30th November, 2007

Today's weather;

The last day of October this year looks good again, dry and warming up today with a current temp at 7am of 27.2C, which makes a big difference compared to yesterday morning!

Yesterday was a bright sunny day all day long a with a max temp of 30C.

Camille

Goodbye to November

It's time to say goodbye to November 2007.

This year's November did honour to the rainy season, almost a bit too much. Early this month we had so much rain, that combined with the rather unusual high amounts of rain that we experienced towards the end of October, that for one day Samui was declared a 'disaster' area in early November.
Luckily enough, that very moment when Samui was declared a disaster area, the rain pretty much stopped and things got slowly back to normal.

Now, towards the end of November, we have very nice weather, since about 10 days we didn't have any rain and the temperature is rising again and we get lots of sun. It seems that the rainy season this year came very early and very fiercefully but that it has moved on by now.

I'm really looking forward to December!

Interesting side effect of the bad weather patch was a very heavily increased amount of visitors to my Samui weather blog. At some days I had over 300 visitors per day, which was nice to see. People from Russia, Taiwan, Hungary, Israel, Australia and Ireland, just to name a few countries visited the site and asked questions.
Thanks for your support and I hope you keep coming back. If you found my blog useful, don't hesitate to make a donation.

Camille

29th November, 2007

Today's weather;

It's a straight blue sky this morning with the sun high and dry up there. It's just cold at night and in the mornings, well, at least of you live here. This morning at 7am it was 24C.

Yesterday was a dry and warm day, with a max temp of 30.7C.

Camille

28th November, 2007

Today's weather;

Another blue sky is shaping up with a fairly cold morning, if you live here, of just 22.7C at 7am.

Yesterday was a nice day, max temp of 30.7C and the coming 7 days are predicted with lots of sunshine with possibly some strong wind.

Camille

27th November, 2007

Today's weather;

The sun is burning through the hazy layer this morning and there's plenty of blue sky with a few scattered clouds. Current temp at 7am is 23.5C.

Yesterday was a nice day, dry and warm with a max temp of 30.5C.

Tomorrow I start another IDC again, the last one of this year. Tomorrow kicks off with the IDCS course and Thursday the actual IDC will start, regular progress and updates can be followed on my dive blog.

Camille

A donation to the local Temple

Sometimes during a Buddhist Holiday, people donate a large amount of money to the local Temple.

This year's Loy Kratong saw such a donation being made by a local women from Plai Laem to Wat Plai Laem.




At Wat Plai Laem I saw all these 'money trees' lined up. The money on the trees are gifts by 'normal' people, like you and me, or my wife. In general people give anywhere from 20 to 100 Baht but also donations of 500 and 1.000,-Baht are no exception. The money is attached to the tree and that's it.

The money that is attached to the money trees is given to the local Temple, to buy bricks, paint, wood, you name it, so a new part of the Temple can be either build or completed.

In this picture, the money trees are all loaded on to cars and driven over to the Big Buddha part of the Temple, where there will be a ceremony, not only the money trees will be handed over to the monks, but.........

..........also the gifts these people are carrying. This local family is donating 100.000,-Baht to the Temple. This is a relatively common happening at various Temples over the island, I assume that a lot of local Samui people make or made good money on land sales and donate part of that money to the local Temple. During my 8 years here, I heard of a few of such happenings, mostly when relatives where involved but so far I never witnessed such an occasion.

The 'anonymous' money trees and the big 'spenders' have arrived at the Big Buddha part of the Temple and the money (100.000,-Baht) is placed in front of the monks. The people who donate the money get to sit with the Puu Yaai Baan (Headman of the village) in font of the Monks during the ceremony in special chairs.

There are lots of people following the 'spenders' and there's music and dancing going on, on the way to the Temple. Once arrived at the Temple, all the money is put in front of the Monks and a ceremony is held, where everybody attending is seated in front of the monks, on the floor.

An interesting Thai tradition. Next time you see a new part of the Temple being build, you can silently wonder who donated part of that money.

Camille

26th November, 2007

Today's weather;

The sun is burning it's way through a whitish layer of overcast. Current temp at 7am is 23.6C.

Yesterday was a nice and dry day with a max temp of 30C.

Camille

Loy Kratong 2007

This years Loy Kratong was a good festival.

At last, it's November's Full Moon and time for this years Loy Kratong. We celebrated at Wat Plai Laem, which is rather unusual, since all other years it has been celebrated locally at Big Buddha. There always was an entrance fee at big Buddha however and now the Chaweng lake is in place, where no entrance is charged, Chaweng Lake grew overnight in popularity and Big Buddha has now been replaced by an entrance free Wat Plai Laem. Big Buddha and Wat Plai Laem are 'run' by the same monks.




This is the Kratong that my 5 year old daughter made at school, with some help of her teacher.

Traditionally the Kratongs are made of a section of the banana trunk but was recently replaced by foam, which caused damage to the environment. Now most Kratongs are again made of banana trunk or bread. It's the second successive year that they had Kratongs made out of bread at the local temple, like these in the picture, for 50,-Baht each.

We had my daughter's Kratong this year and a bread version for our 2 and a half year old son.

At the lake surrounding Wat Plai Laem are hundreds of fish, mainly cat fish and they are an attraction in itself. They obviously love the bread made Kratong but still tried to eat all other Kratongs, as you can clearly see in this picture where they are chasing our daughters Kratong.

This is our sons bread made Kratong, being chased down by dozens of catfish.

The temple had plenty of visitors early on. At around 7pm when we arrived it was already full and there was a blessing ceremony for the King followed by a money offering event which happened at Big Buddha about which I will report later.
This photo shows some of the many dozens of Kratongs floating at the temple lake.

This year also saw the traditional beauty contest and dancing by local school girls but I missed out on these events this year and went home early.

Camille

25th November, 2007

Today's weather;

It's a hazy blue sky right now, with all the ingredients of becoming a very nice sunny day. It was cold though this morning with a temp at 7am of just 22.6C.
It seems that the rainy season is over.

Yesterday was a dry day with mainly overcast and a max temp of 29C.

Camille

24th November, 2007

Today's weather;

There's overcast but it doesn't look like it's going to rain, there's a blue patch or two as well. Temp at 7am is 25.3C. The plants are being watered today in our garden, that's possibly the first time since a month or more!

Yesterday was a nice day with plenty of sunshine and a max temp of 30.5C. There was no rain!

Camille