Advertisement
Published: August 18th 2008
Lonely Beach
This is the name of the place. Beautiful, except for the rain! Well I know it has been a while. A week I think. It has been spent on the beautiful island of Ko Chang, Thailand. I decided after Vietnam to go and hang out with a few of friends from home there.
I arrived in Bangkok in the evening and decided to stay on the notorious Kohsan Road. What a scene. Everything for sale from buddha lamps to airline ID badges. Sidewalk stands of little plastic chairs and tables selling libations by the bucket...literaly. I was there once before but it was on our whirl-wind tour last summer. I can't say I saw anything new this time around, just got a good reminder of the world gone wild. I went to see a crazy cover band, which frankly was pretty amazing. Metallica to Guns 'N Roses and every classic rock hit you never want to hear inbetween. The guitarist shreded like no other. The only time you could really tell that they were a Thai band was inbetween songs when the singer would actually speak. Then his accent was glaring. I stayed out pretty late to watch them and even more so the spectacle that the tourists made of themselves. By
Rock Sugar
The whole gang!! 3am the crowd was pretty wild. Several people had already been thrown out when I began to grow tired. After beating off the usual vamps of the night on my way back to the Buddy Lodge Resort and Spa, across the street from the club, I settled in for the night. And for the record, the name "resort and spa" is used quite loossly in these parts. If hot running water and quasi clean sheets constitute a resort than it surely was.
8am came quite early. I headed back out onto Kohsan Road to stand in front of the travel agent I'd bought my bus and boat ticket from. The street looked like a war zone. Several remnants of the previous nights activities still crawled about and the unearthly smell of Kohsan debauchery filled the air. I stood there for a while thinking I may have missed the guy I was supposed to meet and as the travel agency was closed I wasn't sure quite what to do, so I waited. And waited. And waited. And then he showed up. By this time the noxious fumes rising from the ground were just overpowering as the morning sun warmed most
Bottle stacking.
Here is the evidence of my mad crazy skills of the urchins from their curbside accomodations. I walked down to the main road and boarded a tourist bus. The 5 hour ride wasn't that bad really. They played a couple of bootleg movies, Catch Me If You Can and Notting Hill. (yes, truth be told I did laugh through notting hill but I never cried) Once arriving in Trat I borded a ferry for the 45 minute ride to the island.
Arriving on Ko Chang was a bit different than I expected. It is a national marine park and consists of some of the little natural rainforest left in Thailand. It was beautiful, but the towns were empty. It was clearly the off season in this part of Thailand. No worry though, I didn't really go there for raging all night parties. I got in a "taxi" (pick-up with 2 benches in the back) and told the driver I wanted the Garden Resort, where Kristin, Christina, Courtney and Makala(i know i spell her name differently every time, but I haven't a clue) had told me to meet them. Who knew that there were 5 different hotels with the words garden resort in the name. After stopping at the
first two I finally found them at the third one. It was a nice "homecoming".
The first day it rained all day. Friendly faces still made the trek there worth it. The second day was grey and gloomy but we decided to take a taxi to Lonely Beach anyway. We told our driver to pick us up in 3 1/2 hours. So naturally, when the rain started about 30 minutes after our arrival it was a bit disappointing. We had lunch and then decided to walk to the fishing village about 15-20 minutes away to find a taxi as there wasn't ever going to be one at Lonely Beach. Luckily we didn't even have to make it to the village as Kristin hitched a ride for us all in a pick up right from Pimp My Ride! We went back to the hotel and then across the street to Rock Sugar, a restaurant/bar with a pool table and a friendly group of guys working there. We spent more time than I should admit hanging out with Tiger, Ohn, Tar and others playing pool and talking about music and Thai life. I was introduced to a new game which involves
New friend!
Kristin and Mekala make a new friend on Kohsan Road stacking empty bottles top to bottom, bottom to top. These guys all live in the back of the bar. Needless to say, their consumption levels rival that of a Chevy Suburban.
