Koh Samui Hotel Reservation.
Koh Samui Hotel Reservation and Booking
Powered by R24 database and ECOM Thailand, your guarantee. Also
see general
information about this tropical Island in the Gulf of Thailand at
the Koh Samui Portal. Koh Samui is a travel and holiday
destination with good accommodation in hotels, bungalows, houses
and villas for rent and resorts. Pristine beaches, jungle rivers
and many attractions.
Koh Samui: History.
Prehistory
"Khwan Fa", a stone axe used to hunt animals with during the
Stone Age, was found here leading us to believe that human beings
had been living on this island during that period.
The most important archaeological evidence was found in 1977 and
2000 in the area of Wat Talingpung and Lamai : A kind of
prehistoric drum ("Glong Mahoratung Sumrid"), dating back to the
Stone Age, which is now kept at Chaiya National Museum in
Suratthani. Suratthani.
Koh Samui (Samui Island) was a known Island and Archipelago among
ancient boatmen for a long time. Archaeologists assume that people
on Koh Samui traded with people from the mainland before recorded
history, exchanging coconuts and seafood with goods from the
mainland.
Its richness in tin made it very attractive also during middle
bronze age.
History
The island was settled about 15 centuries ago, by groups or
companies dedicated to tin ore.
At this time tropical jungle covered still the quasi totality of
the Island.
So around the time of the start of the Reconquista in Spain at
Roncesvalles we could describe Koh Samui as a Jungle Island,
probably much bigger than now and with more marshes and humidity
level. Islanders practiced fishing, cultivation, trade, and they
were blessed by living in a place were currency, sea shells, were
find in their beaches in quantity.
Land is hyper fertile here so we could describe this islands in
this time as a quasi paradise.
There was also a kind of services industry, dedicated to made sea
shells collars that were appreciated as presents or money.
Sea Salt, another big commodity in ancient times due to the more
enlightened crystal culture than our vile times, was also
harvested in Koh Samui in many salinas today gone.
Today, Koh Samui imports salt
If we advance in time, we find Koh Samui as a part of the
Svirichai civilization that flourished as a maritime empire
between what is today Thailand and Malaysia.
From this period, an ancient fishing boat with a flat body
carrying potteries was found sunk in the ocean half way between
Koh Samui and Koh Tan. Cooking pots, jugs, cooking ovens,
originating from the town of Srisatchanalai and Mai Nam Noi
(north of Bangkok) were found in the boat. There was also
porcelain and celadon from China, bronze-coated utensils from the
Ayutthaya era, and short rounded stone tables. This discovery
suggests that the boat sailed around Southeast Asia. Coconuts
were also found on the boat which could have been either
provisions or goods or both. It is very possible that coconuts
may have been a major part of the cargo carried in the boat. It
is likely that the boat had sailed from a port north of the Gulf
of Thailand and stopped at Koh Samui to load up and then it
headed south to Nakorn Si Thammarat or Pattalung. However it sank
before completing the trip. This wreck gives us an idea of the
naval activities at that time.
The tin settlements evolved to small permanent towns and some
harbours flourished. Naval activity was at this time much higher
than it is today, as the sea was the major, and many times only,
way for transportation and commerce.
Koh Samui's archaeological discoveries
The Glong Mahoratug drum is considered to be a part of the
Dong Son culture that has its origins at the Songma River in
Northern Vietnam. A boat delivering souls is painted on the drum.
In the boat are a bird and 5 or 6 half bird, half man creatures
with their heads decorated with feathers. This type of boat is
believed to have been made from some kind of grass, similar to
the first grass boats seen in Egyptian paintings. The drum was
popular in Southeast Asia. It has also been found in Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos and Burma, and on several islands in the South of
Thailand. The discovery of archaeological sea resources show that
Samui islanders had traded with people from near and far since
the Ayutthaya era.
Samui and Svirichai
Svirichai empire was based on the control of the Sumatra
straits, but also on controlling access to Khmer and Thai ports
of commerce.
It was also a maritime guild, and Koh Samui has conserved to date
this tradition, as folks on Koh Samui talk about themselves as
Chao Samui or brotherhood of Samui, in the sense of maritime
brotherhood or "hermanos de la costa".
