Saturday 6 June 2009

Compare Samui old style pictures with today's

Compare Samui old style pictures with today's

To follow up on Mike's prompt in his comment yesterday, here's an attempt to compare yesterday's old pictures of Samui with a more modern version;

Chaweng beach last year during late August. Totally pending on where you are at the beach and what time (early in the morning is good!) you may get a similar picture as yesterday's 84 picture. In general, during the day time, it will look different, especially the line of buildings behind the sand.
Chaweng Beach road. Now it's 'only' a mess during flash flooding, which occasionally happens. Certain parts of the beach road turn into murky swimming pools or small rivers. The sandy road has been gone since 1998 I think.

Big Buddha, yesterday's shot is nicer, but the road leading to Big Buddha has changed, is lined partially by trees and there are a lot more buildings around Big Buddha. The statue itself has had a face lift as well.
Camille

9 comments:

Henri said...

Beautiful pictures! It's interesting to see the difference and how Samui has developed over the years. Chaweng stil looks beautiful in your 2008 picture! Amazing sand and waters. Can hardly wait to get there again!! ;)

Camille Lemmens said...

Hi Henri,

That's one fo those early morning shots of Chaweng, the amount of buildings which can't be seen in the picture, is waaaaay different though compared to 1984!

Anonymous said...

Hi Camille.

Nostalgic pictures. I remember staying at the Island Resort on Chaweng about 1993/4. It was run by an American guy named Jerry. we used to dive with a school called Chang Divers which was near where the Bamboo Bar is now, I think. its gone now. i too remember the pre-concrete, two-way traffic, Chaweng Road.

Billy

Camille Lemmens said...

Hi Billy,

Those were the days! Chang divers, they kinda merged with Easy Divers but I just missed the pre-concrete beach road by a year or so.

Mike said...

Camille, thanks it makes an interesting comparison.

Anonymous said...

Hi Camille.

Yes, those were the days. We even used to go diving along the outside of the reef at Chaweng. I would hate to think what is floating out there now. :-(
In fact I even did part of my Rescue Diver course off the beach near the Amari. I first met Richie the owner of Discovery Divers when he was a dive master at Chang Divers, all those years ago. Do you remember the shaky wooden bridge across the lake to the Reggae Pub? LOL

Billy

Camille Lemmens said...

Hi Billy,

The reef in Chaweng is still great, I love to dive there and have many pix up on my dive blog of Chaweng Beach and the reef. I still see stuff there that I don't see at the 'good' dive sites like Sail Rock and around Koh Tao.

I barely remember the wooden bridge, didn't use it a lot though!

Narelle from Aus said...

I loved being on the beach by 7am before everyone else. The most amazing time of the day. Thanks for the pics Camille. Was in Singapore last week for work. I had itchy feet to fly to Koh Samui for 2 days afterwards. Unfortunately my hotel wouldn't let me cancel :(

Camille Lemmens said...

Hi Narelle,

Too bad you couldn't make it, the weather is stunning right now and yes, early morning beaches are cool!