Snake Temple, elephants and more beaches

The following days we drove around the island and visited The Snake Temple, saw elephants and hung out at various beaches.

Even though we liked the hotel we stayed at, there were mosquitoes in the room and since there was no net over the bed, at least I needed mosquito spray when I slept. I must be allergic to mosquitoes in Asia, since if I get bitten I end up with huge bites. Therefore I used almost one full bottle of mosquito spray in one week (with 95% DEET,  which worked smashingly). This would probably freak out a normal person, but since I'm a chemist I sort of lost my psychological sensitivity to poison quite a few years ago ;) Jonas on the other hand, went from strength 30 to 15 sunblock spray and about one full bottle of each. I also realized that flies and mosquitoes are hardly around in Singapore and that it might be because of the fogging, which allegedly then must be working. However, I'm very happy to be living in Singapore for that reason, since flies are probably one of the most disgusting animals I know. They are like small, flying rats, but worse in my book, since they actually move from poo to food. Nasty

We took the bike for an exploration tour and this is my husband on one of the sighting spots along the winding roads 

 We stopped at one of the beaches to have a well deserved swim and plan our next move

 There was a beautiful shrine on the way down. This lead to an interesting discussion though about if the above are called 'shrines' or not, since in Japan a shrine is for Shintoism (with the typical Tori gates/archways for instance) and it is a big building. A temple in Japan is for Buddhism (often with the characteristic Pagodas on the temple area grounds), but is also a big house. Hence it becomes a bit like comparing a church and a synagog. We were therefore a bit confused, but found out that a shrine in Thailand is a place of worship often directed towards a deity (can be natural or supernatural being with superhuman powers) or a god; a temple however, is run by live-in monks or nuns and is a house of worship. Both are for Buddhism though

 Finally we reached the beach! And it was just endless

Getting  back on the road, I spotted this really super cool and super big red building by the bay area of Hua Thanon, so we decided to take a closer look..

 ..and found oh so many snakes. At least they weren't real, but I slightly freaked out as I was turning a corner and almost stumbled into this one. But who can be afraid of snake wearing Honolulu necklaces? Even though it was a black cobra ;)

 Another part of the temple area, where a woman sat by the ocean and quietly sang

The temple was beautifully situated by the sea and we found out it was called Wat Sila Ngu ('Sila Ngu' is 'snake')

These might be grave stones or small shrines, we are again not entirely sure..

 ..and they were everywhere

 Then we found the really big snakes. Golden. Again, why not? However, snakes have several meanings in Thai culture and religion and most of them seem to be positive. For instance if you dream about snakes, you might find your true love or if you see a snake on the road in front of you, you shall receive money the next day. That's actually quite nice

 This sign was kind of lost on us though

 Another fantastically shiny part of the temple, as we were leaving the premises..

 ..to get back on the road (it looks slightly different from the endless, dark and thick pine tree forests in the areas I grew up)..

..and ended up in an elephant park. You might be able to distinguish the elephant behind the palm tree, while I'm really taking a pic of the very smart get-on-get-off-the-elephant-building. Quite clever

I guess the actual carrying around tourists must be quite boring for the elephants, but they seemed to have very spacious areas to move around on when they weren't on duty. And this one even seemed to be laughing at us! 

 This mother was both joking with her baby, but also stealing things from the tourists and throwing branches to people, then catching them with her trunk if they were returned

And it's always nice to see the Swedish flag; never are you so patriotic as when you leave your own country

 We stopped at another beach which looked gorgeous from afar but it was so dirty (which was really sad to see on quite a few locations at Koh Samui actually)..

 ..so we up and left on our glorious ride..

 ..went to get food at the local market..

 ..where I had fruit juice for the first time in months. And it was really bad. What was maybe worse, was the sausages (to the right). They tasted like old feet

There were also flies absolutely everywhere, a foul smell surrounding the area and we decided to leave asap

Surprise, surprise though, we ended up in an Irish pub, where we had the choice of 'Paddy Thai' (after having a large Guinness, that is hilarious).. 

..and it got even better when we passed this bakery where you could actually have 'Crap'

 Even the McDonald's man became funny at that point. Maybe more cute than funny though!

We kept up the tradition with funny names throughout the evening..

..where the menu also invited to us lying across the table laughing ('massamun' can be translated in Swedish to 'a lot of mouth' and 'som' means 'as' i. e. 'as Tum Thai', straight away lead to the absolutely ridiculous Narnia and the even more ridiculous Mr Tumnus = this was obviously his Thai cousin. OK, it was  hysterical at the time.. 

..especially after beer

In addition, the food was completely outstanding; I had the best red curry I have ever tasted for about S$3..

 ..and then we treated ourselves to a banana/chocolate pancake. Each. By then I had completely given up the LCHF business, which gave me grief the entire week btw. I don't understand how I have been able to eat the amounts of sugar I have for so many years and lived a normal life. Seriously, eating carbs, fruit and candy in combination, gave me sugar highs and lows like never before. I got so hungry in between meals, I became completely numb and my stomach took this weird convex shape. And if I didn't get food that instant, I got faint, a massive headache and according to my husband became 'almost like one of the witches in Oz and I wouldn't go with the white one'. Seriously, life without sugar and a more or less constant insulin level is awesome