Saturday, December 15, 2007

Ban Tha Sathon hot spring

Hot spring signThe Ban Tha Sathon hot spring (บ่อน้ำร้อนบ้านท่าสะท้อน) is located in Tha Sathon subdistrict, in the southeast of Phunphin district, Surat Thani province. When coming from Tha Kham (Phunphin) town, one has to take Thai highway 401 to the west, and then the 4448 going south. Some kilometers after crossing the railway one has to turn into a narrow side road to the right, and after some more kilometers turn into another one to the left. Don't worry, it has signs at these two intersections. The compound itself then cannot be missed anymore, one will see the above sign and then directly hit the parking lot.

Bathing childrenAlready visible from the road is the big pond, which seem to be quite popular for Thai children to do bathing. The water seems to be very clean, the whitish color probably comes from the minerals from the spring. Next to the pool is a building with the sanitary facilities, and as usual in Thailand there are food stalls next to the parking lot as well. The whole compound looks very new, which is probably the reason why I haven't been able to notice it in either Google Earth nor PointAsia yet. We only visited that spring while we were on the way to Khao Sok, so we had neither bathing suit with us nor enough time to check out the swimming ourself.

The hot spring itselfThe pond is filled with water originating from the hot spring, which is encircled with a wooden walkway. Getting closer to the water there isn't recommendable, as it has a temperature of about 70° there. Quite odd to see even a little bit of steam on a sunny day with an air temperature of around 30°. Sadly my Thai is not good enough to get anything of the geological details of this spring from this website, but as there's no volcanism in that area the water must come from rather deep to get that hot.

15 comments:

Unknown said...

thank you for useful information.I 'm looking for hotsprings around suratthani too.
I didn't know this hotspring.I try to go there this or next month.I'm living in koh samui.
last weekend I went to hotspring @ tambon khao tok.

Andy said...

This was the first and so far only hot spring I visited. I'd like to visit more, but it's hard to find any information in English - once we tried to follow the signs to one near Kanchanadit, but did not succeed to find it. Can you point me to a map with the locations of further hot springs? Or shall we do one with Google Maps ourself, I've done maps for my mail blog that way already.

Unknown said...

the hotspring in Kanchanadit is very hard to find. I went last Dec.
last hotspring sign have route44, after enter the village, no more sigh in English. So I asked thai people, they navigate by motercycle.I forget little bit after sign.But I may can mark at map.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kohsamui/sets/72157603383235205/
There are photos.

I'm writting about hotspring too.But I write Japanese.
http://www.soma-samui.com/blog/wp_soma/?cat=77

>Or shall we do one with Google Maps ourself

It's very interesting!!
I wanna try!

Anonymous said...

One more hot spring around Phunphin:
http://www.bloggang.com/viewblog.php?id=jantojin&date=30-10-2008&group=10&gblog=2

(in Bokrang village)

This is a Thai blog, so it can be translated with
http://translate.google.com/translate_t#

not perfectly but good enough to have an idea about the place
Good luck!

Andy said...

Looks interesting, just sad that the posting there does not include a map or the coordinates where to find that place. I would love to add it to the hot spring map...

Anonymous said...

It turns out that Bo krang is a train station (ที่หยุดรถไฟบ่อกรัง in Thai wikipedia - but no coordinates!):

Surat thani - Khao Hua Kwai - Bo krang
Khao Hua Kwai station is indicated on the google map but Bo kran station, unfortunately, not. And the resolution of this area is dropped. We can measure +5.72 กม. from Khao Hua Kwai station and point the place approximately...

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=ru&geocode=&q=thailand&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.494074,78.75&ie=UTF8&ll=9.009792,99.268942&spn=0.043234,0.076904&t=h&z=14

The target place is around the centre of this map.
I'm sorry for this long link. I have no skills in using html tags.

Andy said...

Tanks, I can find the village and train station Bo Krang now. In PointAsia ist has higher resolution satellite photo of the place, but I cannot recognize a building which looks like in the photos from bloggang there. It's directly within the village, or a little bit outside?

Anonymous said...

To answer your question I will have to talk with a friend of mine who went there by car. As soon as possible I will let you know. There is a vast cloud over a part of the village on the PointAsia satellite image...it may be there :)

Unknown said...

If you are still interseted I can give you the exact coordinates from the spring

Arjen

Andy said...

I am always interested in adding more hot springs of Surat Thani in this Google map, or corrections to the coordinates in that map.

You are referring to the spring in Bo Krang? Just email me the coordinates and I will add them into the map directly.

Unknown said...

N8 58.525 E99 15.829

Coordinates from the hot spring you descripeabove, so I guess it is Ban Tha Sathon.

By the way, I think you are the one who also added the monkeyschool on the map? You are about 1km to far upnorth. The right position is added also.

Regards, Arjen.

Andy said...

Yes, those coordinates are for Ban Sathon, too bad there's still no high resolution image in Google Earth for that area to place the marker more exactly.

I have fixed the Monkey school map, also the blog posting on the school was placed wrong and is now corrected.

Koh Samui Travel said...

Thanks, I am looking for hot springs in Thailand. I have been to one in Sathun - a very small one. They made it like a swimming pool - cut all the trees, cemented the natural surroundings, and... well, I guess that's their idea of making it beautiful. If they just had a bit more "Japanese" sense for embedding it into a natural surrounding, it could be such a beautiful place.

Jhdubbeldam said...

You can also check out Soaking in Siam

Rick

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