Tonight we become Thai....

OK, so perhaps I started this blog w/ a joke stolen from Russell Peters ("Tonight we become Canadian.... Hamburgers and Haw Dawgs...  anyone?)  BUT it really did seem like on Aug 12 we had a very "Thai" day!

We started by renting a scooter.  (they call them motorbikes in Thailand)

~Lockey on the "motorbike" in front of "Grandma's house"~

They drive on the left side of the road here... mostly... and Lockey navigates like a champ, he only needed 1 reminder to drive on the left.... Cami: "Left side... LEFT SIDE!"  No big deal.

We had a Thai cooking class planned for the afternoon, so we weren't aloud to have breakfast b/c we were making 5 courses! (Lockey and I can generally share 1 or 2...)  We were early and on the way we found a Buddhist Temple, and monastery, so we decided to explore it!

~Gorgeous detailed mosaic on the stairs up to the temple area~

~Aug 12 is the "Thai Mother"'s birthday (The Queen's birthday). So that's the day they celebrate Mother's day, This is a picture of the queen behind me, there is pictures of Thai Royalty everywhere.~

~Buddhist cemetery~

We walked up to this, just thinking it was another pretty building, and then.....

Lockey realized it was their Crematorium..... Eeeeek!  That kinda creeped me out! 

~Lockey in front of the temple~

~ At the gate of the temple~

After the temple discovery we were off to our cooking class again..... We look UBER cool on our scoot scoot, with our rad ill fitting helmets!  Who can't appreciate a good chin strap?

But then we were early, so she told us to go to the beach for 15 minutes, so we went off towards the beach and found another Buddhist temple, this one was the Chinese temple apparently.  

~outside of the Chinese Buddhist temple~

We went up some steps and found a big shrine, and there was a woman there giving an offering, apparently people are even more apt to go to the temples on mothers day, and all of the shrines we saw had tons of water bottles around them.  There was an old woman there praying and she got really excited to explain her offering to us.... but we don't speak Thai... or Chinese... or whatever it was she was speaking... and we had no idea, but the just kept talking and laughing at us!

~Old lady giving her water offering~

And then we arrived at "Sonja's" for our cooking lesson.

Sonja is a great chef, w/ a huge personality, we had a great time w/ her, and learned a lot! 

She called this "Tamarind Puree" and pronounced it Pooray.... w/ the fancy french accent, so I just called it poo, b/c that's kinda what it looked like... but it was SO delicious, tangy and delightful! It was the base for our Pad Thai.... mmmmm deliciousness!

The first course we made though was Tom Yum, (Traditional Thai soup) and then we changed it to Tom Ka by adding some coconut milk.  Great flavour!

~Tom Yum yum yum...~

Next was our home made Pad Thai... If you haven't had Pad Thai you should... but it won't be the same unless you go the Curry house in Fernie....

~Pad Thai, one of our staples here!~ 

Then we made a Ground Pork dish, that I can't think of the name right now.....

~Sonja is a Fartist... (Food-Artist for those of you who don't know what Fartist means)~

~Sonja and I having a great time!~

And then it was time for dessert, which if any of you know me well you know, dessert is obviously my favourite!  We chose the mango sticky rice, so yes, I now know how to MAKE sticky rice on my own! YAY! But I'm going to add banana, even if Sonja does think they are for the elephants! :)

~MMMM..... Mango sticky rice!~

~Coco got all of our leftovers... to bad for her that there weren't many!~

All in all our cooking lesson was a success, especially since we did it all on a hot plate, which is basically the only cooking source we will have when we are in Hong Kong!

After our lesson we went for a scooter ride to check out some more of Ko Samui. We stopped at 7-11 and got a huge thing of water then went to this local beach where there weren't any tourists, just nudey little local infants prancing in the water.  This is where I tried to make myself throw up... Who eats 5 meals at one sitting??? Anyways, it wasn't successful, so we just sat for a while to digest!  

After digesting a bit we went continued on our adventure and found a steep road to a lookout point, kinda sketchy going up on the scooter, but so worth it, check out what we saw!

~Gorgeous Ko Samui Sunset~

Also as we kept driving we saw this big celebration, it was being televised locally, it was by a harbour, and it was in honour of the Queen for her birthday, like I said, Royalty is a big deal here, they had a marching band and there were representatives from different organizations, like schools and they would go up w/ these really crazy urns and curtsy in front of the picture and then line up their offering w/ everyone else's... 

~Ko Samui's celebration for the Mother of Thailand~

After we saw the celebration we were off to a real Muy Thai fight!!! But on the way there it started to POUR... like torrential downpour... I had on my cool new gortex jacket, but unfortunately Lockey left his in the lobby of our hotel and it got stolen... bummer... SO he was soaked and a little unhappy, BUT I had seen some ponchos at some of the 7-11's before, and didn't really know why, but now I get it... when the majority of the population drives a scooter and it suddenly starts raining, they make a KILLING selling ponchos!  So we found a random mall and it was our first experience w/ a Thai mall.... Who knew you could have a down escalating ramp... (does that even make sense?)

Anyways, we found the Thai equivalent of Walmart and found a top quality 90 baht ($3) poncho for Lockey.... Here is the result....

~That's my man!~

Oh and ps the poncho most certainly was pearlescent w/ little stars on it...

