Time Travelling-First Entry

Many people thought I was crazy to work up until the last hour that I leave, but I felt it to be quite economical in the long run, besides, I flew on Sunday and Sunday is time and a half pay here in Massachusettes.

So long story short:

6:00pm February 8; Flight to New York in a tiny paper towel tube plane.
12:30am February 9; Flight to Korea (15 hours) in a massive city in the sky plane.
Arrived in Korea at 5:19am Korea time, stayed in free hotel provided by Asiana Airlines for 12 hours and it was an awesome hotel too; the hardwood floors were heated, as it was cold like Boston, and it had a hot tub in the bathroom.
6:30pm (Korea time) February 10; Flight to Bangkok and arrived at 10:20 pm (Bangkok time) in Bangkok.
6:00 am February 11 flight to the Island of Koh Samui. I stayed in the Bangkok airport overnight and met 2 wonderful guys from the Phillipines; we talked and laughed for about 5 hours until I had to catch my flight.
7:05am February 11; arrived at Koh Samui airport and caught a taxi to the pier.
8:15am Boat departs Koh Samui enroute to the Island of Koh Phangan and I arrive 30 minutes later.

When walking down the pier towards the main town center, a thai girl comes to me and holding a sign that reads, "Taxi" i greet her in thai and we start talking a bit about where my reservation bungalow is. She knew where it was and showed me what to do. She spoke english also.
I noticed that most of the tourists were just shrugging her and all the other taxi drivers away kind of rudely as well. She helped me a great deal, and i made a friendship at the same time. The tourists seem to have an "everyone for themseves" kind of attitude disregarding the culture that surrounds them. Of course, this does not pertain to everyone, just the majority of what I see here so far.
I have had a great time practicing to speak thai with the taxi drivers and the local islanders here.
As I walk around town the taxi drivers were always hitting me up to take me somewhere. So I began to plan out what I wanted to say from my awesome roughguides thai phrasebook, and began speaking thai with them. Now, they do not hit me up for a ride and some know my name; they just wave to say hello and ask how i am doing today.
I have made it a point to only drink my coffee and eat my food at local thai cafes, as there are many people here from europe who have bars and restauraunts catering to the tourist. I want my money to go to the local people only.
For example, I stopped by an Italian restauraunt the other day just to see how the coffee was and the price was 80 Baht and the coffe sucked bad as it was instant coffee, blahch whatever! Later i stopped by a local thai cafe, they had a sign outside that said, "Real Espresso, freshly brewed coffee". The sign was 100% correct and I orederd an ice coffe even without looking at the menu, it was only 30 baht for a delicious iced coffee. 30 baht is about 85 cents. The Adventure continues...