Koh Samui, Thailand daily weather update; 10th April, 2011

Today's weather;

Blue skies this morning on Samui. Good to be home, yay! Current temp at 7am is around 25C

Yesterday I arrived already at 10.40am at the Donsak ferry and by 1pm I was back home! The whole trip saw sunshine but lo and behold, in the Surat Thani area there were some clouds but not a single drop of rain! Samui saw a hot and sunny afternoon with a max temp around 30C

Pretty soon after arriving back home I went around and had a look on my motorbike and although there's some damage, especially fairly easily to spot for residents, like a pothole or six more than there was on the roads compared to when I left, it all seems under control and back to normal.

All main roads on Samui are dry with an occasional puddle, it's some of the secondary roads and short cuts that most tourists wouldn't even know of or use that may still have some flooded parts, but than again nothing is deeper than 2 or 3 cm's. In Chaweng and Choengmon some 7-11's are being fixed and should be ready to open again soon.

Samui is all fine and there's no reason not to visit, same for Koh Phangan and Koh Tao!

One of the two collapsed bridges on highway 44 between Krabi/Phuket and Surat Thani

Yesterdays trip from Koh Lanta (with a successful PADI IE to boost!) to Samui was smooth. All roads were open and no water anywhere on a road. The only ripple were two collapsed bridges on highway 44 (South bound), within 200 meters of each other and the traffic was all on one side of the road. The road from the highway to the ferry was fine as well, nothing like 26th March when I almost got stuck.

Near Surat Thani was a lot of water damage and still a lot of flooded areas but things were definitely under control and repair work was in full swing.

The death toll is now at 59 and the Prime Minister, Abhisit visited Surat and Nakhon Si Thammarat yesterday, see The Nation for a report.

Severe flooding in the southern provinces has killed 59 people, totally destroyed 396 homes, and damaged 5,769 roads and 1.1 million rai of farmland, according to the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department.

The department said the flooding, which hit 10 southern provinces since last month, has receded in six provinces while Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phatthalung, Surat Thani and Trang remain submerged, with some 461,794 people affected.

Camille

Koh Samui, Thailand daily weather update; 5th April, 2011

Today's weather;

Samui woke up under a nice sunny sky this morning! Some deliveries to the island go slow, due to the bottle neck and floods in Surat Thani. Eggs and milk are very expensive. The clean up and repair work is full swing though and most of the water has receded from the roads on the island. Current temp at 7am is 27.5C

Yesterday saw plenty of sunshine and besides cleaning and fixing things, laundry was also a welcome option to many, clothes could dry again afterwards in the sun! Max temp reached 29.7C

More donations were received by Sean and Adam, keep the beer money coming people and also keep hitting the right buttons! It's much appreciated!

Recovery begins as rains ease by the Bangkok Post but Surat Thani is still critical.

Bt6.1bn relief fund as toll hits 51 dead, 29,000 ill by The Nation. Train travel remains suspended south of Chumphon, especially in areas from Thung Song to Surat Thani, where railway tracks remain under flood water.

A Public Health Ministry update yesterday gave a death toll of 51 for people drowned or otherwise killed in the two-week flooding crisis. The ministry said 29,414 people had become sick, including 227 suffering from stress or requiring counselling.
The number of people affected by the floods, updated yesterday by the government's ad-hoc relief centre, has reached 2,009,134, from 581,085 households. Those evacuated number 40,981, including 35,651 in Surat Thani. Around one million rai of farmland is flooded and 20,000 crew members of fishing trawlers are affected.

The Reggae pub a few days ago in Chaweng

A few people have asked how the situation is with respect to disease outbreak after the flood, a very good question. Samui should be fairly fine but large parts of South Thailand are badly affected.

Illness - mostly from respiratory problems - has struck more than 20,000 residents in flooded provinces in the South. They are seeking or receiving treatment at government clinics, hospitals, or from mobile medical units, Public Health Minister Jurin Laksanawisit said yesterday.

Land encroachers are blamed for the landslides in Southern Thailand, let's see if anything will be done to them in time to come!

