Ko Chang - Thailand
8th July – Ko Chang
We were up early, and tried to get ready and pack up our belongings as quietly as we could, so as not to wake our other three room mates. As we were leaving the hostel the owner offered us free tea and toast, to which we happily accepted and then we headed down the road to Bangkok bus station. I think this was the furthest I had had to carry my rucksack so far. I must say, it wasn’t particularly comfortable. We looked like three tired, pregnant turtles plodding down the road at 7am.
Our bus left on time, it was absolute luxury, air conditioning, two seats each and we were even given a carton of water and a little cake as we boarded. Certainly a big difference from the bus we went on in the Philippines. I tried to spend my journey reading, but there was an increasingly annoying man sat behind me, who had decided to sing loudly ALL the way, (yes…over 5 hours) He drove me crazy, at one point Jenna, Kat and I tried to drown him out with our own singing, but it was no use, the bus driver even put a loud Thai dubbed film on, to which the man sang louder, so he could still be heard. He was clearly happy, but it was not pleasant sitting in front of him.
We arrived in Laemngop at about 1pm and then easily found our way to the ferry port and caught a ferry to Ko Chang. It only took about 40 minutes to get there across the rough sea, and once we had we caught a Seelaw to Hat Khlong and walked down a very long track to a place called KP Huts. Now this really was the furthest any of us had ever walked with our back packs on our backs, in the mid day sun too, by the time we arrived we were exhausted. To make matters worse I had gotten an infected bite on my let that had made my whole lower leg, ankle and foot swell up and bruise, so I basically had to limp too.
The travel guide that we had stated that ‘KP Huts’ was a lovely little place. Also that it was one the most beautiful beach in Thailand, but once we had paid for our room and moved in to our little wooden hut, just off the beach, we decided to go and check out this beach. It was hideous, gray sands, dead fish, eels, snakes and crabs all along the shore line and lots of rubbish and it stank. Also there were red flags up stating that it was not safe to swim in (not that I would have wanted to anyway) Oh dear. To make matters worse the staff who worked there were horrendous. It was three young girls (who looked about 15) who clearly didn’t want to be there) One of whom sighed and tutted when I interrupted her program to order some food. We were not impressed and despite the low cost decided to move on the next day.
We were still determined to make the most of out day, so walked along the beach, to check out all the other hotels (which were well out of our price range). We eventually came to the road and finally to an elephant camp. This camp was not nice. The elephants looked miserable and were all chained up in little huts. They looked like totally different animals to the ones that Jenna and I had ridden the previous week. I was soon upset so we continued to walk on, every thing seemed closed or dead due to it being the ’rainy season’ so we headed back. It was dark by the time we got to our hut, but we spent the evening drinking Malibu and cokes out of our trusty travel cups and playing card games long into the night.
9th July – Bo’s Independent and a party on the beach.
We woke up this morning in our cute little hut, excited to move on and find a nicer beach.
We enjoyed a health fruit breakfast (despite the dreadful service) and put our backpacks back on and went on out way. The sun was blisteringly hot and my ankle was throbbing so I was pleased when we hailed down a Seelaw to take us to “Hat Sai Khao” and the more ‘popular’ area of the island known as White Sand beach. We got dropped at the beach and I immediately thought “that’s more like it” The sand really was white and there was quaint little bungalows, guest houses and restaurants all along the beach. We plodded down the whole length of the beach, and just as we were turning around to go back we heard a Scottish accent yell “We have rooms here and they are lovely” we looked up to see a shack like building built on top of a rock. We actually had to climb through the sea and up some rocks to even get to the door, but the place was really quirky (a little like Takatuka lodge, where I stayed in Sipalay) and seemed really interesting. She offered us a fantastically cheap price and showed us up the rocks to our room. The wooden walkway leading to our room had just been painted, so by the time we actually got there we all had green feet, and had ruined the paint job.
The room was nice enough. It has a fan and two double beds, and even our own tap and bucket where we could wash. If it wasn’t for the huge ant infestation it would have been perfect, but for the price we couldn’t really say no, so we settled into Bo’s Independent.
