Saturday 17 November 2007

Natural Museum Lamai, part 1

Today was a day of exploration.

Since the day started out beautifully with a blue sky, we decided to go on a trip to the Southern part of Koh Samui, the Lamai, Baan Taling Ngaam and Lipa Noi area's.

It was also part of my plan to visit two temples of which I recently found out that they supposedly have mummified monks in them. Since this came as big surprise to me, I had to investigate this. The only mummified monk I'm aware of on Samui, is in Wat Kanuram, about whom I posted already.

At the first temple we visited today, in the middle of Lamai so to speak, a pleasant surprise was sprung on me. The temple houses a Natural Museum, in all it's fantastic, dusty museum glory, filed far away on a second floor, inside the temple grounds, where time just had stood still and plenty of traditional Samui tools and artifacts are collecting dust and waiting to be discovered. I took so many pictures in this museum alone that I can easily cover three or four posts about this place. Today part 1.

The temple in question is located on the ring road and driving from Lamai to Nathon, there will be a very hard left turn in the road, that's where the temple is located, at your right hand.




Once you enter he temple grounds, pretty much straight ahead, is a 'mummified monk' who's not that mummified at all but is still very fascinating, more on him on a different day.
The museum is at your left hand, across a fairly big open space. There are stairs in the left hand corner, after you crossed the open space, that lead up to the museum and here's a picture of the museum signs.



Inside you get the feeling that time stood still. There's a back row of glass cabinets and lots of artifacts are located seemingly randomly in the big room, housing the museum. It was a pleasant surprise for me to find out that there was a museum at all but even more pleasant was to find that it is one of these absolute charming places where you just wander around and it just tastes like times long gone by. No explanations are given so it's a good thing my wife knows and/or recognises plenty of the displayed items and what they were used for!


It was really nice to find a very small corner of the floor being dedicated to the old tradition of fishing, something that on Koh Samui comes natural to many on the island. A fishing net and various fish traps are being displayed.


Some of the cabinets have just the most wonderful and seemingly completely random items displayed, in cabinets, like this one here. Some teak wood figurines next to an old 6-tees vinyl 'pick up' player which on it's turn sits next to an old gramophone player with a big horn on it! Makes no sense at all but they look just fabulous.



This wooden construction is an old style 'machine' to make khanom chin, a kind of Thai spaghetti.

Today was a very nice day, we saw lots of interesting places, met some nice people and found some true gems on Koh Samui, well worthwhile visiting, amongst others this Natural Museum in Lamai and there's more to come on this place, in part 2!

Camille

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Leuke tip Camille! Dat museum ziet er niet eens zo heel slecht uit, leuk om eens rond te neuzen en foto's te maken.

Camille Lemmens said...

Hoi Monique,

Dat museum is een woord fantasties! Ik vind het heerlijk om in oude verstofte museumpjes rond te lopen en de prullaria, en soms ook kleinoodjes te bezichtigen.

Het museum heeft een heel hoog Boudewijn Buch gehalte!