Koh Samui history: from coconut island to resort

Samui's written history is thin, and the sources are careful to say so. A study held in the TAT tourism library, a University of Otago thesis on the island, records local folklore crediting Malay fishermen with the first settlement some 1500 years ago.¹ It adds that the island was frequently visited by passing Chinese traders, which tells us the sea mattered long before the beaches did.²

The same study places the island in a wider network. In the 13th century, it says, Samui held a crucial international trading position as a commercial intermediary between China and India.⁷ We would not stretch that into a story about palaces or ports, because the record is general, but it explains why an island of coconut groves ended up with such mixed communities.

Today the island sits in Surat Thani, the largest province in Southern Thailand, whose archipelago of islands includes Ko Samui itself.⁸ TAT's picture of that archipelago adds Ko Pha-ngan, Ko Tao and the Ang Thong marine park, and Samui is the island this page follows. The rest of this page follows the island's own timeline, then the landmarks tourists see.

Until recent decades Samui changed slowly. The thesis says that in comparison with other areas of Thailand the island society had shown almost no physical change.²⁹ Getting around reflected that: before the ring road, a boat trip round the coast to collect coconuts or passengers could eat up as many as three days (3 days).¹⁰

The road changed everything. A concrete ring road of 52 km, the same study says, only arrived in the early 1970s.¹¹ Once a road joined the coast, the beaches became reachable, and the whole island, about 25 km from end to end, now feels close together.^30,31

That history still colours a visit. TAT describes the interior as orchards and plantations, with small dirt roads running between coconut groves.^32,33 A jeep safari travels through that working landscape, which gives a sense of the island that people lived in before the ring road made the coast easy to reach. Ask your guide about the farms you pass.

The legends are where history meets tourism. Hin-Ta and Hin-Yai are the coastal boulders south of Lamai Beach that visitors call Grandpa and Grandma.²³ TAT says a signboard near them details a local folklore legend, and that locals revere the rocks and believe they bring luck and fertility.²⁴ The tourist jokes are easy, but the local belief is genuine.

The most striking story belongs to Wat Khunaram. Luangpho Daeng passed away in 1973, and since then his body has rested in a glass case with little sign of decay.²⁶ Tradition holds that he set his followers a test: cremate him if the body decomposed, and display it if it did not, as a lasting lesson in the Buddha's teachings.⁵³ For Thais, TAT adds, his life is an inspiration to follow the Buddhist precepts.⁵⁴

Other landmarks tell newer stories. The Big Buddha, known locally as Wat Phra Yai, is on Ko Fan off the northeastern corner of the island and reached by a causeway.²¹ Its golden statue is 12 metres tall and seated in the posture of subduing Mara.²² The Secret Buddha Garden, a private park of statues, and the red temple Wat Sila Ngu are younger curiosities that fill out a heritage day.^40,27

How many tourists visit Koh Samui each year? The best figures we can quote come from official counts in the thesis, which draws on the Tambon Municipality of Koh Samui and TAT. They show 675,413 tourists in 1990, 823,122 in 2000, 937,763 in 2004 and about 1.06 million in 2007.^17,19,20,6 The chart below plots them.

We do not give a current annual number, because none of the official sources we use publishes one for the island alone, and a guess would be worse than silence. TAT's own statistics office is the place to look for recent arrivals. What the older series does show is the scale of change: the 2007 count is far above the 1990 count, in a place whose airport only began operating in 1989.^6,17,5

Those numbers also explain the island's mixed feelings about growth. Early on, tourism was an extra income beside coconuts; today it is the main business of the island. When you choose a tour, a guide who grew up on the island is worth the same as any other local expert, because the history in this page is something that they have lived through.