Yesterday we spent the day on the Thai island of Ko Samui - situated on the eastern side of the Thai peninsula. We have never been to the popular island of Phuket - on the western side - but we suspect that this island is similar. Perhaps it may be a little less developed as it has only become popular in the past couple of decades, so there is a lot of building going on. This building work tended to make some areas look a bit "messy" - and recent very heavy monsoonal rains had caused some disruption and messed some areas up - but all in all, it was an interesting day and we could certainly come back again at some time as part of a tour of Thailand.
Apart from the general overview of the island given by driving around it, we saw a number of specific tourist "attractions". The first was a visit to a coconut farm (some millions of coconuts per month are exported from the island) where we saw the use of monkeys to harvest the coconuts. It was actually quite interesting seeing this large Macaque monkey doing it's work - and the signals coming from his handler to indicate which coconut the handler wanted to be brought down. It was only a short visit - but interesting. Secondly we visited ANOTHER Buddhist Temple (apparently there are approximately 30,000 of them across Thailand) - but this one is different in that it has the undecomposed body of a former temple Abbot on display in a glass case. The story goes that when he died, his body did not decompose and this, combined with the fact that he had predicted the exact date of his death 20 years before has caused him to become a significant local religious identity. I don't know how this all fits in with traditional Buddhism - but this visit to Thailand has taught us that there are a number of forms of Buddhism, with variations depending on the country.
Once again as in Bangkok, it was quite busy with tourists on the island. We have been in company with another cruise ship since Bangkok - the German ship AIDA AURA. Apparently in March next year, there will be 3 cruise ships visiting on the same day. We were not very impressed with the well known Chewang Beach. This place is touted as being "very popular" in all the tourist books - but like elsewhere (even in Australia, Byron Bay) it causes too many tourists to gather in one place and too many locals trying to make a living out of the tourists, all vying for the same trade. For us it is the worst thing about visiting Asia and one of the reasons why we have never been to Bali. The very best part of the day was the lunch we had at a 5 Star hotel, right on a small private beach. I though I had died and gone to Heaven. The photos I have attached don't do it justice- I think my camera is being affected by the very high humidity. It was called the Imperial Boat House Hotel http://www.imperialboathouse.com
You can see a Youtube video about our visit to Ko Samui here
No comments:
Post a Comment