After Vietnam, we headed back to Thailand to meet Mylène’s family. Hanoi → Bangkok → Koh Samui → ferry to Koh Tao. So yeah… a bit of travel, but pretty smooth.
Before Koh Tao, quick story about my brother-in-law Martin.
By the time we met up, they’d already been in Thailand about a week, including a few days in Bangkok. Hotel breakfasts in Thailand always have: hard-boiled eggs sitting in bowls of uncooked rice.
Martin rolls up to the buffet. No eggs left. But he doesn’t know that. It just looks like a bowl of rice… and some red curry nearby.
You can probably see where this is going.
He scoops the curry. Then scoops himself a nice helping of raw rice to go with it. Heads back to the table, takes a bite, and goes, “WTF, Thai rice is terrible.”
Honestly… I still don’t understand how he didn’t realize the rice was raw. Maybe the 12 hour jetlag?
Back to Koh Tao.
We rented a villa for the whole crew, which was awesome. The kids were pumped to see their cousins. After months of just us, suddenly they have other kids to play with.
First day was pretty chill. Pool, hanging out, doing very little. Emma and I are officially a bit “beached out,” so we ditched the sand and rented a scooter to explore the island while everyone else did the beach thing.
On another day, we did a boat tour. The boat was ridiculous… three levels, a waterslide off the back, and a diving board on the top deck. We snorkeled, swam, and spent a good chunk of time jumping off like a bunch of idiots.
I was surprised Emma and Teddy went for the top jump. It was about five metres high, and even I had a moment of “this might be a bad idea” before stepping off.
Mylène and I also took advantage of a rare situation: built-in babysitters. First time in almost ten months we weren’t on parent duty 24/7. So we grabbed a scooter and went exploring.
We hit a couple of viewpoints, one of which was stupidly steep. Near the top, we had to get off the scooter and walk. I’m not exaggerating… it felt like a 45% incline. Great views, though. Worth the near-death climb. At the top, there was a sketchy bamboo platform to look at the view. Mylene dropped a water bottle off into the bushes 20 feet below. The owner said he’d go find it. After like 10 minutes he asks where exactly it fell. Another 10 minutes and we tell him not to bother, it’s not a big deal. After a while he gives up and comes to see us. Then he looks at our helmets and says… “Hmmm, what did you drop?”. We answer “water bottle”. He thought Mylene lost her helmet down there, which is why he really wanted to retrieve it. Oops!
The main walking street in Koh Tao is actually really nice. Lively, lots of good food, fun vibe. We ended up going a few times.
Other than that, it was a slower week. Less running around, more just hanging out with family. Which, after everything we’ve been doing, was kind of perfect.
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