Ahh...island life

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Hello all ! We've been in Koh Chang...how long ? It's strange but I've lost all concept of time things are so laid back here. Any more laid back and everyone would be comatose...4 nights, I remember now. This is a perfect place to acclimatise and unwind before we start a 6-week period of much movement around the region.

Koh Chang isn't the hippy paradise it once was, the guidebook tells us. Well I'd like to have seen what it was like then in that case ! We're staying in a small group of bungalows going by the name of "KB Resort" - they're very taken with the term "resort" in Thailand...KB standing for Kai Bae Beach I presume...Our initial choice of hotel, the neighbouring one, turned out to have very cramped quarters indeed, plus the place was dead as a dodo and not in a good way.

KB is lovely. The bungalow has a nice big bedroom and a bathroom at the back, plus a nice little verandah which is perfect for lazing around on reading a book ! We're set back some way from the beach, but the breeze helps keep the room nice and cool during the night. There's a little restaurant and beautiful gardens teeming with dragonflies and what appear to be mynah birds. I can't tell yet if they're speaking Thai.

The weather here has been lovely for 3 out of the 4 days. Nice and hot and sunny, albeit unsurprisingly a bit humid. Yesterday though it rained like crazy all day. What better excuse than to sit out on the verandah and read/eat Magnums/drink fresh pineaplle juice all day ?? It was actually quite relaxing to watch the rain come down, although we were a bit worried a coconut would fall onto our roof. Luckily we were safe ! The people in the 4 or 5 other occupied bungalows were all on their balconies as well...

We're eating wonderful food. It can sometimes get a bit same-same on small islands, but Koh Chang is quite large and a lot of different vegetables/fruits are grown here so there's lots of choice. The salads - like som dtam or green papaya salad - are particularly yummy. As mentioned before Alex is quite taken with Magnums (at 40 pence it's easy to eat far too many), and we are both enjoying Lychee Bacardi Breezers (I'm on holiday).

We haven't actually done very much...the beach outside the bungalows is lovely for swimming and paddling about although we haven't quite got the tides figured out yet.

We intend to stay two more nights, and from here make our way towards Kanchanaburi, west of Bangkok and through which a famous river flows - the River Kwai...

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Photos

Kai Bae Beach, Koh Chang, Thailand
The beautiful palm-lined beach at Kai Bae, on the south-western side of Koh Chang.

William and the ocean-going vessel HMS Kayak
We paddled this across a narrow strait from Kai Bae Beach. The island is barely 200 metres wide and does have a name but we've forgotten it. We'll call it "Hermit Island" for the extraordinary profusion of hermit crabs there. We caught dozens of them and raced them ! Hours of fun for all the family.