Jack hammering the rock

Koh Lanta woke up under a nice blue sky and it looks like it's going to be a hot day! Current temp at 7am is 24.3C

Yesterday saw sunshine all day long and it was warm. Max temp reached 30.5C

Camille

Koh Samui, Thailand daily weather update; 3rd April, 2011

Today's weather;

Samui woke up with another dry day to look forward to and although the sun isn't out right now, it should come out later today. Food is coming in, Big C and Tesco Lotus Chaweng have been re stocked and the markets have fish again because the fisherman are going out fishing. Current temp at 7am is 24.3C

Yesterday saw a dry day with some sunshine and repair work is in full swing, see yesterday's post. That's a good thing and I hope to be able to give more updates on clean up and repair work in progress soon. Most roads are dry or are drying up now. Max temp reached 28.6C

Thanks Joanne for a donation made!

Jet skis downtown Chaweng, roaming beach road, no jet ski scam recently on Samui!

The land roads to Samui are still blocked however and highway 44, between Surat Thani and Krabi, my gateway home has collapsed bridges and the old road north of Phuket is not an option since 4 meter floods are reported in Phun Pin, where Surat Thani's rail way station is. It may be possible of getting to Samui by making a big detour over Ranong. The roads from Chumpon to Surat is packed however by 100's of cars that can't move on and people are parked at the side of the road and on gas stations. It's going to be interesting to get back home again!

Flooding by night

Dear readers of my blog, I appreciate very much that you check in and that you are concerned about your upcoming trip and holiday to Koh Samui but please;

-Please keep in mind that I do NOT have lists of individual hotels and their current state. If I stumble over one or hear about one I will post it here on my blog.

-If you're planning to visit Koh Samui within a week or so, expect a damaged island with a lot of clean up and repair work going on. I'm sure that hotels that aren't affected will do their uttermost best to accommodate you but Samui won't be at it's prettiest! Everybody wants tourists to come back, beach clean ups will also be conducted.

-If you're planning to visit Samui around mid April, I would expect a lot of damage and debris been taken care of and your visit should be fine.

-Anybody planning on visiting towards the end of April or early May or even later, don't worry. Do not reschedule for November, that's usually Samui's rainy season!

Flooding in Khanom late March 2011

-As before, please support my blog with either donations, hitting the beer allowance buttons or keep booking your future hotel stays on Samui and around Thailand on my Samui hotel recommendation blog or Thailand hotel recommendation blog. Please bookmark them.

Koh Tao evacuation, picture by Neil van Niekerk

-For information about Koh Tao, check out Ayesha's blog on Koh Tao, she claims that all is fine on Koh Tao and they never had food or drinking water shortages and should be up for diving and business as usual later today!

For Koh Phangan updates check out the 'My Jungle life' blog for updates.

For Phuket updates, check out Jamie's Phuket weather blog.

On the HTMS Chakri Naruebet, evacuation from Koh Tao picture by Neil van Niekerk

Koh Lanta woke up under a lightly clouded sky but I expect the sun to burn through rather quickly and it should be a lovely day! Current temp at 7am is 24.2C

Koh Lanta has been lovely yesterday. During our dive trip of the current IDC on Lanta we had a flat ocean and got slightly sunburned in the face or if you weren't careful, your whole body. Max temp reached 29.3C

Camille

7th March, 2010

Today's weather;

A near perfect blue sky is shaping up over Surat Thani, where we spent the night. Diamond Plaza, where we usually stay was fully booked so we moved to a different place which actually turned out to be very nice as well. Current temp at 7am is a merely 21C.

Yesterday saw sunshine all the down from Pattaya to Surat with a max temp in Surat Thani of 38.8C it was hot everywhere, every time we stopped and even in the car we had to crank on the aircon!

Camille

Sanchao Hailam Bandon, Surat Thani

Sanchao Hailam Bandon, Surat Thani

On my recent trip to Surat Thani, we had to go down town in order to find the Thai passport office and I renewed my acquaintance ship with a Chinese Temple, which turned out to be the Sanchao Hailam Bandon. Sanchao means a certain Chinese style Chinese Temple. Hailam is the way Chinese name certain districts and Bandon is the district. I posted about this temple already a year ago, but didn't realise back than that there are two temples at the same crossing, opposite each other.

