Koh Chang!

Hello once again. I hope everyone is enjoying the near freezing weather in North America. I had the luxury of spending the new year's weekend on Thailand's second largest island Koh Chang. Directly translated, Koh Chang means "elephant island". Sacha and I took a bus and ferry over there and it was quite relaxing. I'd compare it similar to Koh Somet in terms of the quality of the beach and the atmosphere. It was nice to visit there because there were quite a few more native Thai people hanging out and vacationing. Usually when you go to a beautiful beach, it's full of North American, European, Australian, or other non-natives.

We had decided not to pre-purchase a room beforehand because everyone we spoke to in Bangkok said they were heading up to Chiang Mai because the Thai like to visit the "colder" areas of Thailand for Christmas/New Years. (Colder in Thai terms is like 20C) We bought our bus ticket from Khao San Road for 350 baht including the transfer from the ferry to the island. To give you an idea, 350 baht roughly converts to about $12 CND; keep in mind this is a 5 hour bus ride. So for $12, you get a bus and ferry ride totaling about 7 hours of travel time. What a deal!

We arrived on the island later in the afternoon so we quickly tried to secure a room for ourselves. It was difficult as almost every place was full. We finally found a place in a little bungalow for 300 baht/night or roughly $10 CND. See the picture below of our cute little bungalow.

The first night we were there, we saw the most incredible sunset ever. The whole sky was lit up as shown in the picture above. It was really a marvelous sight, this is the actual image, I didn't enhance the colours. The entire sky was lit up with beautiful pastel shades of pink and orange. We took a bunch of pictures and they almost look fake because it just looks to amazing to be true.

We stayed on Kai Bae beach, an area of Koh Chang. The funny thing was that for every hotel being fully booked, the bars and restaurants at night were almost all empty. There was almost no one visiting the Kai Bae area at night. We definitely weren’t complaining however because it meant more peace and quiet because Bangkok is just so noisy and it was great to get away from the crowds.

We spent New Years here which was nice and quiet; both Sacha and I didn’t really care too much for partying it up for New Years so we spent it at a local bar called the “Sweet Witch Bar”. We went to bed pretty much right after midnight because we wanted to get up somewhat early the next day to explore more of the island.

The next day we went to one of the main beaches to explore the beach there and we took many pictures and hung out on the beach getting a bit more of a tan.

Because this island doesn’t have metered taxis everywhere like Bangkok would, it was surprisingly difficult to find a taxi to take us back to the pier where we could take the ferry back. The taxi’s on the islands usually consist of a small truck with the back of the truck outfitted with seats to carry up to 12 or 14 people if need be. We waited and waited and as we were waiting a British couple who was also waiting for a taxi back to the pier joined us in the hunt for a taxi. They were needing a taxi back to the main land to get to Cambodia. We exchanged stories and it turns out the lady, Lis, used to teach English in Bangkok a few years ago. She gave me the number to the company she worked for as she said she had a great experience with them. We hopped on the ferry and went back to the mainland where we caught a bus to then take us back to Bangkok. Overall it was a nice visit but Koh Samet was just as nice and the bus ride took about half the amount of time.