The Trip – Day 48 – Koh Samui

Yesterday, after posting on the blog, I went to walk the streets of Koh Samui. The place is full of high-end restaurants, pubs and hookers. I didn’t like it at all, as some of the places seemed downright creepy to me. Eventually I sat at an Irish pub called Tropical Murphy’s and had a very good Shepherd’s Pie while listening to live music.

This morning Neil and I went looking to rent ATVs (4 wheelers.) You can rent scooters everywhere, but ATVs are harder to find. Apparently when they break it’s hard to get parts for them because all the places in Samui that used to have them only had broken ones, except for one place that had rented all of its ATVs for the day. So going to look for ATVs is what we did this morning. Then lunch and a nap.

We also found out that our resort has a small gym. How small? It’s a room just big enough to hold 6 treadmills. At around 4:30pm I decided to try running on a treadmill after not doing it for 2 months. It was definitely easier than running outside but the problem was that the air conditioning and the ventilation in the room didn’t work, so my body became very hot very fast and my heart rate was at 180 bpm after running at 10 km/h for only 35 minutes. Eventually I did 6 km in 40 minutes, an embarrassing average of 9 km/h. Going outside to the 30 degrees heat I actually felt relieved. Usually I would start worrying that I’m not in shape anymore, but those were really sub-optimal conditions. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Koh Phangan and the day after that I’m hoping to run on Haad Rin beach again.

We thought about going to that party again but at around 8pm there was lightning and thunder over the sea and then there was a power cut for the entire night until the next morning at 9am. Rain really brings me down but now it appears to be clearing (the power cut off again just as I was writing that sentence. I should post now.)