We spent the afternoon on the beach, I was delighted that it wasn’t raining (for the first day in ages). However I didn’t do much swimming because again the red flags were up and I have never seen, or felt waves quite like it. They were crashing into each other all over the place and you could really feel the pulling on your legs, even when only paddling. There were also wholes and huge dips in the sand where the crazy waves had dug away. Later that evening we found out that two people had drowned that very day! Lets just say, despite being a good swimmer I wont be going in any further than may waist!
That evening the tide had come in so far that we couldn’t actually leave Bo’s Independent even if we had wanted to, so we joined the rest or the guests and all the staff for a Mongolian BBQ. I was surprised at how many people were there, apparently there were huts all up the mountain, and looking up I could see lights coming from rooms all the way up. I was relieved that we had been given a room closer to the bottom. We all had a very nice evening and after our food, we were told that the tide had gone back out for the night so, Kat, Jenna and I along with some of the hostel staff, a couple of English guys, an Aussie girl, two Swedes and a German boy all headed out to find a nice beach bar. We ended up in a disco on the beach. It was hilarious. It was full of young girls desperately trying to pick up the very few western men and lots of transvestites. Despite my bad leg and the horrendous music, we all had a great night.
10th July - Hospital and another Waterfall.
My leg just seemed to be getting worse and worse and was very painful and swollen so the lady who owned the hostel (Fiona) kindly offered to take me to the doctors. Here if you have anything wrong you go to hospital. However I was pleasantly surprised as the place was clean and modern and I was seen right away. Examined, given some cream and some antibiotics and all that only cost me about 3 pounds. I was advised not to walk about and to keep my leg elevated in order for the swelling to reduce, but here I think that really will be impossible.
On the way back Fiona dropped us off at a track where we could walk down to some waterfalls. It was a long walk and I know that I shouldn’t have been doing it but I was eager to get to the waterfalls. After about 40 minutes we arrived. I was relatively unimpressed. They were pretty small and very hard to get to. By this time however we were all desperate for a swim.
Along the way I saw a snake (which I didn’t tell Jenna about) and a huge spider so we were all a little nervous to jump in. I was the first to try. I lowered myself down from a rock, the water was cool, much cooler than the sea, but refreshing. Shortly I felt a nipping at my feet, I squealed and thought that I could see an eel. As I tried to get out there was more nipping. We then all stood at the edge even more nervous to go in, I knew the nipping hadn’t hurt me, but I didn’t like the thought of ‘creatures’, later I just realised that they were a type of filter fish and just got used to them. Once Kat and I had got in we spent ages swimming against the water flow, we would swim with all our mite but not move an inch. If we stopped for just a second we got carried to the rocks leading to the next waterfall. On the way back through the Forrest Jenna slipped again and broke yet another pair of flip flops, my leg was hurting so badly but I was brave and we all trekked back to the main road. Along the way we hear large rummaging in the trees and nut shells were being thrown down onto the path. We looked up to see monkeys! Later we found out that they we short tailed Makaks, and were really quite big. We saw a large male wandering along the path in front of us and I was actually a little worried! After about an hour we found our way to another Elephant camp and managed to get a lift in one of their Jeeps all the way back to Serindepity beach (where we were staying) By the time I had scrambled up the crazy stairs to our room my leg was well and truly throbbing so I decided to have a little nap and elevate my huge ankle. We were woken up by Yod (one of the workers in the hostel) and invited to dinner, we decided not to go. Instead we got ready and decided to run through the sea to get to another restaurant along the beach. I had decided to wear my shortest skirt, to avoid getting wet as best as I could, however one particular wave still manage to drench me. It was funny though, having to scramble down rocks and through the sea just for a meal! We found a cute little place and ordered as much Thai food as we could. The place was full of cute dogs, I was in my element. There was also a baby monkey roaming around the place, trying to interfere in everything everyone was doing. In the next room there was a woman getting a beauty treatment and the monkey kept jumping allover her and trying to eat her face mask, it was pretty funny and I think I had the best spring rolls I have ever tasted in my life. We went back to your place for a few drinks and then all headed off to bed, I was surprised how tired I was considering I had had a seastar!
