Koh Chang

I don't know whether this is spelled Koh Chang or Ko Chang - I see it both ways. So, whichever you prefer, I am talking about the same "elephant island" off the coast of Thailand near Trat, which is in the south near to Cambodian border.

We arrive at Koh Chang the cheap way and the hard way. Sarah, Nicky, and I took a bus from Bangkok's Eastern bus terminal to Trat. That was yet another 6 hour bus ride. Apparently everything in SE Asia ia about a 6 hour bus ride apart. Just keep that in mind. Oh, and this bus to Trat thought it would be really cute if it NEVER stopped long enough for anyone to get out and go to the bathroom. Now prior to getting on the bus we had stopped for waters and beers (it was forth of July that day and we figured we could celebrate). Nicky had also purchased and drank a coffee before getting on the bus. Well about 4 hours in we all seriously had to pee but Nicky, having drank that coffee, was especially miserable. When we got to a bigger city along the way to stop at that bus terminal Nicky had to run out and I made sure the bus man didn't leave her. Now, this bus was soooooo crowded that some people were standing in the aisles. That's right, standing in the aisles on a 6 hour bus ride. Anyway, somehow we arrived at Trat, bought some candy - since it's about 7pm and we haven't had dinner or lunch due to the crunched travel times. We got in the glorified back of a pick up truck - which is what taxis are in this part of Thailand and were driven, along with a cute little German family and some other wayward travelers, to the Trat - Koh Chang ferry pier. Then, we got on a 45 minute ferry ride to the island and drank those celebratory beers. Then, when we got off the ferry this pick up truck style taxi drove us an hour to another side of the island - there is ONE road on Koh Chang - and we finally arrived circa 8:30-9pm.

Well, we immediately got taken to our bungalow, which was not exactly what they had described and was 100 baht more expensive, put out stuff down, and went in search of food and celebrations (it's still forth of July afterall). We end up eating dinner and drinking some seriously interesting Mai Tais from the place we are renting the bungalows. Then, we met some other travelers who convinced us to go basically bar hopping down the 4 bar strip near us. Well somehow during that process we met another group of travelers - that included two Aussie brothers (Charlie and ummmm, cannot remember), a girl from Holland, and some other random Europeans. They took us to this awesome bar that was on a deck over the ocean and had these crazy giant colored lights and whatnot. There, we got a table on the edge of the deck so that we were leaning far over the ocean, we drank lots of good juices, vodkas, and beers and hung out with our new friends for hours. We found our way home, not an easy task in the pitch black dark of a new island, and slept from about 3am to 7am.

The next day Nicky and I woke up early, found the nearest beach access while still in our pjs - if you saw the bungalow set up you would know why - and then came back to get dressed and go find breakfast. On the way out of the bungalow area one of the owners pet monkey's tried to steal the glasses off my face. Mean monkey! But he was so cute and fuzzy! Sarah opted out of the Asian breakfast that morning and Nicky and I found an open Thai restaurant - now by restaurant I really mean a persons home that has plastic furniture outside and she feeds us out of her kitchen. So, Nicky and I had frozen, that's right like actually blended in a blender frozen, coconut and pineapple fruit smoothies, green curry Thai, and Thai soup (Tom Ka Gai or something like that spelling). It was awesome and really hit that breakfast spot. Then, on the way back to the bungalows we shopped a bit in the shops around that area and found some cool jewelry an whatnot. Nicky and I met back up with Sarah, we to an internet cafe to write our families and then decided we could eat more food and went to get some lunch and then go to the beach. Well, somewhere in there we ended up heading back to the bar area from the night before. We knew they had a restaurant and were near sandy beach access. When we got there, we learned that there bungalows cost 3 dollars a night - much less that the 15 we were currently paying - and they were on the beach which our current ones were not. The pay off was that they didn't have bathrooms and we had to use communal ones. Small price to pay for being near the nightly party, beach, and food. So, we moved to the new bungalow. Sarah and I scheduled our 5am taxi for the next morning to get to the 6am ferry and we got lunch and headed to the beach.

The water was the perfect temperature, there was really not many other people on the beach, the clouds went away for a perfect day. The whole experience was great. We swam around a bit, layed out, and then Sarah read a book while Nicky and I went in search of more fruit juice, this time perhaps with some vodka added. We ended up drinking a vodka pineapple bucket at a beach front bar while making friends with a Norwegian man.

After a few hours of beach we headed back to shower for the bbq that the bungalows was throwing that night. Oh, and my shower, I mean bucket showers. That's right, a tub of water with a bucket and that is what you use. Hey, it can work. Good practice for the Peace Corps I suppose.

For this dinner, Nicky and I got barracuda - I wanted to say I had tried that. Oh, we almost got bamboo tattoos - bamboo is the the way to make the tattoo NOT the picture we almost got drawn on ourselves - but we decided we had no way to know we weren't going to place that would leave us with Hep C. Dinner consisted of fish, Thai food, and lots of lots of fruit smoothies of all fruit combinations - mango, pineapple, banana, coconut - mixed in as many ways as possible and all fabulous. Oh, mango orange juice with vodka - which was awesome. Smoothies (which are really just blended ice and juice in Koh Chang) with vodka. Then we moved on to the vodka buckets. Sometime during the night of partying, Charlies passport ended up in the ocean and he and his brother dove in after it. The norwegian man we had met earlier and his friend found it for them. We also played ring of fire - got to love universal drinking games - and just hung out til the wee hours of the morning when Sarah and I headed in to get 2 hours of sleep before our taxi to the ferry.

Sarah and I got in that taxi ride, which was much rougher with a stomach full of vodka soda buckets and juice, and made it to the ferry. Then we made it to the bus stop in Trat, but the pick up truck that brought us there turned around to go back for more people at some point and made us miss the first bus to Bangkok. We made the 8am bus to Bangkok where Sarah and I proceeded to pass out and sleep as much as we could for the next 6 hours on the bumpy local bus we were on. This bus did stop for 20 minutes about half way through for people to get out and get food/drink and pee. Thank God. Sarah and I made it to Bangkok, immediately got in a taxi to the old Bangkok airport, and flew to Chiang Mai (in Northern Thailand near the Burma border) for our finally Thailand adventure - trekking in the mountains.

Total of things lost/stolen in Koh Chang (also the only things that I had go missing on the trip - Sarah got money stolen at the hotel in Hanoi): my USAA credit card, Nicky's rainbow flip flops (which were old and worn in), and my bath stuff that I had on the porch to dry (my shampoo/conditioner bar that I bought at Lush and it's case, my body wash and luffa). Morale of that story - people take weird things!