Koh Samui storm early November, some pictures

Koh Samui storm early November, some pictures

Although I'm enjoying a sunny afternoon in Koh Lanta, I'm in regular contact with my family and friends back on Samui and the stories are interesting.

Since yesterday evening Samui is having a lot of rain and somewhere during the night the power went off, not to come back as of right now, a good 18 hours later! Apparently the power may be off for another 2 or 3 days due to a problem at the main power distribution station.

A view on the ring road near Bangkok-Samui hospital

Here on Koh Lanta we had very strong and heavy wind very early in the morning but around 8am that subsided and we have sunshine now during the afternoon.

Samui on the other hand is in for less wind and almost no rain tomorrow but than another 3 to 4 days of rain are on the horizon before there may be any sign of sunshine again.

Chaweng downtown

As expected and as shown in the picture above, there is flash flooding around the island, this picture showing downtown Chaweng. With the new drainage system, I expect the water to subside a few hours after the rain stops.

More flooding in Chaweng

My wife reported about flash flooding near our house in the Plai Laem area. Let's hope they can get the power back on again quickly!

All the best to my family and friends on Samui.

Camille

1st August, 2010

Today's weather;

Samui is covered in clouds today, a fairly heavy layer actually and I wouldn't expect too much sun today. Current temp at 7am is 27.3C

Yesterday saw a sunny day with a max temp of 33.5C

The demonstration around the island yesterday against oil drilling off Samui's coast didn't go unnoticed in the rest of the country and the two major English speaking papers in Thailand wrote articles about the demonstration. The Bangkok Post article is very informative and explains how a legal court battle is in the making and actually may have a chance of walking away with victory, The Nation's article is just a report of the demo on Samui.

Camille

Stop Oil Drilling around Samui

Stop Oil Drilling around Samui

Just a quick reminder that tomorrow between 10am and 12 or noon the effort will be made to make a human chain by a minimum number of 35,000 local residents (including those from Koh Pha-Ngan, Koh Tao and Suratthani) and visitors (including foreigners who are sympathetic to the cause) by linking hands forming a continuous human chain along Koh Samui’s 52-kilometre long ring-road. Read here to see my previous post on this topic.

Signs are at various locations around the island

Camille

26th July, 2010

Today's weather;

It's cloudy but dry on Samui at the moment although the forecasts predict lots of rain today. Current temp at 7am is 26.2C

Yesterday saw two storms, a big one in the morning and one around 3pm. Although there were fierce winds, the amount of rain that came down wasn't that much. There was however a massive temperature drop, max temp reached 'only' 28.7C, the first time since a while that the temperature during the day didn't go over 30C. This may also be good news for the coral bleaching that's going on all over South East Asia, but particular here in Thailand, since the water temperature might drop, high water temperatures being the cause of the bleaching.

Camille

Kill the Drill

Kill The Drill!

Koh Samui leads the protest against the oil exploration and drilling project off-shore of the Koh Samui, Koh Pha-Ngan and Koh Tao Region in the Gulf of Thailand.

Khun Ramamanate Jaikwang, President of the Siam Gulf Preservation Network Group, recently presided over the steering committee meeting for setting up a movement against any government grant to petroleum companies for oil exploration and drilling concessions in the territory of Koh Samui, Koh Pha-Ngan and Koh Tao.

The committee revealed that the direction of the movement shall be determined by representatives from official organizations, active communities, leading network groups and clubs on the islands, including: the Tourism Association of Koh Samui, the Thai Hotels Association (Southern Chapter, East Coast - Samui), the Tourism Association of Koh Pha-Ngan and Koh Tao, the Green Island foundation and various other local community groups on Koh Samui and neighbouring islands.

The committee also announced that there shall be an initial mass demonstration, to be made on 31st July, 2010, of full public support against any oil exploration concessions. A minimum number of 35,000 local residents (including those from Koh Pha-Ngan, Koh Tao and Suratthani) and visitors (including foreigners who are sympathetic to the cause) will link hands forming a continuous human chain along Koh Samui’s 52-kilometre long ring-road.