Anyways, we did arrive finally to the Muy Thai fights.... It was Crazy, I was a little concerned that it would be more brutal than I could handle, but it was amazing w/ the advanced fights how much of a "dance" it really was.  Lockey compared it to a chess game.  There was a lot of strategy.  Oh, and they played the Thai anthem and lit candles in honour of the Queen.  The anthem was wicked... like a polka, I just wanted to sing along and bop!  Here's a link so you can enjoy it too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBDKah2nnvw

~all the fighters during the anthem~

~Locklyn and I in the bleachers~

This fight was NOT very evenly matched... They said they were the same weight... not a chance.. you can tell just by looking at the next picture.  This fight ended first round.  With the French guy doing a round house kick to the back of the head on the Thai guy, and then somehow the Thai guys right leg got broken... ya, intense stuff! Lockey actually got it on tape, he might try to post it at some point.

This next fight was a Thai guy and a Polish guy... The fight again was over in one round.  You would think the Thai guys would Waste the white guys, as it's their national sport, but the international guys have reach, they are SO tall compared to these Thai guys... The Polish guy's coolest moves was a roundhouse elbow to the face... who knew I would be so impressed?

This next fight was the piece de resistance (or however you would spell that...)  2 Thai guys, this was the fight where we really decided that Muy Thai is an art!  they were so equally matched, they went all 5 rounds, and they were actually scored b/c there wasn't a knockout.  It was great, and you should have seen the betting an cheering going on by the Thai people!  (when Canadians would normally say OHHHH... for something good they said Ahhh Ahhh... twice like that... )  

The next day we left Ko Samui, we were sad to see it go, but were excited about our new adventures and diving in Ko Tao.  When we arrived there were ridiculous amounts of taxi drivers trying to take us to our hotel, but we kept walking thinking that it would be cheaper away from the pier.... And just as we were getting a taxi, I saw a truck that said "Asia dive resort" on it, (which is where we were staying) and we flagged it down and got a FREE ride... this is my smug look in the back of the truck!

So we rented another scooter, this one had huge tires on it so navigate some bumpier roads!  We found this nice little bay area, Chalok Harbor, or something of the sort and watched the sun go down here... Oh and I forgot to mention it was our 6th, yes SIXTH wedding anniversary also, so we ate at the nice restaurant there to celebrate!

~This was the first fresh fish we had, and they don't take off the skin or head or tail or anything, so they had to teach us how to eat it! Ha!~

~Thong Thong.... (pronounce tong tong...)  chicken meatballs in crispy wontons... what's not to love?~

~The salad was so spicy it literally brought tears to my eyes... but it was so delicious!~

~Even more handsome after 6 years, how is that possible?~

The next morning we woke up bright and early to go diving.  We found a great little place where the group was small (Only 9 divers w/ 3 Dive Masters)  on a 2 decker boat.  There were at LEAST 2 truck beds full of divers that left from our hotel (don't be fooled it's not a real resort like the name implies...)  and we saw a 2 decker boat packed w/ people on both levels... So our small group was awesome!

We went to Chumphon, which is supposed to be in the top 10 diving sites in Ko Tao, and was one of our Dive Master's favourite places to go.  It was rad.  We saw all sorts of HUGE fish!  And we saw a Trigger fish, which can actually attack/bite you, it has real teeth and the fish are approx 2 ft long and 1 ft tall, so we were instructed by Mo (our dive master in training) to back up w/ our fins towards the trigger fish if we saw it.  So when we did see this trigger fish Mo motioned for us to back up, but Lockey sometimes gets excited and preoccupied so he didn't notice her signal, and he wanted to check it out... and that trigger fish did NOT approve.... The trigger fish came at Lockey like a fat kid on ice cream!  But, good thing that he had fast reflexes and he laid back and stuck his fins in that fishes face and kicked.... The fish did touch his flippers, it was pretty crazy... It seems Lockey and wildlife are not so much getting along these days... He's not one w/ nature.... Lockey spotted a box fish a cute little yellow polka dotted fish that looks like a puffer... but is in the shape of a box...  We saw Shrimp, 3 different sizes and styles of Barracudas, Butterfly fish, Blue Ringed Angel Fish (You should google that one and the trigger fish for shiz, cuz they are cool!)  and some Christmas tree coral that when you wiggle your fingers close to it, it sucks back into the rock! And tons more.... We did 2 dives one right after the other (The second at Green Rock) and they were our best dives ever! 

~W/ Mo, our leader!!! She was awesome, saw her in town today and she had just gotten her wisdom teeth out, so I gave her some tips for recovery! :) ~

After a nap we went mini golfing, and there was a spinner at each hole to play goofy golf, so we did!! And I even got a hole in one... Legit. And I won... no big deal.   

Halfway through our golf game though it again started pouring... it tends to do that on this island as well as Samui, at night time... it lasted for a while, but we listened to some sweet disco music in the bowling alley (which every time that someone's turn is over some Thai guy resets up the pins!) and then also chatted w/ a couple from Australia who are into free diving... Just what Lockey needs... Another no risk hobby... ;) 

~ after my hole in 1... rock on brudda!~

~emptying out my helmet after the downpour....~

After golfing we went down the little street that lines the beach, it had Thai massage, and restaurants and the same shops you see everywhere else that is touristy, but they also had Thai pancakes... but not just any thai pancakes... check this guy out!  (We definitely weren't expecting a show when we ordered!)

http://www.youtube.com/user/trashproduktion?blend=3&ob=5#p/u/0/QBBATXc9hgA

Like I said before, we saw a big celebration for the queen, learned how to make the main Thai dishes, and enjoyed Muy Thai fights...  Could we be more Thai?