Day 3 began with Christina waking up saying come on guys the sun is shining. As I had decided not to sleep the previous night these were not the words I wanted to here. But, as you're only in a place once you must take advantage. I slowly rose and went to the beach. Once there I learned my first real interesting fact about my new travel companions....Christina is afraid of fish. Not sharks, not whales, not even large fish like tuna. Just all fish. Mind you, this island is a national marine park. So, after reassuring her multiple times that there were no fish in the marine park she waded in up to her shins. She tells me this was a major accomplishment. Kristin on the other hand just doesn't like water. She can swim she tells me, just doesn't like the ocean. She managed to go in up to her waist and dunk herself and had a look of pride I'd never seen before. This was
Activities At the Singapore Airport
Are you kidding? Why couldn't the new logan be like this!?!? turning out to be more adventure than I could handle. Next came Courtney, she had no phobias, just a really bad sunburn. Mikala at this point just seemed to be the supportive one.
That afternoon we decided to rent Kayaks and go out to one of the near by islands. I was on one with both Kristin and Christina. Christina sat in front, Kristin in the middle and I was the fool in the back of the boat. Kristin stated that she was scared and I said everything would be alright and if she got any more scared she should tell me. Well, after about 15 of our 30-40 minute row panic mode struck. And we ended up taking her back to shore. She was red and hyperventalating by the time we got there. Now I was on the boat with just Christina, New York as I called her. We rowed back through the same waters again the entire time I noticed Christina's paddle was more slicing the water and not rowing it. I didn't want to say anything as she was worried about all the fish. We eventually made it to the pretty little island and hung out for a while. We left in time to catch the sunset from our kayaks. If you would like a more in depth portrayal of the kayak incident you should read it at Kristin's blog site, she made it into a play. http://www.mytb.org/howell it is pretty funny.
The next two days we decided to take a speed boat out to one of the other small islands right off the coast. We spent our days lougning in the sun and snorkeling the reef right off the beach. I was able to see many creatures native to this part of the world including nudibranch, pufferfish, many clams, schools of striped sargent fish and parrot fish. The list goes on but I'm sure hearing about fish you know nothing about isn't very entertaining so I'll save it for when I see those of you that care about such things. On our first day of snorkeling is when I discovered just how sea sick courtney gets. Just the motion of the waves while she was snorkeling was enough to almost make her ill. And as for Mekala, she had some oh lets say...traveler stomach issues that made her time on the island a dream I'm sure.
Now, these are my friends, even though they all had their lettle quirks I loved traveling with them and I am almost afraid of the rebutled list of my quirks!
As for the return to Bangkok, I think we were all getting a little stir crazy on the little island so it was well welcomed. We arrived on Kohsan Road again and stayed just off the main road. No matter how many times I see this place I am always amazed at all the people coming and going. We tried to capture it in pictures but none would come close to doing it justice. We all had one more thing on our list to do in Bangkok...see a ping-pong. The details I will not discuss here but if you ask, I will tell. You may not want to know.
After a long day of travel and a bizzare night watching 'ping-pong' we were all tired and decided to settle in for the night. I remember nodding off to the techno music coming from a crazy dance club next door. Shoulda thought of that when we thought the room was so nice! In the morning we had breakfast together and I was off to Sinapore and then Bali. The 3 hours layover in Singapore was actually quite nice. That airport has everything! Movie theatre, bowling alley, spa, showers, children's playground, a cactus garden and bar, and the list goes on!
I arrived in Bali around 10:00 pm. A long day. My taxi driver and I had a slight disagreemet as to where he was taking me. When I found myself in the middle of nowhere and him saying the hotel was "too far, too much traffic" I had a feeling things would get ugly. He took me to 3 other hotels with similar names and then drove me to some deserted street and told me to get out. This taxi, unfortunately, was a prepaid one from the airport. After some choice words I got him to take me to a hotel that I had tried to stay at before so I at least I knew where I was. After a final selection of words from Eric's Greatest Hits, I got the last word in (as I'm sure is a surprise to you all) and gave him a friendly hand gesture good bye. Of course, they had no rooms available. It couldn't have been kharma as he started the whole thing, just bad luck. So off I went into the night backpacks on and Lonely Planet in hand to find a room. By 12ish I had finally found one. It was a hole which I'm sure I overpaid for but it had a bed and that is all I needed. I crawled out of it today and found a lightly ncer accomodation at the 3 Brothers Inn where I think I will stay for the remainder of my time in Bali.
Surfs up dude!
eric
Advertisement
Tot: 0.181s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 14; qc: 53; dbt: 0.1332s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
karen
non-member comment
and so it goes...
I think the best part about your travels with the "girls" is that I get to compare "notes". I find the perspectives very interesting. Enjoy your last few days in Bali. Have a safe journey back!