11th July - A huge storm.
The three of us spent the morning planni8ng where we were going to go when we get to Cambodia and how long we were going to spend in each place and how to get buses and boats etc. We then decided that we had spent too much time together and needed a bit of space. Kat decided to have a nap in a hammock in the lounge, Jenna decided to wonder into town to find a PC room, where as I opted to go down to the beach and read my book (despite it being over cast). I enjoyed an hour or so paddling in the sea and reading my book and chatting to passers by. Then all of a sudden, the sky turned black and torrential rain began to fall. The tide lapped up so fast and I was suddenly surrounded by water. I decided to make a run for it but as I did a palm tree crashed down before me. Then I heard a voice shouting "come and shelter in here" I turned around to see a guy in one of the trip organising huts. I ran to shelter with him. The floor of his hut was soon flooded and we laughed as we tried to put away all his important documents and leaflets. Rain was blowing in through the open sides of the hut too. We staired gobsmacked at the roaring sea and chatted about our home lives, his English wasn't particularly good but he was very animated, telling me about his home village where they have no electricity or running water and where they kill chickens and ducks with their bare hands! I thought back to the village I visited when I was in Negros.
After a short time, as the rain started to die down, I saw Jenna trudging passed with her rucksack on and drenched to the skin, I darted out to make the walk back through the strong tide and wind to our hostel with her. The weather was dreadful for the rest of the day, so we spent our day in our room chatting and reading.
That evening we joined everyone from the hostel for the 'family meal', tonight it was Vegitable Thai curry. There is such a nice atmosphere here, It is also funny how we are all trapped in every night. We then clambered as far up the mountain as I think we could possibly go and watched the "prestige". Tomorrow we will be in Cambodia...hopefully :)
We were up early, and tried to get ready and pack up our belongings as quietly as we could, so as not to wake our other three room mates. As we were leaving the hostel the owner offered us free tea and toast, to which we happily accepted and then we headed down the road to Bangkok bus station. I think this was the furthest I had had to carry my rucksack so far. I must say, it wasn’t particularly comfortable. We looked like three tired, pregnant turtles plodding down the road at 7am.
Our bus left on time, it was absolute luxury, air conditioning, two seats each and we were even given a carton of water and a little cake as we boarded. Certainly a big difference from the bus we went on in the Philippines. I tried to spend my journey reading, but there was an increasingly annoying man sat behind me, who had decided to sing loudly ALL the way, (yes…over 5 hours) He drove me crazy, at one point Jenna, Kat and I tried to drown him out with our own singing, but it was no use, the bus driver even put a loud Thai dubbed film on, to which the man sang louder, so he could still be heard. He was clearly happy, but it was not pleasant sitting in front of him.
We arrived in Laemngop at about 1pm and then easily found our way to the ferry port and caught a ferry to Ko Chang. It only took about 40 minutes to get there across the rough sea, and once we had we caught a Seelaw to Hat Khlong and walked down a very long track to a place called KP Huts. Now this really was the furthest any of us had ever walked with our back packs on our backs, in the mid day sun too, by the time we arrived we were exhausted. To make matters worse I had gotten an infected bite on my let that had made my whole lower leg, ankle and foot swell up and bruise, so I basically had to limp too.
The travel guide that we had stated that ‘KP Huts’ was a lovely little place. Also that it was one the most beautiful beach in Thailand, but once we had paid for our room and moved in to our little wooden hut, just off the beach, we decided to go and check out this beach. It was hideous, gray sands, dead fish, eels, snakes and crabs all along the shore line and lots of rubbish and it stank. Also there were red flags up stating that it was not safe to swim in (not that I would have wanted to anyway) Oh dear. To make matters worse the staff who worked there were horrendous. It was three young girls (who looked about 15) who clearly didn’t want to be there) One of whom sighed and tutted when I interrupted her program to order some food. We were not impressed and despite the low cost decided to move on the next day.
