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

Tambun Sala Koy

Tambun Sala Koy

Here's a very old Samui tradition that I happen to stumble over today. My wife asked me to bring our son to her Mum and Dad at Wat Plai Laem but if they weren't at the Temple or Wat, they would be at the sea. Good luck finding it and if you have problems call Dad!

After a couple of attempts to reach empty beaches, I finally spotted a group that looked like local Temple goers to me. They were gathered at this Sala with a Grand Dad and Grand Mum inside, overlooking the ocean and taking care of and securing the health and welfare of the Plai Laem village.

This Sala used to be a lot more up North on the beach but due to a lot of construction and a lot of Westerners using the beach to party, the sala was moved south to a quieter location and can be reached now to go direction beach at the waterworks in Plai Laem.

A small boat is build, with a captain, sail and everything and set out to sea.

This boat carries pieces of nail and hair from the local Plai Laem families and food and is carried to the ocean after it's been being blessed by monks and set out out to sail the ocean and carry all bad luck away from Plai Laem.

Here's the captain of the little sailing vessel and he's named Rua Kloh or loosely translated; the person/boat that brings the bad luck away. In front of him you can see the bags filled with nails and hair of the local families.

Apparently this is done all over Koh Samui island and possibly also in other parts of Thailand as long as they're near the ocean I imagine. In Chaweng a similar sala has been build on the beach recently.

According to my wife a couple was waiting at a beach for each other and the boy found a small boat and wanted to bring it home and use the wood etc. After bringing it home he turns kind of crazy and starts to speak in various tongues.

This ceremony goes back for over 30 years that my wife can remember and she figures it's at least 50 years old if not more. The ceremony is held each year around this time of the year and if you find a small vessel like this on a beach, don't take it home, it brings bad luck!

Camille

OTOP Samui, Coconuts at Lipa Noi

OTOP Samui, Coconuts at Lipa Noi

Remember or ever heard of the OTOP program, One Tambon One Product, very popular under Thaksin Shinawatra's reign over Thailand.

What would suit Samui best, being known for one thing before it all turned into a tourist industry, right, the coconuts. Hence in Lipa Noi there's a small factory annex outlet for coconut carved products.

The shop is in Lipa Noi not too far away from Nathon at the Immigration office side of Nathon.

There are hundreds of different items made out of coconut wood for sale, from cups to plates and all kind of different items.

To the side of the shop is a work place where the items for sale are all being made. Two or three machines are constantly churning out new products.

All items are being lacquered and are drying here, next to the shop. This is the original shop that supplies all other souvenir shops on the island, if you want the cheapest price for your coconut made wood products on the island, here is where you can get it.

Camille

A day in Nathon

A day in Nathon

As the title of this post already mentioned, we spent some time in Nathon today. This is where the Municipality is located and all other important government offices, including Immigration.

It's also the town on Samui that reminds me the most of mainland Thailand, since it's the least touristic town, compared to Chaweng and Lamai, to name the other two bigger towns. Interestingly enough, it hasn't changed that much since 10 years ago when I arrived on Samui. Sure, there's a new Seatran pier and a small Tesco Lotus, but the main structure and infrastructure hasn't changed that much at all.
Interestingly enough, the only supermarket or what you could call a supermarket was Samui Market, located on the main road. It had the only moving stairs on the island and 29 days out of 30 they seemed not to work! On a quick visit today they were holding to tradition and we had to walk them up rather than being moved up!

Nathon has 3 roads, the main road you enter Nathon in, coming from Maenam, a seaside road and a road in between these two bigger roads. This inbetween road and the seaside road I like best, since it they have a lot of small restaurants and shops that give some interesting views. Above is one of the original Hainan style build houses of which Nathon has plenty. Some shops that are located between the main road or seaside road and the in between road have doors facing each road and in between the whole family life seems to be displayed. I've seen shops that have a restaurant at one side that kind of leads into a living area and an assembly of all kinds of things towards the other side (towards the in between road).

This part of Nathon has a whole stretch of old style Hainan style houses, fairly unique on Samui nowadays although Hua Thanon also hosts a few. Some of these houses are not very well maintained and some of the wood on the second floors looks fairly rotten and not in very good shape. I like seeing these houses since they represent Samui's history and I most certainly hope that these houses can be maintained.

