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Koh Samui
("Koh" Or "Ko" is the Thai word for "island") is located in the deep south
of Thailand, about 100 kilometers north of Ko
Phuket, but on the other side of the Isthmus of Kra, the narrow mountainous
strip of land that connects Thailand and Malaysia. Samui
is only the most well known of a veritable archipelago of 80 islands in
the south of the Gulf of Thailand (or Gulf of Siam, as it is still sometimes
called). Among the other inhabited islands of the archipelago are Koh Phangan,
which has approximately the same size as Samui and is located north of
it (you can see it from Maenem Beach) and Koh Tao, also north of Samui.
Small Fishing
Village
Ko Samui
lies 35 kilometers off the Surat Thani (one of the major cities in southern
Thailand) coast and about 700 kilometers south of Bangkok. The island was
probably originally settled about 1500 years ago by fishermen, but
its existence has first been officially recorded by the Chinese only as
late as about 1500 AD, in ancient maps from the Ming dynasty. Apparently
Samui Island had trade connections with China (at least Chinese ceramics
were found in ship wrecks from that period that has sunken near the coast
of Samui). The probably most dramatic episode in the history of the island
was the short Japanese occupation during World War II. Today Ko Samui belongs
to Thailand but due to the long isolation from the rest of the world
(little was known about Koh Samui until the early 1970s) the islanders
(Samui has about 35.000 inhabitants) still think of themselves as really
different from the rest of the country and are proud of their island culture.
Samui has a size of about 250 kilometers in square (comparable to the Malaysian
island Penang). As everywhere in Thailand, the major religion is
Theravada Buddhism and there are lots of simple temples and shrines on
the island, sometimes hidden in the jungle.
In the Courtyard
of a simple Buddhist Shrine
Life on the
island is still very quiet, much more so than for instance on Phuket. There
are schools on Samui but the more well-to-do families prefer to send their
children to the colleges and universities on the Thai mainland. The
main produce of the island are coconuts (which are processed for copra
production), tropical fruit, and bamboo. Fishing is of course also a major
source of income and recently the tourism industry (most of the accomodation
offered on Samui is still owned by locals, not by large hotel chains) has
become more and more popular.
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