Friday, May 05, 2006

Just call me Crash

Yesterday we thought we would join Sadie and Rock in the tour of the island on scooters. We had done this while we were on our honeymoon 11 years ago, so I thought this will be a piece of cake. Unfortunately it wasn't as easy as it looked and as we were getting ready to go on our tour I crashed my scooter into a ditch across from our villa. This may not surprise many of you as I have never been known as a good driver. Luckily I wasn't seriously injured, but I do have a huge bruise on my right thigh from where the handlebar landed, a scrapped up left knee and a small chunk of my toe is missing.

After Dr. Jonny fixed my foot I climbed back on to my scooter and gave it another shot. We went to the tomb of the Mummified Monk. Here is an exert I found on the web about the the monk:

The mummified monk is located in a smaller building in Wat Khunaram. The monk known as Dang Piyasilo also Phra Kru Samathakittikhun. The venerable ex-abbot of Wat Khunaram on Koh Samui. A native of Koh Samui he enjoyed a long prosperous family life until he was 50 years old when he decides to devote the last part of his life to the monkhood. After being ordain in,he became reknown for his meditation practice for about 20 years. He was also able to foresee his own death in 1973 when he was 79 years old. After his death his body remained undecomposed so his family and disciples decided to place his body in an upright position with in the casket as requested by him in written instructions. To keep as a symbol to aspire the future generations to follow Buddhist teachings and be saved from suffering.

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Here he is in his glass coffin. He has decomposed, but he looks pretty good for being dead for over 30 years.

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Wat Khunaram

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I needed to be blessed after my little accident.

After our visit to the temple we stopped at a scenic view to see the ocean. Here is a picture of Jonny and I at the view.

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As we headed around the island we stopped at a British grocery store called Tesco. On Wednesday I went to a Thai cooking course for half of the day to learn how to cook these beautiful dishes we have been eating. I was very happy to hit a grocery store to try and find some of the ingredients to make Thai food to take back to the 'Du since the ingredients in Thai food is very hard to find in China. I found lots of different goodies like different curry pastes to make a few of my favorite Thai dishes.

Our next stop was Big Buddha.

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This was an enormous Buddha! Here is the story of Big Buddha. It was a very impressive statue with other statues of Buddhas all around.

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Here we are with a sleeping Buddha.

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Big Buddha is located on a penisula and has spectacular views. We are standing directly in back of Big Buddha.

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Here are pictures of our personal Buddhas, Jonny and Rock!

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Sadie and Rock behind Big Buddha.

I had one other mishap with the scooter. As we were driving back to the villa I drove right into the bushes. I was very happy to turn in the keys when we arrived safely home.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You look like you are having so much fun!
The story about the mummy is very interesting.