A view inside one of these Hainan style houses, what we would call a living room, with the obligatory pictures of the Mom and Dad and some other relatives that can be found in almost all Samui houses.

Here's a sample of a very well maintained and beautifully shining Hainan style house on the in between road. In typical fashion, some kind of food is sold outside the house or sometimes straight from the living room.

Here's also another side of Nathon, the one where progress can't keep up with quality and demand (did I hear the word corruption??). The quality of this seaside mini pier to launch boats into the water or get them out isn't up to standards.

It seems that the new local government (the Tessabaan) is actually putting a lot of effort into Samui's infrastructure, a lot more and seemingly more serious and with better quality than any previous Tessabaan, but that's a completely different story for a another time.

Hope you enjoy this little mini trip through Nathon, I can easily walk around here for a few hours and get some great pictures! Enjoy your stay at Nathon in case you make it here.

Camille

Island life

Island life

A day in the life of an islander it almost seems like in this post. This morning I was well on my way to Nathon to visit the local Immigration office to pick up the stamp for my yearly visa extension when we firstly encountered a massive black smoke plume over Maenam, similar to the one there was a bit over a year ago when a car crashed into the 7-11 in Bang Rak.

This time a fire was raging next to or almost in/on a new construction site next to the Maenam river and all the construction junk and wood was ablaze in a massive fire, blackening the whole side of the construction site/building. Interestingly enough, immediately next to the fire was this row of machines which didn't look like they would take a fire on their paint too well, so after a quick picture or two it was time to move on to Nathon again.

Once we arrived in Nathon and were about to drop off passenger in our car who was taking the ferry to the mainland, all the cars that paraded over the island since the end of Buddhist Lent day were gathered in Nathon to select a winner for the year. We didn't wait around for the final result since we had plenty to do but funnily enough the girl in the right bottom corner of this picture managed to pull off a typical Thai thing; posing in a picture. She saw me with the camera and in a kind of Pavlovian reflex she immediately went into posing mode and had a giggle about it when she figured that she had managed ending up posing on this Farang's picture. I've never seen the girl before!Nice car though, isn't it?

More action around the Seatran pier in Nathon for the car parade.

We planned to visit an eye doctor in Nathon for my wife but couldn't do this in the morning because there was no parking space available, all was taken up by visitors to the parade so we decided to come back in the afternoon after I found out that I went to immigration without my passport (a fine D'oh moment) only to find out that they were closed/had a break for another hour when we showed up in the afternoon again. A third visit to Nathon for the eye doctor is in the making! Stay glued to this blog for updates.

We also had the 30.000km check by Ford taken care of for our car after we left Nathon in the morning.

In between trips to Nathon we also visited the brand new Tesco Lotus branch in Lamai and had lunch in our favorite Kao Man Gai place which is now directly located next to entrance to Tesco Lotus in Lamai.

A typical day in the life of an islander? Well maybe, at least we got some things sorted and taken care of, slowly but surely, in a nice slow way being not very efficient. yeah, that sounds like island life ;-)

Camille

Hainanese style houses on Samui

Hainanese style houses on Samui

In my blog post last week about the Chinese Temple in Hua Thanon, I mentioned
a Hainanese legacy on Samui. Over the weekend, when we visited the waterfall in Baan Namuang, I went back to Hua Thanon to take some pictures of typical Hainan style houses.

Here are three perfect samples of such Hainan style houses in Hua Thanon, as you can see, they're made of wood and typically have two floors. This one seems to be housing a motorbike repair shop.

Here's an other prime sample of a stand alone Hainan style house in Hua Thanon.

This is also a typical sight in Hua Thanon, a few Hainan style houses next to each other, build in to a variety of shops or restaurants.

Here's a sample from a Hainan style house in Nathon, converted in to a restaurant.

Another excellent place to find houses build in this style are in Nathon and Bophud, although in Bophud, a lot of the original houses have been renovated but it has been done in a nice authentic way giving it a modern flair.

Camille

BTW It's 10 am and it has drizzled and rained pretty much from 8 am onwards and there's a rather dark, cloud filled sky.

House inauguration of Aunties house

Today was the house inauguration of one of my wife's Aunts.

