Thursday Feb 17 Kho Samui

Today we had a tour that circumnavigated the island. What surprised us the most was the ongoing development. It is a little messy but is clearly becoming a destination for tourists. There were a lot of young people around. Apparently Friday is the annual full moon party. This is a celebration that involves an all night party on one of the small islands close to Kho Samui. It sounds like a giant Florida break week that attracts people from around the world.

Kho Samui is the third largest island in Thailand. The population is primarily Chinese. After the opium wars the Chinese started emigrating south east and settled in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore. The island is 247sq kilometers and has a population of 200,000. The main industry is tourism and coconuts. It is very inexpensive. You can rent a house on the beach for $500 a month. You cannot purchase property unless you are a citizen of Thailand. 

Monkeys are still used to harvest the coconuts. They use monkeys because of the danger in climbing the coconut trees. Apparently there are many snakes that will jump out at the climbers and a number of them are poisonous. There are two types of monkeys on the island – short tailed and long tailed. The short tailed ones are used on the coconut farms to pick the ripe coconuts. They are smarter, we watched one climb a tree, test the coconuts to find the ripe ones, pick them and throw them down. They determine ripeness by knocking on the coconuts and listen for the sound Of fueled sloshing – that means they are ripe.

Monkeys have very good eyesight and train for 10 – 12 months. They eat just about anything – snakes, worms, insects. But then so do the people (no we we not served any of those wonderful sounding foods. 

The fresh coconut is not what we get at home. They will hack off some chances of the outer shell to reveal a “core” this is picked out with the machete and straws are inserted. The liquid is clear and has a fermented taste to it. They do make wine from the liquid by adding yeast. A milky fluid, which is the coconut milk we Re used to is made by adding grated coconut meat to the clear liquid then squeezing it and capturing the liquid.

The older dried coconuts are what we are used to getting at home.

Other animals on the island include water buffalo and elephants. There are 80 elephants on the island, all domesticated.

We went to an elephant camp and watched a baby elephant show. Two elephants, one 5 years old and the other 8 years old both females. Basically the elephants did some tricks, while it was interesting and fun to see I felt like the elephants were being made fun of. I was embarrassed for them. One of the “tricks” was to have a member of the audience lie on a mat on the ground, the elephant then gave her a massage using one foot and her truck. 

More things I have learned about elephants – they have excellent hearing and can hear 2 – 3 kilometers, their sense of smell is also excellent (should be with that schnoze). They have very small eyes and cannot see well. The Thai people think the elephant is a symbol of courtesy and they “worship” them. They Re supported by different groups. Thai Air donates 5% of their income to supporting the elephants and the royal family sup rots 400. A portion of the sales tax collected goes to supporting them.

We had a lovely lunch of Thai and Chinese buffet sitting on a deck by the ocean. There was a nice breeze which helped as it was very very hot.

We visited the usual Buddha. This one was on a high alter that we had to climb up to. He was a gold colour. All around the Buddha was a colonnade which had large bells hung at regular intervals. You take a big stick and do a walking meditation, striking each bell as you come to it.

Around the Buddha were several small shops, the only one of interest to me was a batik shop. The artist was at work on a a marvelous piece. I bought a small hanging. Sorry girls no batik fabric that would be good for quilting. I have been watching for that.