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 Koh Samui History...
The island was probably first inhabited about 15 centuries ago, settled by fishermen from Malay Peninsula and Southern China. It appears on Ming Dynasty maps dating back to 1687, under the name Pulo Cornam. The name Samui is mysterious in itself. Perhaps it is an extension of the name of one of the native trees, mui, or it is a corruption of the Chinese word Saboey, meaning "safe haven".
Until the late 20th century, Samui was an isolated self-sufficient community, having little connection with the mainland of Thailand. The island was even without roads until the early 1970s,
Before 1940, there were no roads nor vehicles on Koh Samui. Its inhabitants lived where simply and almost without contact with the outside world. People moved on the island on foot or by boat by following coasts. For example, to go from Maenam to Lamai, it took several hours of walking through the mountaineous jungle, and going there and back in the same day was impossible.
Tourism was there unknown, because there was simply no convenient means to go to the island.
The only way of reaching it from mainland was with the daily connection by night boat, what took more than 6 hours of crossing from Suratthani to Nathon. And by arriving here, it was necessary even to count several hours to reach final destination.
The firsts construction plans of a road were abandoned because of the numerous mountaineous regions of the island and the impossibility to bring on it construction machines. But in 1967, Khun Dilok Suthiklom, the "leader" of the island at that time decided that something must be made for the development and asked the country government for help. Two main obstacles were the high hill between Nathon and Maenam and the rocky and mountaineous side between Lamai and Chaweng which had to be blown up to allow the road to rise in an acceptable angle. Trees and rocks were removed to clear the way which as final result was a narrow track which made the round of the island. The beginning of the construction of the road began with a long and enormous manual labour of several hundred persons "to clean" a way around the island.
The first years before the concrete laying, it was not rare that everybody came out from car (excepted the driver obviously) to push and to help it go up hillsides. The sector between Lamai and Chaweng had to be cut in the mountain on a 3 km lenght, a task which would have been impossible without dynamite and heavy construction machines. So, machines were brought from mainland and due to the lack of a deep quay of stopover, had to be landed on the ground by deep enough coasts to allow the big transport boat to get closer to the bank and to cast anchor on the ground.
During this period, delays were taken on the construction project due to the rainy season and to the monsoon, making practically impossible the progress of the works.
And finally in 1973, order had come from Bangkok to finish this project up and the concrete began to pour to finish 52 kilometres of road which make the round of the island. For a long time, this road was only 2 metres in width until when it was widen about 2 years ago to face the traffic increase.
Today, Samui has a population of about forty-five thousand, and lives on a successful tourist industry, as well as exports of coconut and rubber. It even has its own international airport, with flights daily to Bangkok and other major airports in Southeast Asia. While the island presents an unspoiled image to the public perception, economic growth has brought not only prosperity and changes to the island's environment and culture, a source of conflict between local residents and migrants from other parts of Thailand and other countries. We now can hardly imagine the time when the only way to go from a place to another one on Koh Samui was on foot or by boat... as it is so easily to going around the island and nearby .
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History 