Part of the Temple is used as a school for languages and unfortunately I wasn't allowed to make pictures of a big altar and shrine there.

What I really liked were these pictures from years gone by, a feat to be found in a lot of Thai Temples.

I was allowed to take pictures from a smaller shrine in the same complex and this the entrance to this smaller shrine.

The actual small shrine.

Next to the temple or behind, pending on how you look at it, was also the Hainan association of Surat Thani. I already posted about a big Hainanese infuence on Samui and here's more proof of the influence Hainan must've had on the Thai cities in the Gulf of Thailand.

When in Surat Thani, well worth checking out.

Camille

International School of Tourism, part of Surat Thani's Rajabaht University, Chaweng

International School of Tourism, part of Surat Thani's Rajabaht University, Chaweng

The off shoot of Surat Thani's Rajabaht University's campus on Koh Samui, dedicated mainly to hotel management is about to complete it's construction.

The Samui campus is almost completed, in contrast to what the static Uni's website tells us and classes could start happening with the start of the next school year.


The complex houses a hotel so the students get hands on training and experience. Not sure what the rate for rooms will be but I'm sure it won't be the last I report about this Uni and I will update on news regarding the Uni and room rates accordingly.

In my opinion this is an excellent initiative and exactly something that Samui needs. Tourism is the main source of income nowadays on Samui so this Uni makes absolute sense.

It's located near Tesco Lotus' traffic lights, on the road leading into Chaweng, also not too far away from Thai International Hospital.

Camille

New weather website

Found a new weather website

It's called Weather Bonk and covers the province of Surat Thani, of which Koh Samui is part.

It has a nice map of the province and a weeks forecast. I will make a permanent link for this site in the sidebar.

Camille

22nd January, 2008

Today's weather in Surat Thani;

It's foggy like there's no tomorrow, we're on the 14th floor of our Surat Thani city hotel (well, outskirts of Surat) and can't see the road. The sun is coming on hard though and soon the fog will disappear. At 7 am the temp is 22 C.

Yesterday was a long day's driving, we started at 9 in Bangkok and traffic was slow there, it took almost an hour to cover the 6 or 7 km's to the expressway.
From there on we had a blue sky all the way down to Surat Thani, 700 km's! We got to Surat around 5.30 am.

Tomorrow we will be back to the regularly scheduled program, folks. Daily updates from the Samui weather and some more stories from our travels, lots of beautiful temple reviews coming up.

Hope you enjoyed my travel tales a bit.

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

27th August, 2007

Weather today in Surat Thani;

A very blue sky greeted us this morning, but within minutes of opening my internet connection, the Wifi system went down, so I can only update right now.


Here’s a picture from the hotel room with a view over the outskirts of Surat Thani and a nice blue sky to go with it.

Yesterday it was a nice enough day, not too warm but almost all day long overcast with in the morning even some drizzle in Donsak.

Today, after breakfast, we were on our way to Phuket however.
Driving on Thai roads is and remains an interesting activity which needs full attention levels at all times. There’s a new highway between Surat Thani and Krabi, a stretch of about 100 km, with 4 lanes.

On this short stretch of highway, we encountered 5 ghost riders and a good dozen motorbike ghost riders. They rather travel anywhere from a few kilometers to a couple of hundred meters against traffic rather than following the road in the right direction and hang a U turn.

The price of the day went to a guy who parked his motorbike on the hard shoulder on a bridge, on the side of the fast lane, where the shoulder is just about a meter wide, if at all, and he was fishing off this bridge, walking up and down the shoulder checking his equipment.

The mind boggles with so much ignorance and bliss to danger.

We arrived safely in Phuket however and went straight to an Oishi restaurant before we checked in to the room at the Centara Kata Resort, in Kata, Phuket.

Camille

Sao's wedding party

The wedding party was in the early afternoon near the Donsak pier in a local school.

The location was inside a gym hall, which was turned into a giant room with dozens of tables where all the guests could eat and drink.

This must've been one of the prime weekends for weddings this year so far, all over the place wedding parties were held and we met and saw various wedding convoys, on their way to their respective parties.

Here's a view from the back, in front you can clearly view the typical table set up, with 8 covers, a bottle of Thai Whiskey, a big bottle of Coke, a couple of smaller bottles of Soda water and a bucket of ice.

