Ko Chang - The Elephant Island

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After a crazy bus ride, in which we spent very little time on our own side of the road and then a ferry we had completed our first Island hop. With no booking our first job was to get accommodation for the night, and there were plenty of choices. After just 1 night on the island we moved hotels to a place called 15 Palms and booked for 14 nights - in retrospect maybe a little bit too long in 1 place. Our plan was to stay settled and spend Songkran (Thai New Year) in Ko Chang.

First impressions of the island. Mountainous, cooler climate in the hills, less dogs, cheaper laundry and loud music where we were situated on White Sands Beach.

Ko Chang is the second largest island in Thailand, after Phuket, so it was imperative that we source a scooter and hire it for the first 7 days of our stay.

Our first morning at 15 Plams we rose early to investigate the included buffet breakfast. Toast, cornflakes, tea and coffee - to us this was a treat, the little things in life really make you happy, and cornflakes certainly worked for us.

The island is 30km long and 14km wide, so the scooter rides proved to be quite adventurous, particularly the day we decided to complete a round trip. Never follow a dotted line on a map that has no KEY. We did. We passed a small National Park looking office and took off down the small tarred path. Talk about taking the path less travelled. We followed this for about 6km to where we found a pile of concrete rubble on the creek bed that we assume was a continuation of the dotted line. After a few dead end dirt tracks and a randomly placed shrine we admitted defeat and turned back with very little fuel.

The first week on the island was spent exploring the most northern waterfall (Klong Chao Luam waterfall), near daily book trading, and another trip to the South of the island - Bang Bao and the fishermans pier to get an insight into the lives of the locals.

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