Khlong Krut

Well, not so much.

Ban Krut is reknown for its coconut groves. Rows of coconut palms line the entire beach front and inland the groves extend as far as you can see. Yesterday, when we looked out over Ban Krut from the temple, we could see the true magnitude of the plantations.

From the coastline to the mountains the land is covered in lush greenery. As my camera zoomed in on the green area, it became clear that it was actually nothing but a blanket of coconut palms.

So here's the weird part.

As I sit poolside composing this blog, I look up at the trees surrounding me and count at least fifteen coconuts on each of them. And that's only on the side facing me. With all the trees in the area, there must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of coconuts ripe for the picking.

But in the three days we've been here we haven't seen anyone selling any form of coconut, except for one guy near our hotel who was producing and selling freshly shredded coconut.

Any other place we've been in Thailand it seems everyone is selling the stuff. Sometimes it's just the meat, carefully removed from the shell and packaged. Sometimes it's entire bunches of loverly young coconuts. Sometimes it's bags of fresh coconut juice and sometimes it's ice cold whole young coconuts with their tops lopped off and a straw stuck in them. And let's not forget about coconut chips, coconut milk and all the various coconut based desserts for sale at all the markets.

When we decided to come here we figured we'd be sipping gallons of young coconut water, but alas, the only water we drink here is the aqua pura that comes from 1.5 liter bottles we buy at Tesco.

Sigh......Read more