Elephants and Monkeys

After a couple of days lazing around on a tropical beach we thought we'd get out and see what else Koh Samui had to offer. Turns out there's quite a lot, so we booked onto an 'eco' tour. This claimed to include 'monkey training' and Phil spent the night before it unable to sleep with worry that we'd signed up to support monkeys juggling with fire and other monkey cruelty...

The tour turned out to be really good though with apparently no animals hurt in the making of the tour.

First stop was elephant riding (actually we arrived early so were entertained by hundreds of catfish being fed by the next door monastry, but then there was elephant riding). Much fun:

Afterwards we got to feed the Elephant! This involved holding up a bananna which was taken out of our hands by his dexterous trunk and dropped off in his mouth to be gobbled up, skins and all!

Next stop was thai cookery. Unfortunately we didn't get a photo of that - we were too busy eating. Yum.

Then off to the coconut plantation and finding out how to make coconut milk (not the coconut water as we'd previously assumed), and then it was time of the MONKEY! He very cleverly (and seemingly without animal cruelty, and definately without a shiny suit such as the monkeys on the fliers for monkey circus which is well known as the home of monkey cruelty on Koh Samui...grrr says Phil) spun the coconuts with his hand a foot until they fell from the tree. Apparently each monkey can harvest up to 200 coconuts per day!

Then we took a trip to the Namuang waterfall and whilst it was too murkey to swim (because of the previous night's monsoon downpour) it was very pretty...