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Published: June 24th 2009
After enjoying the good food of Phnom Penh and not doing a whole lot else for the best part of a week we managed to drag ourselves away heading for Thailand and the island of Ko Chang. After a relatively straightforward bus ride via Koh Kong where we changed buses to the border, crossing the border, getting a minibus then having to change again (why so many changes?!) we arrived in Trat where we'd planned to spend the night instead of getting to Ko Chang late in the day.
While we were in Phnom Penh we'd taken advantage of the Thai 'special offer' for a free 60 day tourist visa. This saved us quite a bit of money as the visas were $35 each and we were both feeling quite pleased with ourselves. We had to wonder if people do any research about their trips when we overheard a group complaining about only getting 15 days on the border crossing.. this has been enforced since December so we couldn't understand why they were so shocked.
We made our way over to Ko Chang the following morning first catching a sawngthaew to the Centre Point ferry pier then getting the
very reasonably priced ferry over to the island.. just 160B return which was actually less than we were expecting which doesn't happen often! Another sawngthaew on the other side took us the 18km round the island to the Lonely Beach area which was to be our home for our time on the island.
Ko Chang is Thailands second largest island but even knowing this we were both surprised by the size and look of it. It is almost completely covered in forested National Park, so much so that we struggled to work out where the resorts must be. The answer to this is that most of the resorts are on the West side which is not visable from the ferry, but even so the resorts that are there don't really cut into the park at all being very long and thin along the various beaches.
We had come here in the off season which brings occasional rain, some sun & lots of cloud. Our experience was mostly cloud, quite a bit of rain and not a whole lot of sun at all! This probably didn't give us the best experience on the island but we didn't really mind
as it meant the temperatures were quite bearable and the accommodation was also super cheap! The sea was really rough though so we didn't really see the kind of beach scenes we'd been used to while over in Krabi, instead of crystal clear calm water we saw very choppy waves which you couldn't really swim in for fear of getting caught in a rip and dragged out to sea. Dale really enjoyed it though and spent hours hand surfing in the waves getting spun around and around. Sophie ventured into the water at one point but when a couple spotted a jellyfish she darted out never to return again!
During our 5 day stay we got 2 huts there.. our first hut was the nicest we've stayed in but we had to move when they started renovating the hut next to us at 7am each morning. This worked out for the best though when we moved to the next hut resort along and got a beachfront hut (not as nice but still lovely) for less money and got to enjoy the sound of the waves each morning & evening whilst sitting on our terrace overlooking the beach. The best
Lonely Beach
Not quite so lonelybit was that this resort had hundreds of cats & dogs which we got cuddles with for our stay. They had a nightly BBQ too so we continued on with our feeding up frenzy after our diet of eggs & rice in PP.
Despite the rain we made the most of our time on the island by hiring out a motobike and going off to explore the island. On our first day we ventured first South as far as we could go before hitting a resort that wanted 150B to go in and look round.. we didn't bother! We then headed up North stopping at all the resorts on the way to compare them to ours, we both agreed that we'd made the right choice as we found our beach to be the nicest of the lot so were quite pleased even if we weren't getting to spend our time on it. Whilst exploring we had our first petrol disaster since we've been away. The fuel guage on our bike didn't work so as we were going along a side road we ran out knowing it was quite a long walk back to the nearest petrol station we headed
off.. we were working up quite a sweat with the bike.. well Dale was because Sophie couldn't push the bike!.. after about 1/2 mile a nice Thai man stopped to help us and pushed Dale on the bike (don't ask how!) while Sophie hopped on the back of his bike and he dropped us at the nearest station. We continued on round to the other side of the island but it started to really hammer it down so we returned to our hut to read and watch the sea come in.
We'd been wanting to have an elephant experience for quite a while now and decided that Ko Chang was the place we should do it. They have an elephant camp deep in the National Park and from here you can have an experience washing, feeding and riding an elephant in the jungle. We actually didn't really want an elephant ride but could not talk the camp into letting us just do the washing & feeding for a reduced price so went ahead with that part anyway.
The washing was great fun, we followed 2 elephants (one 45 and one 51) down to the river where they waded
straight in. We jumped in after them and got to sit on them and scrub behind their ears while their mahouts told them over and over to spray water all over us.. such fun and the elephants are so gentle and clearly love this part of the day.
Next was our jungle ride, we climbed up on the platform which is used to get onto the elephant and it was only at this point that Sophie realised just how high elephants are! The ride was kind of like a rollacoaster ride with a bar stopping us from falling forward and us rocking this way and that as the elephant went on it's way. For 1 hour we rode though the jungle, up and down small hills, over streams and rivers and generally getting to enjoy the beautiful scenery all around. What was not so nice were the huge spiders that were also all around and we had to keep moving out the way for fear of getting them caught in our hair. Towards the end of the ride the mahout jumped off to collect us some mangousteens to eat (yummy) and we got to have a go at riding
on the elephants head and steering it. This is a lot more difficult than you might think because if an elephant doesn't want to do something then it won't.. this was the result that we got when we tried to tell it to go anyway!
Lastly was the feeding part and we were given a big box of bananas to feed. Dale wasn't just content with hand feeding and fed the bananas with his mouth which caused huge confusion with the elephant trying to reach out with it's trunk and hold his hand only to find it empty but he soon got the idea. These animals are truly amazing but also a little intimidating becuase they really are so big! We loved our elephant experience and were very impressed with this camp because the animals all look so well cared for and loved which is so important to us.
We'd already made our decision to leave on the Friday and this was confirmed when we woke up on our final day to have it rain all day, Ko Chang isn't so much fun in the rain so we were a bit glad we were leaving by that point
and were looking forward to the bright lights of Bangkok second time around...
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Great pics!
Looks awesome