The purpose of this huge collective expression of solidarity is to inform the Thai government, fellow citizens of Thailand and other nations of the world that the overwhelming public opinion in the Southern Region is fully against the Department of Petroleum granting permission for oil exploration and drilling in the territory of Koh Samui, Koh Pha-Ngan and Koh Tao which could have a disastrously negative impact on the entire region’s tourism and fishing industries, with possible knock-on effects being experienced in Suratthani, Nakorn Sri Thammarat and Chumporn, and even places as far a field as Phuket, Krabi and Phang-Nga.

The committee is calling for the government’s grant to the project to be withdrawn forthwith and requests an official meeting with the Department of Petroleum in order to discuss possible energy production alternatives which wouldn’t potentially threaten the region’s thriving tourism industry.

Rak Aao Thai Group

Community Protest Against drilling in the Gulf of Siam Please come and join us on Wednesday 7th July at 9:30 in front of the Tetsabahn's office to pr

Community Protest Against drilling in the Gulf of Siam

Please come and join us on Wednesday 7th July at 9:30 in front of the Tetsabahn's office in Nathon to protest drilling in the Bay of Siam!
This is the final call to stand up and make your voice heard. Can we make a difference? How do we know if we don't try?

We have seen the results of the BP spill recently and know about the promises that oil companies give – even with the best of intentions, accidents can and will happen! What are the other implications of rigs near our tourist islands? Noise? Pollution? Lights? Disturbance to the already fragile marine ecosystem? Come and find out more....

Here is a link to a video which is being aired on Samui Channel this week in Thai. It is a call to arms to everyone who loves Samui and who cares about our future to protect our island from potential disaster.


Below is a summary of the contents:
On Thursday at 9:30am there will be a second and FINAL hearing regarding oil exploration in the bay of Siam only 42 km from Koh Samui, and affecting our neighbouring islands of Koh Phangan and of course Koh Tao.
By law, if there is no opposition the company can go ahead and drill.
Chevron has been coming back and forth to our bay to do oil exploration. They have followed pro forma announcements about public meetings, but the fact is that not many people know about the details.

Now is the last preparation before they actually start the drilling and the last time that the people of the island have to stand up and be counted!.

It is necessary for each person who loves Koh Samui to come to show their concern by attending the protest at 9:30 at the Tetsabahn on Wednesday, July 7th.

Everyone needs to attend! Bring your friends...

We all know what a major oil spill can cause. It is devastating to the environment, the health of each and every person, animal and every person's livelihood. Our island environments of Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao and the Ang Thong Marine National Park would be devastated. And it isn't a remote nightmare, it is happening right here.

PS The word for protest in thai is KAT KAHN both high tones.

Very low water around Koh Samui

Very low water around Koh Samui

This year the low water around Samui seems to have found a new low, so to speak. During the 11 years that I've been here now, I've seen some low tides, especially around this time of the year, but this year seems to be taking the stroedel.

Around Nathon, where I took these pictures, the water recedes a lot each year but now the water also recedes at places that usually stay covered in water.

The Thai people love the low tide and go out in masses to look for various kinds of shells ('hoy'), octopus ('waai') and small fish. My mother in law said the other that it was the first time in her life that she could just pick up small fish from the beach near Plai Laem that were caught out by the low water. This made for some good deep fried fish for our son!

Here's another picture of Nathon with the pier and an incoming ferry in the background. You could almost organise soccer games on these vast amounts of space!

Camille

Building a well on Samui

Building a well on Samui

After yesterdays post about the drought in our garden, here's a post on how we actually get our water on Koh Samui.

Since a year or two, the government has put water pipes in the ground that are supposed to deliver water to the majority of houses, mainly if your house located near one of the major roads on Samui.

The current drought however has already disrupted this water delivery for over a couple of months in many areas and especially in the Chaweng area.

My wife's youngest sister had a problem with water delivery and her parents decided it was time to put a well in for the youngest daughter.

These wells are hand dug and take a week or two to build, pending on the local water levels and how deep the well has to be.

