Ko Samui: Temples and Monkeys

Ko Samui, Thailand was another one of those "where's that?" ports!  We've taken to getting a picture of the TV showing where the boat is at the time.  We had departed Singapore (at the very south end of the Malaysian peninsula) and headed north.  The arrow in a circle is the position of the boat and the green dot the arrow points toward is Ko Samui.  This was our first of two stops in Thailand.

Arriving Ko Samui,  the terminal building awaits us.  This was an anchor port versus a dock port so we arrived at the dock by tender.

This was the first of many boats we'd see, boats with the strange looking motor off the back.  We later learned they're called long tail boats.  The motor itself was placed similarly to most US outboards, however it had a long extended shaft with the propeller at the end.

One of two temples at our first stop.

A closer look at the snakes decorating the stairs up to the temple.

The doors were locked, however, they were glass so we could get a look inside at the big statue.

These whimsical "speak", "see", "hear" no evil statues were sitting on a wall at the entrance of another temple on the property.

  

The altar of this structure.  At the top, in the glass case, was the mummified body of the meditating monk "Luang Por Daeng".  He is in the position he was in when he died in 1973.

A closer look at the monk… he really looked like Michael Jackson!  The sunglasses were a recent addition to cover the eye sockets.  It is hard for the camera to "see" through the glass with all the reflections but if you look closely you might make out his right arm.  The body shows virtually no signs of deterioration.

Next stop, the "monkeys" part of the trip.  Ko Samui is known as the island of coconuts.  Harvesting the coconuts takes special skills.  Pig-tailed monkeys are trained to work with a handler to harvest the coconuts.  The monkey was on a rope, you can see it hanging down below the bunch of coconuts.  At the cue of the handler, he scurries up the tree, finds a ripe coconut and spins it until it drops to the ground.  At a gentle tug from the handler, he scurried back down the tree.

  

My new buddy!

We stopped for a refreshment break and a view over Chaweng Beach, the longest, most popular and most developed on the east coast of Ko Samui.

At the Big Buddha temple.  The Buddha is 35-40 feet high and sits on a small island connected to the main island by an unpaved, and rough!, road.  A dragon stairway leads up to the top where the Buddha sits.  The pavilions at the bottom, on either side of the stairway house smaller Buddhas.  We chose not to climb the stairs!

A look at the Big Buddha straight on.  There was a dragon boat positioned behind it.

 

Market stalls around the Big Buddha area.

These statues were at the other end of the islet from the Big Buddha.  Tom like this one better!

Not too far away from the Big Buddha was our next stop, Plai Leam Temple.  It has three depictions of Buddha, this one is the Happy Chinese Buddha.  Note the huge ears hanging down on his shoulders.  Big ears denote a long life!  Guess I now don't mind that my ears are getting larger and larger!

One of several prayer pavilions in the temple.  Note the intricate decorations.

A closer look at the the golden elephant, trunk up turned for good luck and the dragon stairway up to the building.

Another of the buddhas, this one an 18-armed Hindu style Buddha, Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy.

 From here we returned to the ship, thus our visit to Ko Samui.

Yes, I'm still very behind on the blog.  Instead of three ports behind, it is now four!  As I write this, it is Sunday, 2/24 and we are sailing from Hanoi (Ha Long Bay) to Huang Pu (Canton), China.  This segment of our trip is quite port intensive so we've not had the free time to do updates that we had on the first two segments.

rf