10.7.24

Yesterday we contacted The Monkey Training Centre in Surat Thani to arrange a visit whilst we had the hire car. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible, but they messaged last night and asked if 2pm today was ok.

It certainly was ok even if we had to walk the whole way. So excited!

John found an island for us to visit this morning, not Koh Samui or anywhere well known but Koh Lamphu.

It was lovely and sunny so off we went thinking we would have breakfast on the island.

It was easy and flat and took about 30 minutes.

Plenty of photo opportunities along the way, sad seeing the differences between rich and poor in a small area.

We walked across the bridge and discovered that Koh Lamphu has a football pitch, outdoor gym equipment and nice plants.

Oh well, off to 7 Eleven then for mocha and chocolate frappes. We also got a box of mixed doughnuts.

We wandered until 1pm, sat and stuffed the doughnuts, then got a Grab the rest of the way to the Monkey centre.

We were very early, a good opportunity to read the story board and meet Somjai, one of the trainers.

She’s just wonderful, she makes you feel like you’ve known her for years. She has such a beautiful relationship with her students.

There are 4 main types of monkeys in Thailand. The only ones suitable for coconut picking training are pygmy tail monkeys. Of course not all adapt to the training.

We had joined a small group of Italians, so there was a lot of translating going on.

We’re always very wary about anything involving any cruelty to make animals cooperate. These monkeys have all learnt through positive reward and clearly love it.

We had demonstrations of how they learn to turn the coconuts to make them fall to the ground, demonstrations of how they distinguish which are the right colour and ready for picking and very importantly how they have learned how to undo ropes so that they don’t get caught up or injured. One climbed a tree to show how fast they can pick the coconuts. It was amazing.

The reason they’re on ropes is so they can demonstrate their skills. Somjai explained that she can call them, but they could turn up an hour later if not on ropes.

One of the monkeys was a large male, he’s 20 years old and retired a long time ago, but he still loves to show how smart he is and Somjai finds activities to stop him being bored.

It was the most amazing experience.

There are so many videos and photos.

After all the others had gone Somjai gave us some homemade chocolate coconut ice cream with some curled rolls that looked a bit like brandy snaps.

Absolutely delicious. A perfect end to a wonderful experience.

We walked back for about an hour enjoying the rural and then town scenery until it started raining.

It was like Türkiye back in the early days of visiting, people staring curiously and children shouting hello.

One young girl stopped her motorbike to give us her bottle of water, we already had some, but how lovely.

A young boy in his scout uniform was so excited that I gave the scout salute to him, he was calling mum, mum, mum.. Well something like that.

On the way back to our room we passed a market area that we hadnt seen before.

After a coffee we set out to get dinner. It was raining a little.

We took our washing to a launderette, no lovely assistants at this one. We were just a tad baffled. Thank goodness for Google camera translate.

We made our way to the market place. It was huge and sold everything you’d need to heat up or to prepare a meal.

Not a place for the squeamish. A lot of the fish were still moving and almost every part of an animal was available.

There were several stalls with rails and rails of second hand  clothes.

How is it possible to be the other side of the world yet it all smelled the same as every other second hand or charity shops?

No actual restaurants there but John had an amazing mango yogurt smoothie and an iced mocha (surprise surprise) for me.

We picked a little place near the launderette for dinner.

Mixed seafood and chicken rice for John, chicken and yellow noodles for me. John enjoyed his so much he had another plateful.

We went back to the launderette and our washing was still wet.

We thought the machine dried automatically after washing, the dryer was seperate above the washing machine.

After 30 minutes it was dry but John had lost a turquoise sock.

There it was going round and round with someone else’s washing!

We decided not to wait for 28 minutes to rescue it.

Back at our room it was time to get sorted for our train journey tomorrow.

It’s been a fab couple of days. My first impression of this town wasn’t great, it’s tatty in parts, smarter in others, it’s a bit of a nightmare to cross the roads, the pavements are uneven and full of obstacles, but I’m going to feel quite sad to leave it.

Monkey videos may be  duplicated, not in order or blank. .

It’s taken hours of retrying, phone overheating, spitting and swearing to get them to upload at all!