We were still determined to make the most of out day, so walked along the beach, to check out all the other hotels (which were well out of our price range). We eventually came to the road and finally to an elephant camp. This camp was not nice. The elephants looked miserable and were all chained up in little huts. They looked like totally different animals to the ones that Jenna and I had ridden the previous week. I was soon upset so we continued to walk on, every thing seemed closed or dead due to it being the ’rainy season’ so we headed back. It was dark by the time we got to our hut, but we spent the evening drinking Malibu and cokes out of our trusty travel cups and playing card games long into the night.
9th July – Bo’s Independent and a party on the beach.
We woke up this morning in our cute little hut, excited to move on and find a nicer beach.
We enjoyed a health fruit breakfast (despite the dreadful service) and put our backpacks back on and went on out way. The sun was blisteringly hot and my ankle was throbbing so I was pleased when we hailed down a Seelaw to take us to “Hat Sai Khao” and the more ‘popular’ area of the island known as White Sand beach. We got dropped at the beach and I immediately thought “that’s more like it” The sand really was white and there was quaint little bungalows, guest houses and restaurants all along the beach. We plodded down the whole length of the beach, and just as we were turning around to go back we heard a Scottish accent yell “We have rooms here and they are lovely” we looked up to see a shack like building built on top of a rock. We actually had to climb through the sea and up some rocks to even get to the door, but the place was really quirky (a little like Takatuka lodge, where I stayed in Sipalay) and seemed really interesting. She offered us a fantastically cheap price and showed us up the rocks to our room. The wooden walkway leading to our room had just been painted, so by the time we actually got there we all had green feet, and had ruined the paint job.
The room was nice enough. It has a fan and two double beds, and even our own tap and bucket where we could wash. If it wasn’t for the huge ant infestation it would have been perfect, but for the price we couldn’t really say no, so we settled into Bo’s Independent.
We spent the afternoon on the beach, I was delighted that it wasn’t raining (for the first day in ages). However I didn’t do much swimming because again the red flags were up and I have never seen, or felt waves quite like it. They were crashing into each other all over the place and you could really feel the pulling on your legs, even when only paddling. There were also wholes and huge dips in the sand where the crazy waves had dug away. Later that evening we found out that two people had drowned that very day! Lets just say, despite being a good swimmer I wont be going in any further than may waist!
That evening the tide had come in so far that we couldn’t actually leave Bo’s Independent even if we had wanted to, so we joined the rest or the guests and all the staff for a Mongolian BBQ. I was surprised at how many people were there, apparently there were huts all up the mountain, and looking up I could see lights coming from rooms all the way up. I was relieved that we had been given a room closer to the bottom. We all had a very nice evening and after our food, we were told that the tide had gone back out for the night so, Kat, Jenna and I along with some of the hostel staff, a couple of English guys, an Aussie girl, two Swedes and a German boy all headed out to find a nice beach bar. We ended up in a disco on the beach. It was hilarious. It was full of young girls desperately trying to pick up the very few western men and lots of transvestites. Despite my bad leg and the horrendous music, we all had a great night.
10th July - Hospital and another Waterfall.
My leg just seemed to be getting worse and worse and was very painful and swollen so the lady who owned the hostel (Fiona) kindly offered to take me to the doctors. Here if you have anything wrong you go to hospital. However I was pleasantly surprised as the place was clean and modern and I was seen right away. Examined, given some cream and some antibiotics and all that only cost me about 3 pounds. I was advised not to walk about and to keep my leg elevated in order for the swelling to reduce, but here I think that really will be impossible.
On the way back Fiona dropped us off at a track where we could walk down to some waterfalls. It was a long walk and I know that I shouldn’t have been doing it but I was eager to get to the waterfalls. After about 40 minutes we arrived. I was relatively unimpressed. They were pretty small and very hard to get to. By this time however we were all desperate for a swim.
