Sayonara, Stephanie

Arkansas Firefighter Gets The Boot on Survivor:Thailand

(CBS)  There was an interesting twist last night on Survivor: Thailand. All of the contestants were given the opportunity to change tribes, but no one took advantage of it. One player who only thought about switching sides, probably should have done so.

Later in that episode, firefighter Stephanie Dill was voted out of the Sook Jai tribe by a 5-2 vote. She appeared on The Early Show to talk about her experiences in Thailand.

Asked if she regretted not making a tribal switch, Stephanie didn't hesitate. "I do regret it now."

But she said, had she switched, she would have been an outsider and that might have hurt her. "That was part of the thought process. Because I had made some really good relationships on my tribe. You know, Robb and I are like brother and sister and then Jed and I were. So I kind of hated to leave the tribe knowing that it was kind of a catch-22. If I went to the other tribe, then if they lost, you know, the next immunity then I would be the first one voted out because I wasn't an original tribe member."

Stephanie told Julie Chen that she had a pretty good idea that she would be the next person voted out of Sook Jai." "They had told me that they voted off Jed because he was a threat if it came down to the individual immunities. I had already gotten a little hint that I was in that same position."

The strong-willed 29-year-old admitted that she had alienated herself from her fellow castaways, starting from the very first night when she didn't sleep in the tribal shelter because it was uncomfortable. It was "bumpy bamboo, you know. And it got cold every night. This is the monsoon season. So it rained constantly. And like I said, it got cold at night and the air circulating around the shelter made it that much colder. Well I stayed cozy in my little bed in the sand. I dug out this huge hole and I got all the warm sand out from underneath the coals and it was wonderful. It was cozy. I was warm."

As with all Survivor shows, food - or the lack of it - played a major role on the island.

During the chicken meal, Robb was grossed out about Shii Ann's table manners, Chen noted. Was Stephanie?

"I don't recall that bothering me at all, she replied. "We're out there starving to death, and we're eating stuff that's dead, that's laying around, that's rotten. We don't care, we're gonna eat it. And so that didn't really bother me then. If we'd been across the dinner table from each other, it probably would have bothered me. But not out there. I was too busy eating to really pay that much attention."

Stephanie even ate the grubs the tribe had bid for at the food auction. "When you're starving to death, anything's going to taste good. What was sad was,when he said grubs -- they've been seasoned and all this -- I was like 'Oh, man they're going to be fried, batter dipped taste like chicken somehow.' No, that wasn't how it went," she said. They tasted like "dirt. Just like gooey dirt. It was disgusting."

But she said she'd rather eat grubs than coconut. "I'd rather starve to death than eat coconut. After the first 24 hours you get so sick of it."

And, as for the hot fudge sundae? Stephanie said when she saw it, she was "thinking I'm going to jump off of these little bleacher things and I'm going to knock everybody out, I'm going to take off with all the food and I'm not coming back. You're not going to be able to find me."

Mark McEwan said he assumed that Stephanie had watched some of the earlier Survivor shows, but she didn't play as if she had. Why didn't she build coalitions, he asked.

"Our tribe was based on the whole priority thing. They wanted to do the shelter. Some of us wanted to take care of food and water. Water was super important. We ran out three or four times. And all of us were getting a little dehydrated. It's just hard to keep up with the water. You had to get the fuel for the fire, you had to keep the water going, get the water, boil the water, by the time you got that done, everyone was drinking it. So, yeah, there was, you know, that division there. And actually if our division of labor had been better I don't think that quite the separation would have occurred. But, you know, I wasn't there for the money. I was there for the adventure. So I wasn't worried about playing the game and flying under the radar."

McEwan was surprised. "Don't you have to be worried?" he asked. "It is a game. If you're there, not worried about playing the game, what are you doing? Because you're there to play the game."

"I signed up because I wanted the adventure," she replied. "I wanted to experience -- you know, not really the challenge of the game, obviously, but just to have fun and meet new people. And you know, I did that. And then the friendships that I made, especially with Robb and Jed, are worth more than any amount of money."

Like so many other survivors Stephanie would do it all over again. "Absolutely I would do it again and hope that I didn't get sick. I was wanting to be good TV. I wanted to be a good character for television. I didn't want to be like everyone else that had ever been on there. I wanted to be unique. I think I accomplished that. But I wanted to be more - I wanted to have more spirit with me. But when I got sick, it really put a damper on that. Because I'm really happy go lucky. I love to make people laugh. That's like my favorite thing to do."

Chen wanted Stephanie to dish a little dirt on the behind the scenes action. Was there any hanky-panky on the island?

"No, not even really rumors," Stephanie answered. "You have no idea -- that is like the last thing on your mind. You know, you're starving to death. Like I lost 20 pounds in 15 days and the last thing I was thinking about was hooking up with somebody. You know. And I've been eating grubs and I had grub juice running out of the corners of my mouth. So I'm sure I was really attractive."