Stone Fish Museum

More than 3,000 fish, crabs, and other sea creatures line the display hall at the Stone Fish Museum in Don Sak — every one of them hand-carved from stone by Kitti Sinudom, a retired fisherman who started sculpting after settling here from Phetchaburi’s Ban Lam district. He picked up hammer and chisel roughly three decades ago; his first carving alone took about three months. What’s on display isn’t natural rock art shaped by the sea, despite how the pieces might look at a glance — it’s the sustained output of one man working marble, sandstone, limestone, and granite into fish shapes, some true to life-size, others scaled up or down for effect.

The collection is organised loosely by type: freshwater species on one side, saltwater reef fish and open-water fish on another, and a section for everything else that swims or scuttles — shrimp, crab, seahorse, squid, and stingray among them. Labels next to each piece name the species it represents. Sinudom has said the project is partly an act of gratitude to the fish that supported his fishing career, and partly a record of species that have become harder to find in the Gulf of Surat Thani as coastal fishing pressure has grown.

It’s a small, personal museum rather than a polished institution — an open-air display hall built up around one man’s decades of carving, not a government-run natural history collection. That’s part of what makes it worth the short stop: there’s nowhere else quite like it on this stretch of coast.

Insider Tip: Don Sak is the main departure point for Koh Samui and Koh Phangan ferries, so this works best as a 30-45 minute stop en route rather than a standalone trip — pair it with lunch at Don Sak’s pier-side seafood stalls before you catch a ferry.

Watch out: This is a small private collection, not a large attraction — arrive with modest expectations of scale and you won’t be disappointed.

Combine the visit with Koh Raet, a small working fishing island a short causeway crossing away in the same district, or check the Surat Thani guide for the rest of the mainland before you catch a ferry to Koh Samui.