Wat Phra Pudthabat Sisurat, Kanchanadit

Wat Phra Pudthabat Sisurat, Kanchanadit

After yesterday's post about Samnak Song Tam Bo Baan Thip cave, today's post is about a Temple or Wat a little bit further down the road which holds, high up on a mountain, after you climbed about 200 stairs, Buddha's 2nd foot print in Thailand.

It's on the same road from Surat Thani to Donsak, a couple of kilometers before the road leading to the Samui ferries. You really can't miss this sign on the corner of the road!

This is at ground zero level, the general Wat or temple area and it shows an interesting structure which is the entrance to some stairs, up the hill.

This a view if these stairs, I didn't count them but there must've been at least 200 or more and most of them are totally out of sync, some steep, some shallow and it almost seems never ending! Hence my comment on yesterdays post that aren't too many stairs at the cave!

Here's the actual foot print, filled with soapy water since the visitors keep cleaning the inside of the foot print. My Thai is not good enough yet to ask if there is any foot odor.

A whole family with some monks had made the climb and they were very friendly and all wanted to take a picture of our kids!

The climb down was also very interesting, to say the least and it was good to be back down again. The next day you could definitely tell which muscles in your body you hadn't used for a while!

I can however strongly recommend this place, with beautiful views on the way up and/or down, together with the cave and the Donsak Orchid Garden, all within a couple of kilometers of each other. All three have something completely different to offer and are worth a visit.

Camille

Samnak song tam bo naam thip cave, Kanchanadit

Samnak song tam bo naam thip cave, Kanchanadit

After our recent trip to Surat Thani, just a bit over a week ago, we not only visited the Donsak Orchid Garden on our way back to Samui, but shortly before that, on the highway to Surat Thani or in this case coming from Surat Thani and on that side of the high way, there's an exit that leads to the 2nd Buddha foot print in Thailand, about which more later, and on that same road, leading to the 2nd Buddha foot print, is another small exit to this unexplored and interesting Cave temple.

This is how the exit to the cave temple looks like from the road. They're currently working very hard to bring this Temple up to scratch and attract more visitors, so right now it's beautifully unexplored and almost untouched.
The entrance to the cave system, the passing main monk showed us the lights leading up to the entrance and opened them up, which at night most certainly looks pretty good, right now, when we visited it didn't have the impact it will most likely have at night. The amount of stairs to climb is very reasonable.

Next to the cave entrance is this very serene looking Buddha statue.

Inside the cave are plenty of stalagmites and this Buddha statue.

There's work done all over the place, including inside the cave, hence the hammer in front of the statue. Once completed I would like to see the caves again and wonder what they exactly have done with the lightning, since it looked promising.

A view of the stalagmites.

Definitely a complex to visit before they complete the work, now it's raw and very interesting, although, I would like to see it in a while with the work in progress and wonder if they will attract many visitors. The potential is there.

It's easy to find, coming from Surat, just watch out for the sign pointing you to the 2nd Buddha foot print in Thailand, it's just a few kilometres before the turn to the Donsak ferry pier where the ferries to Samui leave. According to my wife it's still located in Kanchanadit well known for it's local seafood restaurants.

Well worth visiting, on your way home to Koh Samui, enjoy before the hordes discover it.

Camille

Nai Aow Restaurant, Kanchanadit, Surat Thani

The Nai Aow Restaurant has been a favourite of my wife since a long time.

Today is the first time I made it over there myself. Every trip we made to the mainland, once we got to the Kanchanadit exit, about 20 km's before Surat Thani town, she told me over and over about this incredible place. I know people on Samui who just go over with the ferry in the morning, have lunch there and go back to Samui with an afternoon ferry, so expectations were high!!

It's about 7 or 8 km's from the highway, but you gotta make a couple of turns before you get there. There's a big parking lot outside with some stalls selling oysters and sweets. The oysters come from directly in front of the restaurant, where they are grown (?).

Here's the scenic walk to the restaurant, after the market stalls. The little walkway goes past mangroves.

From inside the restaurant you have an immediate view over the ocean, today, when we were there, it was very low tide however.

A view on the restaurant, it's a big place and it was fairly full once we started our meal. More tables than on this picture were occupied.

An absolute fave dish of mine, 'puu phong curry', crab with Indian curry powder, done in an outstanding fashion here. We ordered a second plate!

What the place is known for, oysters! In all sizes and very cheap. Have a good look at the size of these oysters and these were the smaller ones.

Condiments to go with the BBQ'ed fish that we ordered.

A specialty of the house 'Yam Nai Aow' or Nai Aow salad, a sour mixed seafood salad. Very yummy!

Outside the stalls are selling these oysters, although the picture isn't too sharp, the prices for the oysters are stunnishing, 15 Baht for a big one!

In the stalls they also make sweets, fresh off the hot plate. All of us bought various goodies, from sweets to cashew nuts.

The restaurant definitely lived up to it's legend, I can't wait to go back and try more dishes that I saw pass onto other tables, loaded with crab, mussels and other seafood.

This was it, the end of our little week long trip. Tomorrow morning we're back onto the ferry at 9 am and than off to our lovely home in Plai Laem.

Hope you enjoyed the trip reports and pix and don't be shy to post some comments.

Camille