David's Gatlog

Ahhh, Ko Chang island off the south eastern tip of Thailand.  Pictured above, translated as Elephant Island, we found a nice little slice of heaven in this place and wound up spending a good 4 days of our trip here. It turned out to be an incredible time.

After a rather adventurous 4 hour taxi ride from the Poi Pet border of Thailand and Cambodia, we found ourselves in the sleepy coastal community of Trat and then the Laem Ngop ferry stop. Our taxi driver managed to get us to the pier perfectly on time, however we lagged a little bit in getting our things together and watched as the last ferry for an hour sailed off towards our Ko Chang destination.  By the time we realized where we were exactly, keep in mind we only decided this was our destination 8 hours earlier, we found ourselves at a marvelous little pier jutting out into the Gulf of Thailand.  Jessica and Melinda (above) used our hour layover in paradise to write some much over do postcards…which I think are still unmailed…go figure. If you happen to get one in the near future…know, at the least, that they were written here

On the ferry…It took us about 45 minutes to cross to the Island, and as you can see from the photos, the sun was already close to setting. We had absolutely no idea where/what we were doing once we got across to the island…no reservations…no Baht (just american dollars, which no Thai accepts)…no clue where we were headed.  All we had was a vague notion that we wanted to stay, somewhere cheap, on the beach.

By the time we made it across, we had missed the last taxi for an hour…(taxis on Ko Chang consist of a modified truck bed with benches shuttling 14 people at a time around the island. We almost made the grave descion to rent some scooters and haphazardly navigate the treacherous roads piled 2 to a bike with all of our luggage.  Had that actually played out, I’m sure we would have killed eachother if the roads hadn’t already done so…but Jessica wisely talked us out of it, and sweet talked a taxi driver into taking the 4 of us to our destination…he wanted to wait for the next ferry so he could get 14 people in his truck and get the full fare. We wound up paying him something like 15 US dollars, which is outrageously expensive for a Thai taxi…but we were tired, it was getting late, dark…and hell it’s 15 dollars.

Anyhow, we pulled up to a strip of shops and beachfront hotels and made our way from lobby to lobby checking for availability. Once we found a place, we paid top price (about $100 US split 4 ways), threw our bags down, ran barefooted to the beach, and cracked open some ice cold beer and finished off the night watching some cliche fire dancing and listening to some terrible remix of American Hip Hop blasting away from the beachside dance clubs.

Being that we arrived at night, we really had no idea what our little beach haven actually looked like.  We all awoke before the sun, and wandered about 20 steps from our front door to find this (above). Not too shabby.

85 degree waters, palm fronds dangling into the water, 50 cent beers…David was happy.

White Sand Beach, Ko Chang, Thailand.

Jessica in the Ko Chang “taxi” on our way to Lonely Beach and a bungalow on the sand for $30 US a night….UPGRADE.

Ko Chang Freeway. Notoriously sketchy roadways, and what could have easily been the demise by way of scooters for our happy little 4 some.

Nature Hotel, Lonely Beach, Ko Chang.  http://www.travelfish.org/accommodation_profile/thailand/eastern_thailand/trat/lonely_beach_and_bailan_bay/all/1985. This place was ideallic beach resort by day, and crazy dance club party pad by night. This photo was taken from our lunch table cabana.

Rough way to end the day.

The islands seen in the distance here wound up becoming targets for our kayak adventures, I’ll post some photos from those trips soon. Stay tuned.