Koh Chang

Posted by on Feb 18, 2010 in general, thailand | 5 comments

We took a bus and boat to Koh Chang (which according to what we’d read should take three and a half hours). As we were leaving at half 8 we thought we would definitely get there for midday. However, first of all we had to follow a man riding a pink motorbike through Bangkok to get the bus. This involved pratically running with our backpacks to keep up. The bus didn’t have the greatest facilities including a tiny toilet that no one was going to fit in. The bus actually took about 7 hours so we got to our first destination, White Sands Beach, at about 5pm.

White Sands Beach
We hadn’t booked any accommodation so we took a while to find somewhere to stay. We eventually found Island Lodge where they had one room left. There were 53 steps to climb to get to the room! Not the easiest thing to do with your backpack on in 30 degree heat. The views of the mountains were amazing though. Our room was lovely but there was a hole in the bathroom ceiling which had caused hundreds (well what looked like hundreds) of fly to get in. A quick trip to the shop for some fly spray and Jimmy had turned the bathroom into some kind of fly morgue.

We’d heard that White Sands was the busiest part of Koh Chang so we went there thinking there would be loads of nightlife. It actually turned out to be really quiet. On our first night when we went for drinks all of the bars on the beach turned there lights out at 10pm! Still we had a balcony so at least we had somewhere else to drink.

Lonely Beach
After 3 nights at White Sands we headed further down the coast to Lonely Beach. We hadn’t booked anywhere again and we went to about 5 different places until we found somewhere to stay. That is, somewhere that actually had a roof on the bathroom. We thought the bungalow we’d found was really nice and it had a veranda. Then we went in the bathroom and realised it smelt really badly of poo! We wasted no time in finding somewhere else to stay the next night.

Ting Tong bar on Lonely Beach
Typical road in Lonely Beach
Swimming (paddling) Pool.
The next day we went to our new hotel. It even had a swimming pool. Well I say swimming pool but it was more like a glorified paddling pool. We got free breakfasts here too. They are the first breakfasts that have filled Jimmy up! I think it appealed to him all the more because it was free. Lonely Beach was great. It had a very hippie feel to it with loads of bamboo bars with hammocks and cushions to lie on while listening to the live music that played in most bars. I’ve become slightly addicted to pool. Jimmy says he’s created a monster, but I’ve still only managed to beat him once (Technically it’s true, but in reality she didn’t, I just potted the black by accident)! We were in one of the bars on Lonely Beach playing pool and we saw the fattest dog ever! He was so cute though and waddled when he walked. Later in the night we realised why he was so fat when his owner gave him an ashtray full of beer which he seemed to enjoy!

 

Klong Son Bay

We needed to book a bus to Bangkok from Klong Son so we decided to stay here for a couple of nights and treat ourselves to a more posh resort (it was Valentine’s Day after all). We caught a songthaew from Lonely Beach to Klong Son. I asked the driver where our hotel was and he told us 200 metres in the direction we had come from. However when we got there it didn’t have the same name as the one we had written down so we went on our way to find our hotel. Anyway, to cut a long story short, after walking for what seemed like miles and meeting a really lovely Thai man who drove us around we discovered that we’d been at the right hotel in the first place!
Small Swimming pool.

It was a relief to finally get there and we were presented with drinks on arrival. Our hotel was really lovely and it had not one, but two swimming pools. We had two really relaxing days around the pools before heading off for the airport.

At the moment we’re in South Korea in the freezing cold snow. Joy!

Our Green Curries

Big Swimming Pool

Snowy South Korea.
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