The whole family gathers, including the kids and a good time is had by all. It starts a day or so early by cooking all the food for the monks and the relatives and friends that will attend.
My wife went early with the kids, who had a blast playing around with the other kids present and she helped out in the kitchen, preparing dishes and cleaning up.




It all starts out with monks being invited to the house who will chant for an hour or so and than the food is served.

The best food and first choices are given to the monks and the rest of the friends and family eat outside on the balcony and other rooms, the monks get to eat in the living room. Once the monks are finished, the food that they didn't eat is shared by the other visitors. Everything that's left over goes into the 'doggy bags' and is taking home by the various friends and relatives.

The ceremony is concluded by the main monk who paints a good luck charm on top of the front door. Before that the monks have strapped a very thin white cotton rope around the house.

Each new build house or shop, gets an inauguration like this in Thailand.

Camille

Natural Museum Lamai, part 2

Here are some more pictures of the Natural Museum in Lamai.

After my post of part 1 of the Natural Museum in the Temple in Lamai, I thought it to a good time to post some more pictures about this fascinating place.




There's a big cabinet displaying all kinds of various Thai bank notes through the 'ages'. There are quit a few that I remember, even the 10 Baht notes and also a wide variety of 50 and 500 Baht notes. Interesting to see, in my humble opinion.

These 3 vases are also on display. Chinese I would guess, they're beautiful but unfortunately there's absolutely no information on them whatsoever.

There are a few (push) bicycles on display as well, to my rather big surprise. Than again, some of the things on display will most certainly raise a few eyebrows, rather obscure to say the least but I think that's also part of the charm of the place.

An intricate weighing system, similar to one that my wife's Mum used to have, a long time ago.

This is a very interesting set of items. Have a good look, see anything strange? Did you notice their iron or steel tongues sticking out? These figurines are all used to split the coconuts open, so the coconut flesh can be taken out. This is some real good and original Samui tradition on display. Similar items can sometimes still be seen in use in real life nowadays, although the 'tongues' aren't attached to such beautiful tongue holders. Most of the time it's just a steel rod connected to a piece of wood.

As already mentioned in some posts, Samui used to be Thailand's main coconut provider, until a few years back, tourism took over as the main financial provider for the island.

A funny anecdote about the coconuts is this one;

In the older days, not even too long ago, all the 'good land', being land with lots of coconut trees on it, was given to the favorite sons and/or daughters and the less popular off spring 'got stuck' with the worthless beach land. In the more popular areas like Chaweng, beach land goes nowadays for anywhere between 30 to 50 Million Baht per Rai.

Hope you enjoy these pictures and make sure to visit this Natural Museum in Lamai.

Camille

Natural Museum Lamai, part 1

Today was a day of exploration.

Since the day started out beautifully with a blue sky, we decided to go on a trip to the Southern part of Koh Samui, the Lamai, Baan Taling Ngaam and Lipa Noi area's.

It was also part of my plan to visit two temples of which I recently found out that they supposedly have mummified monks in them. Since this came as big surprise to me, I had to investigate this. The only mummified monk I'm aware of on Samui, is in Wat Kanuram, about whom I posted already.

At the first temple we visited today, in the middle of Lamai so to speak, a pleasant surprise was sprung on me. The temple houses a Natural Museum, in all it's fantastic, dusty museum glory, filed far away on a second floor, inside the temple grounds, where time just had stood still and plenty of traditional Samui tools and artifacts are collecting dust and waiting to be discovered. I took so many pictures in this museum alone that I can easily cover three or four posts about this place. Today part 1.

The temple in question is located on the ring road and driving from Lamai to Nathon, there will be a very hard left turn in the road, that's where the temple is located, at your right hand.




Once you enter he temple grounds, pretty much straight ahead, is a 'mummified monk' who's not that mummified at all but is still very fascinating, more on him on a different day.
The museum is at your left hand, across a fairly big open space. There are stairs in the left hand corner, after you crossed the open space, that lead up to the museum and here's a picture of the museum signs.