Once a party of 8 (or less) is seated, the food starts arriving. In this case we were served Moo Waan (sweet pork, delicious!), Plaa Nung Manau (Steamed white snapper with chili sauce), Yam Saam Klob (spicy mixed salad), Pat Pak Ruam (mixed fried vegetables), Tom Yam Talee ( sour sea food soup) and Kao Pat (fried rice).

The couple had to endure loads of speeches and here they are with the MC.

Outside the people that left were donating their envelopes, which contain money. The amount of money in the envelope depends on how well you know the person in question, and ranges from a couple of hundred baht to a couple of thousand Baht or sometimes even more. All envelopes are named, so the receiver now knows how much he has to give next time you throw a party.

A view of the entrance of the hall, on the left the table with the white boxes for the envelopes, in front the entrance to the hall and on the right a picture of the wedded couple with flowers.

All in all a great day which went by rather quickly. The kids had a blast, met some old friends and played till there was no tomorrow. They're both dreaming right behind me in the room.

My wife had a great time since it was her best friend being married and she met various other old friends, amongst other Kob, who she doesn't get to see that much, since they live about 1500 KM away.

Tomorrow morning it'll be a relaxed breakfast in the hotel and than off to Phuket, unless we have lunch with Kob first!

Hope you enjoyed today's pix and I'm looking forward to hear your comments.

Camille

Sao's wedding

Sao is my wifes best friend.

Since a couple of months it was decided that today was a good day to get married, according to the monks. So, we're off to the mainland, to Donsak, where she originates from. Donsak is also where the ferry arrives from Samui and this weekend proofs to be a very popular weekend for marriages, all the monks must've looked in the same crystal ball, since it's marriage galore, everywhere are marriage parties, both Samui and the mainland.
The hotel we're staying at in Surat Thani has a party every night as well.


Sao in her wedding dress. She's in her room in her house, where she had to stay all morning, waiting for the groom to show up.

The groom and his family are arriving. The women of his family have been sent in first!

The groom has to pay a fee for every door that he enters in Sao's house. He will give the holders of the gold chains a small amount of money in an envelope. The chains are normally held by the bride's friends.

The groom arrives with his posse. His Dad in front and he's on the left next to him.

Before he can enter the actual house, he must take off his shoes, which in this case is done for him.

One of the envelopes that is used to 'bribe' his way into the house.

Entering the living room, where the actual wedding ceremony takes place.

Earlier this morning, around 6 am, the monks came to the house and had a blessing party.

The actual wedding is about to start and prayers are held.

The ceremony is not supervised by monks, but by elder people, in this case the Grand Mother of the bride. The elderly are very well respected in Thai culture.

The dowry, or Sin Sot in Thai, is paid to the father of the bride (the Mother has already passed away a few years earlier).

Here's the complete dowry, about 50.000,-Baht for this wedding, a golden wedding ring, a gold wrist chain and a golden necklace. The gold is worth a few bath as well, in this case, the word Bath is used as a weight rather than the monetary variation. One bath equals about 10 gram (if memory serves me correctly) and is currently valued at about 12.000,-Baht per Bath.

Putting on the wedding ring.

The bride thanks the groom for everything.


The groom receives his ring, so he can proof he's married.

Final blessings by the elderly.

A few over the crowd that gathered in the room, watching the ceremony.

Than we were off to the groom's village, about 70 km away from Sao's village, since she had to meet the groom's family elders, who all gave their blessing.

Around the corner of the groom, one of my wife's other very good friends lives. Sao, Kob (the other friend) and my wife all went to the same school and university.

This is Kob's beautiful wooden house, in the middle of nowhere, very relaxed.

Sofar it's been an eventful and busy day. We have a short break now but are almost on our way again for this afternoon's wedding party in Donsak at Sao's, to be held in the school grounds next to her house. About 400 to 500 people are expected during the evening.

It was interesting to experience the wedding for me, since it's the first time I actually witness the actual wedding. Parties for which we are about to leave soon, I've visited plenty of times in Samui already.

Hope you enjoy the pictures, more pix later from the party.

Please feel free to leave comments.

Camille