Very much in the way that corsaries organised themselves in a
brotherhood in the West Indies, but in a much greater scale, as
both Thai and Khmer payed tribute to Svirichai to avoid attack to
their ships and coastal cities.
The Island has rivers that carry water all year around. This made
it a good anchorage.
Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese sailed here at the end of the
Svirichai period and left recounts of its glory and
grandeur.
They started coconut cultivation, by promising locals to come
back to buy their coconuts. Ships carried coconuts to asian and
european countries and they give a boost to the Island economy.
Until this time industry included only tin mining, bronze
working, fishing, farming. The services sector included
pirating and harbours.
The arrival of chinese and europeans is going to give a boost to
coconut cultivation.
Koh Samui appears on Ming Dynasty maps dating back to 1687, under
the name Pulo Cornam.
Then disaster struck in the form of a big eruption and earthquake
in Borneo that generated one of the biggest tsunami on record.
The maritime empire just vanished.
But relationship with the europeans and chinese was open. So the
boats keep on coming after the big tsunami and offered survivors
to buy tin and coconuts.
The Island survived with this trade until the boom in tin prices
at the beginning of the past century. The high prices of the
mineral prompted a nascent and savage capitalism to import slave
workers to the island to mine tin. It is said that at a time more
than 2000 slave miners worked here.
Introduction of chemical techniques for mining, with total
disregard for nature guided the island to its next big
catastrophe, tin poisoning.
In fact, it is said that it was not tin only, but the residual
chemicals used to mine tin from ore that poisoned the environment
to the point that many died in Koh Samui.
This was not an isolated phenomenon, at the same time many other
tin exploitations around the world produced similar disasters,
Pukhet for example witnessed the same situation. As did many
european and american exploitations.
The Islands were more or less abandoned by the survivors and the
population dropped to very low levels.
Muslim Sea Gypsies, did not quit on the islands, as they did have
very little contact with land, and they were nomad. Some
Government representatives also remained. But the islands were
much more calm and quiet for many years.
As land was available, some people arrived from overcrowded
countries. Generally they came by sea. And they claimed land by
taking property of it. The Island organised itself in districts
around the coast, communicated only by sea and ruled by a chief.
They called themselves chao koh or brother of the Island. In the
1938 to 1980 immigration from china, Vietnam and Cambodia
increased following the chinese civil war, the Vietnamese wars,
and the Cambodian civil war.
People arrived in wood boats from 8 to 20 meters, packed. Some
stayed, some continued to the mainland. Many perished in the
attempt, but some succeeded, and todays descendants figure
between the more influential business people in the
islands.
A little tin pollution is not worrying much someone who has
witnessed such human made horrors as to made attractive packing
one's belongings and embarking on a small wood boat, with no
return, without a destination.
The ones who stayed and were clever enough to learn about the
land property access rules in Thailand claimed land and at the
second generation were often octroyed with land titles dedicated
to coconut cultivation in the thousands of rais.
This is one of the origins of the power and wealth of today's
chao koh community and the chinese community, the ruling classes
in the Island, along with government officials.
Maritime transport was still prevalent until the early 1970s, and
the 15km journey from one side of the island to the other
involved a whole-day trek through the mountainous central
jungles, or a long boat trip.
This polarised the Island in two focus or centers. One nearer the
mainland main harbour, Suratthani, todays Nathon, that received
the ships from Suratthani and evolved to be an administrative
center, more or less controlled by the government, and the rest
of the island, where the Chao Koh were and are undisputed masters
of the universe.
In the 1970,s also the first hippies arrived and many liked the
thing that was cool and had ample natural spaces.
One of the first big resorts in the Island, World Resort opened
in 19.., but before this some very basic hut type resorts existed
here conforming the base to todays thriving tourism that we can
evaluate at half million tourists per year.
Today, Samui has a registered population of about forty-nine thousand, and
lives on a tourist industry, as well as exports of coconut and
rubber. The local economy has been keeping a good pace fueled by tourism if compared with the mainland.
It even has its own international airport, with flights to
Bangkok, Pukhet, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
Very recently, the island has dotted with some luxury hotels in
the beach side. Its interest is as door to the archipelago of
100 islands many of them still inhabited.
