Ships and Diving for Coins at Ko Si Chang
Posted by Stuart at 07:44 PM on August 04, 2008When I was on Ko Si Chang on Saturday, I took a few videos that I'll share here. (This is the first time I have ever uploaded anything to YouTube, so I hope it works!)
The first video was taken from the big Chinese Temple and is looking out over the Gulf of Thailand back towards the mainland. Ko Si Chang is about 10 kilometers from Thailand's biggest port at Laem Chabang. It was amazing how many huge ships were docked here.
The 47-second video below shows some of the ships, and the main town of Ko Si Chang, and finished on the boat pier where I missed my first ferry and had to buy another ticket for the second one. In the background, you can hear monks chanting from the Thai temple below the temple I was in. You can also here the constant din that all of the boat traffic is making. It's definitely not as peaceful here as when King Rama V came here for rest and relaxation!
Once on the ferry, I witnessed something I have never seen before. There were several young boys (around 10-12 years old, perhaps) playing in the water around the boat. They soon started yelling at the passengers to throw coins into the water. When the coins were thrown, the boys would dive for them. Each one of them must have made 30 baht (US$1) or so. Not bad for fun and games when you're 10.
Here's a ten second video of a couple of the boys competing for the sinking coins. The first boy gives up, but the second boy stays under a bit longer and comes up with the prize.
Nick: I didn't see any cruise ships. Most of the ones I saw were freighters and rice barges. One interesting thing I did see was the freighters that had big "scoopers" (not the technical word, I'm sure) that would reach down to the rice barge and scoop up a big load of rice and lift it up and dump it in the huge ship.
(Actually, I don't know much about shipping so I am sure I am calling these vessels the wrong thing!)
I haven't heard of cruise ships coming to Thailand. That doesn't seem to be a big business in Asia. Although I assume that if the big ones were to come to Thailand, that they would be too big to go up the river to Bangkok and instead would have to dock here at Laem Chabang.
Cool videos! Thanks for sharing them. I liked seeing those big boats in the harbor - I wonder if they were cruise ships?