Inside you get the feeling that time stood still. There's a back row of glass cabinets and lots of artifacts are located seemingly randomly in the big room, housing the museum. It was a pleasant surprise for me to find out that there was a museum at all but even more pleasant was to find that it is one of these absolute charming places where you just wander around and it just tastes like times long gone by. No explanations are given so it's a good thing my wife knows and/or recognises plenty of the displayed items and what they were used for!

It was really nice to find a very small corner of the floor being dedicated to the old tradition of fishing, something that on Koh Samui comes natural to many on the island. A fishing net and various fish traps are being displayed.

Some of the cabinets have just the most wonderful and seemingly completely random items displayed, in cabinets, like this one here. Some teak wood figurines next to an old 6-tees vinyl 'pick up' player which on it's turn sits next to an old gramophone player with a big horn on it! Makes no sense at all but they look just fabulous.

This wooden construction is an old style 'machine' to make khanom chin, a kind of Thai spaghetti.

Today was a very nice day, we saw lots of interesting places, met some nice people and found some true gems on Koh Samui, well worthwhile visiting, amongst others this Natural Museum in Lamai and there's more to come on this place, in part 2!

Camille

Beautiful Samui pictures........

This is an amazing website with stunning pictures of Samui.

Besides having joined the Thron Tree forum and stumbling over Tezza's website, I also recently stumbled over Monique's Land of Smiles website. She's Dutch and lives on Samui and took photography on as a hobby, the results are just stunning.

Especially after the recent stretch of rain and bad weather, I thought it to be a pleasant change to view some of Monique's pix.

Enjoy.

Camille

Khanom Chin food stall in Bang Po

Khanom Chin in Bang Po.

Today, early in the morning, I had to go the Immigration office in Nathon, to see if my yearly Non Immigrant B Visa had arrived. After a bit of waiting and some stamps and signatures in my passport, I could happily embrace my new one year Non immigrant B visa.

On the way out of Nathon, after having done some various errands along the way, we were all hungry and my mother in law, who came along for the trip, suggested to go and eat Khanom Chin in Bang Po, in this supposedly excellent place for this kind of food.

Khanom Chin are Chinese style noodles with a Curry on top. Especially in the South of Thailand, these curries are very spicy but Khanom Chin is in general eaten throughout Thailand.



This is how the place looks like, it's located at the ring road, in Bang Po, the North of the island, and it looks like a shack.




It's mainly visited by locals, since they serve a very traditional Samui style curry and everybody just kind a joins around this big, table like thing. At one end the food is prepared and at the other three sides of the tables one can sit down and eat.
Rice is not served but they do serve a soup as well, a Long Thong.

These are the various vegetables (Pak) that go along with the Curried Khanom Chin.

Here's the famous Khanom Chin, doused in a very spicy curry.

Since I'm not a big fan of Khanom Chin at all, I had to go for the only alternative available, the Long Thong soup. The soup was very good and I ended up ordering a second bowl, since one wouldn't stop my appetite.

As a dessert I had this Lot Chong, the only Thai style dessert I actually like.

If you're in for a somewhat more adventurous eating experience, in sharp contrast to yesterday's Prego experience, this can be advised.

Camille

100 days ago

Today it's been 100 days ago that my wife's Grandma died.

In an earlier post I already talked about the ceremonies involved.

This morning we just come back from the temple in Chaweng where the ashes of Grandma were placed in a family shrine/tomb.

As usual, monks are involved to participated in the ceremony. Here they can be seen walking back to the temple, directly after the ceremony. The tomb is in the background.

All family members present have a moment of silence and prayer in front of the tomb, were they also place burning incense.

After all this, it was time to eat again. Massive amounts of food were cooked overnight, to be distributed amongst the monks (they get the best pieces!) and the family members, either to eat at the temple or to take home.

We did a bit of both, had some food at the temple and took some food home, in one of the container in the picture above. These containers can be seen all over Thailand and are actually very handy. Food can be placed in 4 different containers (4 different dishes!) and people carry them around all over the place, varying from 2 to 4 containers in height.

Here's the content of the containers, from left to right, a curry for Kanom Chin (Thai noodles), pork, Naam Som Plaa ( a spicy fish curry) and sweet Pork with Eggs.

The curries are both very spicy, something the South of Thailand is well know for, it's spicy curries. However, this calls for a different posting, the various foods in the various regions of Thailand.

Camille