April 23, 2019

We have been to Ko Samui twice before (search the name on the blog site if you want to see those experiences and photos).  So today, we decided to just take the tender in to the town (this port requires the ship to be anchored off shore). Ko means island in Thai.

The smaller boat is the one that took us to shore, one of  the others is a ferry the the last one belongs to the Royal Thai Police.

Ko Samui is located in the Gulf of Thailand and is Thailand’s third largest island.  It is surrounded by about 60 other islands. It is circular in shape and about 9.3 miles across. We came into the port of Nathan which is the true commercial hip of the locals and is small enough to walk everywhere. The island was even without roads until the early 1970s and the journey from one side of the island to the other involved a whole day trek.

Today Samui has a population of about 47,000.  It now has a thriving tourist industry with the main appeal of the rural beach communities and the water sports.

It was quite hot but not as hot as Bangkok which was over 100 degrees.  We walked around the town and did some shopping. One of the women I know on the ship always asks if I bought anything.  If I say no, she asks “Do you have a pulse?!!)  So I did have a pulse and bought shoes, a couple of tops, pants and sarongs.  A good shopping day!

We also visited a temple and were the only people there.  I guess we still haven’t seen enough temples!

And also still not enough markets, which fascinate us every time.

Here are some other sights we saw. The bakery with my name! The German bakery.  And the kiosks to fill water bottles.  And Thai food.  Which would be common in Thailand, I guess!  Perhaps the sign is for us visitors.

The boat has a lot of traps.  And the shop caught our eye because of the statues of the cats.

I really liked this Keep Calm sign.

The ship has made a transition to this boxed water when you go out on tour.  It tastes OK but has a smell of wet corrugated cardboard which is kind of unpleasant. Norm gave the cruise line feedback about it and got the response that it was a test and will be discontinued. Guess this particular kind is not better.  We do applaud their objective to be environmentally positive and they are going to discontinue plastics, but this box isn’t up to their standards.

We now have a day at sea before our port of Singapore. We have traveled here together three times and I spent a number of days here on an ICF trip, so we will go out exploring on our own this trip.