Our first day in Koh Samui, we signed up for a jeep tour of the island with Mr. Ung’s tours. We woke up and were greeted by three large jeeps sitting outside our hotel. We hopped in and sped off around the island. I had no idea Koh Samui would be so big.

Our first stop was at a little coconut grove where the trainer showed us how the monkeys pick coconuts. They apparently collect hundreds each day. I was a little torn seeing the monkeys chained up but they were having so much fun jumping around and vying for our attention that I went ahead and walked up to meet them.

My biggest concern was getting monkey butt on my arm. They goofed around and definitely had fun pulling my hair. Afterwards we grabbed a coconut to share and had our first real coconut water. We make a pretty cute couple, right?

Our next stop was at the temple of the mummified monk. This dude just kicked it while meditating 40 years ago and was put inside a glass case where he sits and hasn’t decomposed. We got to shake the sticks for our fortune and Maggie and I both got the same one! We pretty much have the best fortune possible and will win any lawsuit we are involved in. Long story short, don’t sue us.

We hopped back on the jeeps, but this time on top for an extra windy ride. I’m not sure any tours in the US could get away with this, especially given the way the tour guides were driving. YOLO.

We stopped off at a camp for elephant rides and photos with tigers. Although we did play with the monkeys, neither of us could ride the elephants after our visit to the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai. We were also uninterested in posing with the allegedly unsedated tigers.

We stopped at a waterfall nearby that has water slides built in the side. Our guide warned us that the fast slide was very painful but we all tried it of course. It didn’t feel so bad the first time but the second time, my legs slapped the water and are still bruised days later.

We grabbed lunch at a restaurant overlooking the island before heading off to the Magic Buddha Garden where we jumped around and posed playfully with the statues.

Our guides warned us that the ride would be extra bumpy from this point on and that was an understatement. We hopped in the back totally unassuming and headed off onto the roads much less traveled. At some points we ditched the roads completely and our guides thoroughly enjoyed tossing us around.

These brave girls sat up top.

We finally made it to the top to see the giant Buddha overlooking the entire island.

Although the tour was over, the guides wasted no time giving us a wet and bumpy ride back down the island. Our driver’s favorite trick was jumping out and seeing how long it took us to notice we were still rolling without him. One of the jeeps got stuck in the mud and we had to ram into them to push them back out. The drivers also took it upon themselves to dump the remaining drinking water all over us and each other.

Probably our most eventful day yet, we arrived back at our hotel tired and hungry. I was a little skeptical paying for a guided tour but after seeing the routes we had to take to get around the island I think it would be hard to explore Koh Samui any other way. I would definitely recommend doing a tour like this and our guides with Mr. Ung’s were the best guides ever.