December 24-25: Christmas in Samui

Banyan Tree Breakfast Buffet

The breakfast buffet (which was included in our stay) offered the widest range of food you could imagine, and everything was DELICIOUS.  Everything from sushi to ice cream, and phad thai to crepes.

You could make your own waffles or crepes

                  Iced Latte with syrup                             We especially loved the pretzel bread    

Christmas Eve Dinner

Since the breakfast buffet was always so spectacular we decided to try the special Christmas Eve buffet. Unfortunately the food didn't live up to our expectations, and was way overpriced for what it was. The fireworks and "live music" (local school children singing English Christmas songs) improved the evening. It's funny how much they celebrate Christmas here considering only 5% of Thai people are Christian.

Christmas dinner at Saffron

 This was the most delicious Thai food we ate during our trip...so far

 We're dressed in our festive Christmas colors

 Fluk was our personal villa host during our time at the Banyan Tree. We're going to miss him.

 At the airport waiting for the plane to Chiang Mai

December 23: SCUBA Diving at Sail Rock

Sail Rock

Prior to traveling to Thailand we had heard that the SCUBA diving here was fabulous and we could see things here that we wouldn't anywhere else in the world.  I booked a dive trip with Discovery Dive Center (mostly because the owner is a Jets fan), to dive at Sail Rock.  Sail Rock is a dive site about 1 hour from Koh Samui by speed boat, and boasts a wide range of sea life that congregate around the rock.  One of the main draws of the site is that you can swim through a chimney starting at 15m and going up to 10m. Unfortunately because of the strong currents and rocky ocean water we were only able to do one dive at Sail Rock and the chimney was too dangerous. We did our second dive at Koh Maa which was much shallower and had much less visibility. Overall we had a mixed experience diving but we are glad we did it.

An enormous Moray Eel

Sea Urchin

A view looking up Sail Rock

Cuttlefish

The grumpiest fish in the ocean. I don't think he liked having his picture taken.

December 22: Thai Cooking Class and Fire Show

Thai Cooking Class at SITCA

Both of us didn't know much about traditional Thai cuisine so we decided to educate ourselves by learning how to make 3 traditional Thai dishes.  We made a red curry with roasted duck, pork stir-fry, and Phad Thai. Each dish was more elaborate than then last. The pork stir fry had the least amount of ingredients with 15. Prepping each of the dishes is what makes these dishes so labor intensive because the actual cooking time in the wok is 5 minutes tops. Although Phad Thai is very common in the states, we were never fans of the overwhelming peanut flavor, but here the only peanut that was added to the dish was a sprinkling at the end.  This was the best tasting Thai food we have yet to have here in Thailand...and we made it!

Our drill sergeant teacher

Sabrina preparing the duck and the duck after it was roasted

                         Red Curry with Duck                                                  Phad Thai

It was an overwhelming amount of food

Fire Show at Banyan Tree

When we arrived back to the hotel that night we made our way to the beach where there was a fire show. The performer danced with the fire to songs like Gangham Style and Call Me Maybe.