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CHRISTIANSBURG -- Well, the tribe spoke.

And Cao Boi shuffled off into the sunset.

Christiansburg's Anh-Tuan "Cao Boi" Bui -- indisputably this season's most colorful character on the long-running CBS reality show "Survivor" -- was the sixth person voted off Aitutaki, a lovely South Pacific atoll among the Cook Islands where ancient inhabitants purportedly practiced cannibalism, polygamy and nonstop warfare.

Bui tried to initiate a little warfare of his own Thursday night when he hatched "Plan Voodoo," a scheme to expose the holder of the hidden immunity idol and thereby save himself from expulsion.

But he got eaten alive when tribe mates Jonathan Penner, Sundra Oakley, Oscar Lusth, Becky Lee and Yul Kwon all dropped his name in the ol' coconut shell.

Bui's friends and fans at the Christiansburg Moose Lodge shouted "No! No!" when the votes were read.

"I wanna cry!" squawked Danyl Basham, 32. "I am mad. They were stupid for voting him off."

In the boob tube's final Bui shot, the usually animated man with the winning smile looked forlorn, attributing his exile to the fact that he was vulnerable to his own people -- fellow Asian-American castaways.

The 13th edition of the show sparked controversy with producer Mark Burnett's decision to divide 20 contestants into four racially split tribes -- black, white, Asian-American and Hispanic-American.

After only two episodes, four tribes merged into two, and the expected explosion of ethnic engagement fizzled.

Since his adventurous start in America as an 11-year-old Vietnam War evacuee from Saigon, the now 42-year-old Bui chalked up tale after tale from his wanderings around the country. He left his home in California at the age of 16, joined the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division at 17 and played in the unit's 100-hour marathon softball game at 18.

He sold suits, sold cars, sold cameras. He biked, hiked and jumped out of airplanes. He worked on a shrimp boat, waited tables and practiced the Hindu ritual of tantra. He claimed he earned two degrees from Virginia Tech that he never picked up.

Bui's nickname -- pronounced "cowboy" -- goes back to his Vietnamese childhood when he watched American Westerns and understood "cao boi" to mean "tall man."

Rick Cupp, administrator of the Christiansburg Moose Lodge where Bui serves as prelate, is proud that Bui used the "Survivor" platform to tout the Loyal Order of the Moose, an international fraternal organization with 1.5 million members. The green T-shirt Bui wore on the show sported a Moose logo, and Bui listed his occupation as Moose Lodge prelate on CBS' Web site.

"It's a big thing nationally for the Moose," Cupp said. "He has promoted it the whole time. ... A lot of people don't know what the Moose is about. Cao Boi's really helped us out with that."

The Moose can be proud, too, that Bui will likely go down in "Survivor" history as one of the most lovable characters on the show, in the league with "Big Tom" Buchanan, the Rich Valley farmer with the "aw-shucks" charm. Buchanan -- who holds the record for the most days on the show (37 on "Survivor: Africa" and 36 on "Survivor: All-Stars") -- never won the $1 million prize but has since earned advertising contracts and raised funds for charity.

"Hopefully, Cao Boi will get to ride some of that train," Buchanan said earlier this week.

"He's like me. He runs his mouth too much," Buchanan said of Bui. "We're a different shoe. I wasn't willing to change for anybody. ... Cao Boi is Cao Boi and Big Tom is Big Tom."

Buchanan said because Bui was voted off before getting to serve on the jury that chooses the winner of "Survivor: Cook Islands," he probably got to spend several weeks vacationing while the show was being filmed last spring. CBS, which swears all contestants to absolute secrecy, would have treated him to lots of activities while the filming continued.

"CBS really treats those voted off good," Buchanan said. "If you don't make the jury, you get to do a lot of traveling. It's just a paid vacation."

"When I found out how good they had it," he added, "I said, 'Hell, I wish I'd got voted off.' "