had dinner on the beach with just us, candlelight, and the occasional dog walking between us and the dark waters in front of us. The delicious meal was punctuated when we got fireworks from a lady selling them along the beach and got to set them off ourselves! It was pretty much the most romantic dinner you can get, and I loved it!