Koh Chang – a wet island paradise

We finally received our passports back with our shiny new Indian visas. Once we had documents in hand we decided to escape the busy capital and find ourselves a little slice of island paradise. With our flight back only five days away we needed to stay fairly close to Bangkok to get a good few days on the beach so we chose Koh Chang, which was only six hours away by bus and boat.

Koh Chang is Thailand’s second largest island and right near the border of lovely Cambodia ($1). The island looks like your typical Asian island with lush green hills and windswept palm trees lining the sandy beaches. We hopped on an open air taxi from the ferry port and dumped our bags on the roof of what was basically a pick up truck. Off we went up windy hills and through raggedy towns. As we were admiring the view behind us suddenly there was a crash and we saw a big silver blob cartwheeling down the road. Turns out it was my rucksack – brilliant. We shouted to the driver (who hadn’t even noticed or didn’t really care) who turned the taxi around for me to retrieve my poor battered bag. The driver seemed to think it was pretty funny and blamed the wind (there was no wind). We continued on to our bungalow where i could assess the damage.

The bag turned out to be okay, just a few tears which i patched up with electrical tape. The rain cover is screwed though, so hopefully it doesn’t rain much from now on – it doesn’t rain in the rainforest right?

We stayed at a place called Noren Resort which was run by a crazy Swedish guy named Martin. He was mega nice, but just shouted at you whenever he spoke to you. His fluent Thai with a Swedish accent was something to behold :). The place itself was really nice and only about 15 quid a night.

We dropped our stuff off and headed to the beach to get a bit of sun, sand and sea. From the second we stepped onto that beach it practically didn’t stop raining for any extended period of time until we were back on the boat heading to Bangkok! It was fine, we would rather be here having a beer looking out to the stormy sea than holed up in Bangkok. We tried to book a trek, but it was cancelled every day due to the weather 😦 We did see some elephants by the side of the road who are used to take you through the forests of Koh Chang, but the weather was never good enough for us to use them. Martin kept telling us that it has been the driest low season he can remember and just before we came he had enjoyed sunny days for like three weeks – thanks for that 🙂

We had a nice relaxing time though, Carla had many massages and i had many swims in the rain – lush!

After our little beach break we were back on the bus and off on the next stage of our adventure – the tropical jungles of Borneo where the scariest and most dangerous animal in the world can be found the rare and wild  Rachel “Cornish” Payne – aggghhhhh!

Laters,

J