Advertisement
Published: July 30th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Hi! I hope you all are doing great. I spent a few more days in Koh Samui and had a lot of fun. I took a tour of the island, which included several different sights. One was the mummified monk. It was kind of creepy. The monk died in 1973 and his followers noticed that his body was not decaying, so they displayed it in a glass coffin, believing that this was a Buddhist miracle. He still has some hair, fingernails and very leathery skin! It looks kind of funny because they put sunglasses on him so people wouldn't be scared of his face with no eyes. He also predicted his own death, but I'm not sure how he died. Here I was given a string bracelet, tapped on the head with straw and water and told, "Good luck to you! Good luck to you! Good luck to you!" by an old monk.
Has anyone seen the email forward of the falic looking stones? One of a male and one of a female? I have seen the email before, but had know idea that the sight of the "Grandmother Rock and Grandfather Rock" would be that. It's funny that
they include this in the tour because they really are very falic! It is believed that a couple died there and that's when the rocks formed.
Next, we went to a waterfall and then a monkey show. They have the monkeys trained to retrieve coconuts from the palm trees. They have them on ropes and keep them as "pets" who make them a whole lotta money.
That night, Jess and I went to a Caberet show. This was extremely entertaining. The show was many lady-boys doing their thing. They were all decked out and lip syncing and dancing to Whitney Houston and Cher. They were very talented!
I really enjoyed talking with the locals on this island. Jess and I spent time with some really cool, unique people.
Today is my third day on an island called Koh Phi Phi (Lis, thanks for the recommendation). Aside from the torrential down-pour today, this place is like paradise! The beaches so far have been beautiful, but nothing compares to this. One of the beaches is where part of the movie The Beach was filmed. The island is very small and no cars are permitted. The island was almost
completely wiped out by the Tsunami, but from what I hear, is getting back to normal except for less tourist traffic. Their source of power was destroyed and the island now runs on a generator. We've had a few power outages so far. Supposedly, the day after the Tsunami, people of the island immediately got to work to restore things. Millions of dollars were donated from around the world, but the Thai people refused it and only used one charity source that works directly with the people of Phi Phi. The reason they refused the money is that many of houses and shops were washed away and if they take the money, the government will replace them with resorts. It's not clear what has happened to the rest of the money that was donated to the government. There seems to be a fear of the government on this island.
Yesterday I took a snorkeling/kayaking/island tour. I can't explain how amazing it was! We first stopped at Monkey Beach and got to see wild monkeys and feed them pieces of bananas. It's so cute...if the banana lands in the sand, they run to the water and wash it off and
then peel it to eat it. I heard this awful noise and saw two monkeys fighting over a banana. I wanted to show them that I had more bananas and that they shouldn't fight. I ran over to them and the guide grabbed me and scolded me. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have tried to break up a wild monkey fight.
Next was kayaking and snorkeling. I kayaked into coves of crystal turquoise water and saw tons of cool fish and other weird ocean things. It was fanstastic! After that, we went to a different part of the island and had to swim to shore. It wasn't very deep water and the coral below got a bit scary. One of the guides put all of the cameras in a dry bag for us and took a small boat to shore, which I thought was nice of him. We climbed through a hole in the limestone rock and walked through a path in the jungle that opened up to The Beach. It was so beautfiul that it took my breath away! This poor couple was skinny dipping thinking they had the beach to themselves and in walks this boat load
of people. I saw their bathing suits in the distance and grabbed them for them.
We spent a few hours at the beach and I didn't want to leave!!! They are trying to presevere it, though, so there are stipulations involved.
Tomorrow is my last day in Koh Phi Phi and I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't rain.
Take care!
love,
nikki
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.028s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb