DAY 34 - ECO TOUR

Signed up for a half-day "eco-tour" so we could experience a little sight-seeing on the island.  Met 2 couples from Australia, 1 couple from Finland and another couple from England.  I think that's one of the most fun things, having the chance to chat with people from other countries…  The tour itself was a huge disappointment.  Took a lot of photos but the sights, to be honest, were pretty lame.


We  didn't want to do the hour-long ATV ride up to see the falls so opted instead for a 30 minute "elephant trek through the jungle".  As a pet project of the resort we are staying in is protection of elephants in Thailand, we felt that gave some assurance that this tour would be "elephant friendly".  In the end, hard to say.  The mahouts (elephant handlers) seemed to have a good rapport with their elephants…  The "jungle trek" consisted of wandering through a loop of a treed area, the elephants would stop and eat here and there, no big rush to get anywhere.  We rode on one of the female (smaller) elephants, named Lina.

Then, at the end of the loop, turns out the waterfall is a five minute hike in the other direction lol!  As waterfalls go, not too impressed.  We see ones just as nice along Hwy 1 heading up to Hope.

Our English speaking tour guide even dropped us off at one site, saying "back in 40 minutes", there was not 40 minutes of things to see.

Cemetery

See a lot of snakes or dragons
down the sides of stairs

New temple under construction

Monkeys have been trained to harvest coconuts.  Video is short & shaky cause I didn't know what I was doing with the camera...  The monkey on my shoulder looks fierce but is actually just yawning (boring tourists)!

One site we visited that was kind of interesting was Wat Khunaram where we saw one of Samui's two mummified monks.  The story is that Loung Pordaeng, a wealthy resident of Koh Samui, married, two kids, decided to become a monk at the age of 50.  Some 30 years ago, while meditating, he died but no one noticed at first.  When they realized he had died, they were amazed to discover that his body was not decomposing.  His death was considered a miracle.  Against the wishes of the other monks, he was mummified and put in a glass case.  His body is still in a very good state,  he still has some hair, fingernails and leathery skin.  The sunglasses are to cover up the fact his eyes have fallen back into his head.

Got back to the resort around 1:00 and immediately headed for the pool again.  Phil & Linda filled us in on the excitement we'd just missed.  There was a 3 foot snake in the pool (probably the same one Danny had seen yesterday?).  Staff were able to snag it out of the water and then beat it to death poolside.  Everyone clapped.  Guess there were no Peta supporters in the crowd :)