Along the way I saw a snake (which I didn’t tell Jenna about) and a huge spider so we were all a little nervous to jump in. I was the first to try. I lowered myself down from a rock, the water was cool, much cooler than the sea, but refreshing. Shortly I felt a nipping at my feet, I squealed and thought that I could see an eel. As I tried to get out there was more nipping. We then all stood at the edge even more nervous to go in, I knew the nipping hadn’t hurt me, but I didn’t like the thought of ‘creatures’, later I just realised that they were a type of filter fish and just got used to them. Once Kat and I had got in we spent ages swimming against the water flow, we would swim with all our mite but not move an inch. If we stopped for just a second we got carried to the rocks leading to the next waterfall. On the way back through the Forrest Jenna slipped again and broke yet another pair of flip flops, my leg was hurting so badly but I was brave and we all trekked back to the main road. Along the way we hear large rummaging in the trees and nut shells were being thrown down onto the path. We looked up to see monkeys! Later we found out that they we short tailed Makaks, and were really quite big. We saw a large male wandering along the path in front of us and I was actually a little worried! After about an hour we found our way to another Elephant camp and managed to get a lift in one of their Jeeps all the way back to Serindepity beach (where we were staying) By the time I had scrambled up the crazy stairs to our room my leg was well and truly throbbing so I decided to have a little nap and elevate my huge ankle. We were woken up by Yod (one of the workers in the hostel) and invited to dinner, we decided not to go. Instead we got ready and decided to run through the sea to get to another restaurant along the beach. I had decided to wear my shortest skirt, to avoid getting wet as best as I could, however one particular wave still manage to drench me. It was funny though, having to scramble down rocks and through the sea just for a meal! We found a cute little place and ordered as much Thai food as we could. The place was full of cute dogs, I was in my element. There was also a baby monkey roaming around the place, trying to interfere in everything everyone was doing. In the next room there was a woman getting a beauty treatment and the monkey kept jumping allover her and trying to eat her face mask, it was pretty funny and I think I had the best spring rolls I have ever tasted in my life. We went back to your place for a few drinks and then all headed off to bed, I was surprised how tired I was considering I had had a seastar!
11th July - A huge storm.
The three of us spent the morning planni8ng where we were going to go when we get to Cambodia and how long we were going to spend in each place and how to get buses and boats etc. We then decided that we had spent too much time together and needed a bit of space. Kat decided to have a nap in a hammock in the lounge, Jenna decided to wonder into town to find a PC room, where as I opted to go down to the beach and read my book (despite it being over cast). I enjoyed an hour or so paddling in the sea and reading my book and chatting to passers by. Then all of a sudden, the sky turned black and torrential rain began to fall. The tide lapped up so fast and I was suddenly surrounded by water. I decided to make a run for it but as I did a palm tree crashed down before me. Then I heard a voice shouting "come and shelter in here" I turned around to see a guy in one of the trip organising huts. I ran to shelter with him. The floor of his hut was soon flooded and we laughed as we tried to put away all his important documents and leaflets. Rain was blowing in through the open sides of the hut too. We staired gobsmacked at the roaring sea and chatted about our home lives, his English wasn't particularly good but he was very animated, telling me about his home village where they have no electricity or running water and where they kill chickens and ducks with their bare hands! I thought back to the village I visited when I was in Negros.
After a short time, as the rain started to die down, I saw Jenna trudging passed with her rucksack on and drenched to the skin, I darted out to make the walk back through the strong tide and wind to our hostel with her. The weather was dreadful for the rest of the day, so we spent our day in our room chatting and reading.
That evening we joined everyone from the hostel for the 'family meal', tonight it was Vegitable Thai curry. There is such a nice atmosphere here, It is also funny how we are all trapped in every night. We then clambered as far up the mountain as I think we could possibly go and watched the "prestige". Tomorrow we will be in Cambodia...hopefully :)
- Posted by emily1183 on 20/07/2007.
- emily1183's site
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