As can be seen in the picture above, it's a fairly simple construction with some build in sun cover.

Since our and the younger sisters houses are build on the slopes of a hill, the water levels aren't too deep and they hit water at relatively shallow depth, the reflection of the water shows clearly in the picture.

They will still dig deeper though and somebody will have to get in there and put the baskets in the water and mud to get the bottom dug deeper.

The pulley looks simple but is very effective. The hook will have a bucket attached to it and inside the well somebody will fill the buckets all day long.

This is the fortification of the actual well, once they have finished digging the concrete circle parts will be lowered into the well to prevent it from collapsing.

Like in the tunnels of the 'Great Escape' movie, loads of sand need to be disposed of and in Plai Laem it's slightly easier than in the movie, it's just heaped up behind the well construction site.

Some 9 years back these wells went for around 30.000,-THB, nowadays they range between 40 and 50K, pending on the depth the well needs.

Our well hasn't dried up since we had it build, I can only hope for the younger sister that she will be as lucky, but looking at the water ground level of her well, it looks like she will be just fine.

Camille

Drought in our garden

Drought in our garden

That's just our garden, unfortunately all of Koh Samui is suffering. The wells are running dry around the island and the Government water supply has dried up a while ago already.

This years rainy season didn't materialize and although it made for good turnover in the tourist industry during unusual months, now the invoice is being presented.

This papaya tree has dried up, due to the lack of sufficient water, the leaves are just hanging about and the fruits have shrunk in size or are non existant.

This papaya tree has been helped out of it's misery and it just tumbled over, not being able to carry it's own weight anymore, let alone any fruits. Just about three months ago, our garden was in full blossom, including these papaya trees.

The banana trees are also having a hard time and they can't carry the weight of a cluster of bananas and tumble over. Really a sad sight.

Here's another banana tree that toppled over, I'm not sure if the banana's will actually keep growing. So far they're still green and haven't been rotting, although the trees toppled over a good two to three weeks ago.

Besides this some trees are losing all their leaves and things in general just turn brown all over our garden. There are some plants that still blossom so there's still some colour around.

I can only hope we get some continual rain soon, just an hour or two per day for a couple of days in a row. That would be nice.

Besides the drought we are experiencing also very high temperatures which causes a coral bleaching problem in the local waters around Samui and Koh Tao. The local water temperatures are an average of 2 to 3 degrees higher than usual.

Camille

Oil on Samui beaches

Oil on Samui beaches

Messages on Thai web forums about Lamai beach being covered in oil and an sms message portraying the same problem on Chaweng Beach made me decide to have a look for myself today.

The sight I encountered wasn't very pretty. The picture above shows small black pellet kind of debris all over Chaweng's beach which are oil based. After I left the beach I had a hard time cleaning my flip flops of the oily substance that was sticking to my flip flops and I upon touching those pellets it was not easy to clean my hands.

It's very sad to see a syringe amongst the debris as well, one of a few that I noticed today on a short stretch of beach.

Besides the oil based debris, some stretches of beach, as here in front of Al's Resort, there was also a lot of general debris. On either side of this resort the beach seemed to be a lot cleaner and the general debris was a lot less.

Here a closer look at what kind of debris was on the beach, various kind of shoes were strangely enough represented rather well.

The Tessabaan is looking into the Laem Sor area of the island, at the South Western corner of Samui since apparently that's where the oil is coming from. If there are any updates I will let you know.

Camille

Our garden is in full bloom

Our garden is in full bloom

And here are some pix to enjoy it. The garden was already blooming but a day and a half of rain definitely helped and caused a bit of a mini explosion.

One of the many orchids, they come in a wide variety of colours

Shompoo or Rose apple, if you treat them right, with giving it sugar water etc the fruits end up being really juice and sweet, our two trees are heavy loaded

Shabaa

Beautiful purple flowers but I don't know their name

Definitely mango season!

A lotus in full bloom

Moo Nang in Southern dialect or Kalin Pling in proper Thai, a sourish fruit

Kanoon or jackfruit

Hope you enjoy the pix.

Camille