Goodbye Ko Samui

Tonight is our last night in Ko Samui. We have loved it here. Love love love. The food is great, the beaches are sunny, and we can't get lost because there is only one road... The guesthouse we are staying in is run by an adorable Italian man named Luigi and it has been so nice!! He comes and clean our room and there is a little restaurant where you can eat either Italian food fixed by him or Thai food fixed by his Thai helper/girlfriend (we think) He is soooooo friendly and we have loved it here at Embassy Guesthouse Restaurant and Bar. If you ever come to Ko Samui, you must come meet Luigi. His girlfriend even helped us with our next travel plans and ordered us a taxi at 5 in the a.m. That brings me to our next adventure. Tomorrow we take a taxi to the pier and a ferry to the mainland where we will be picked up by Siam Safari Tours for a 2 day jungle tour of Khau Sok National park. We will be in the serious jungle! Riding elephants and kayaking and sleeping in mosquito nets. We briefly got over our eco-conscious problems with deet and bought some bug spray today. Our fear of malaria and Dengue fever is stronger than our desire to protect the environment..
We are hoping this is not the last time we will be in a place where we can lay on the beach all day and buy cold, sliced fresh mangoes and bananas from a beach peddler and get massages for 7 dollars.
After our jungle tour we will be going to Krabi (pronounced grah-bee) where Kristina wants to do a little rock climbing which Krabi is famous for. Hopefully they have an amateur route for me... And then to Phuket and Ko Phi Phi, more beach paradises.
We talked to an American man last night that runs a little surf apparel shop on the main road and he said that the media and embassies of other countries always blow the Thai violence out of proportion and that we have nothing to worry about and travel in Southern Thailand is perfectly safe. We will talk to a few more people before we decide for sure.
We've met some extremely nice people (usually locals) and encountered some not-so-friendly people (usually tourists) but this truly is the land of smiles and I don't know if I ever want to leave.