Vodka picnics under the starry sky

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As mentioned in our last blog, after the scamming and thieving in Cambodia we decided to head to Koh Chang in Thailand a few days earlier than we originally planned. We booked our transport through the hotel we were staying at as they offered a free drop-off to the bus station for our 7:30am bus. We weren’t looking forward to the journey as last year when we did it the road was still being constructed and we had to use a series of ferries to cross the 4 rivers along the way which meant getting on and off the bus in the heat and hanging around. But a year had passed we kept telling ourselves, the bridges and road should be finished by now...but this was not the case...

The journey had improved in as much as we had a big 35 seater bus but the bridges were still not complete. This time, instead of being offloaded onto ferries, we were dumped next to a closed waist high barrier at the start of the bridge, told to get our bags off and walk across the bridge. No-one was impressed, we all had to help each other over, ferrying bags then people across this huge barrier. Neil struggled a lot because he had twisted his ankle chasing a thief with a piece of wood the previous day. We then had a 1.5km walk across the bridge under a bright blue sky with a baking hot sun, then the bus wasn’t waiting on the other side and we had an hour’s wait. Imagine 27 very annoyed, hot and tired backpackers hanging around in the sun only to get on a bus to have the most awful and loud Cambodia karaoke played full blast...someone actually went and asked the driver to turn it off and in response he turned it up louder! In total we did getting off and dragging all our luggage with us for 3 bridges, the 4th had been completed...walking in that sort of heat with big rucksacks really tires you out. We were doubly annoyed that we didn’t have our mp3 player to listen to as it had been nicked in Sihanoukville, grrrrr!

We breezed through the border crossing...anybody reading this planning to cross to Thailand via Koh Kong note that when the bus organisers tell you your bags will be taken across the border for you it isn’t free. The guy pushing the bags on his trolley will expect at least 100 baht from you for the privilege! We arrived at Laem Ngop pier at 4pm feeling very tired, we then had an hour’s wait for our ferry and then another 30 minute journey in a sangthaew taxi to White Sands resort.

Koh Chang is Thailand’s second largest island after Phuket, but with nowhere near as much development and the whole interior of the island is rainforest and is a national park. We had decided to book our accommodation ahead in Koh Chang as it was Songkran (Thai New Year) at the time we were going to be there and we had a feeling accommodation would get booked up with holidaying Thais. After our journey we were actually very glad we had booked ahead as all we wanted was to get a shower, food and sleep!

Our room wasn’t great but it was the best value there was on White Sands beach, at 800 baht (£13) a night we did expect to have a flush toilet at least but that wasn’t the case. On the plus side we got breakfast included which meant that it saved money on lunch. Compared to some countries in Asia, Thailand is now expensive for backpackers, a lot of people have been commenting this to us lately. We were spending £20-5 a day without even going out drinking to any bars...in Cambodia (scamming aside) we were spending £15 a day at most and getting rolling drunk every night on vodka, the same in Indonesia. Even Malaysia is cheaper for some things than Thailand. We were shocked.

********Quick Rant Time*********
Be aware that most Thais in tourist resorts are only nice to people to get money from them. We saw very little genuine friendliness or smiles towards tourists and even overheard Thais insulting tourists (in Thai) who were buying things off them. The majority of the time the Thais we meet in tourist resorts appear to have no respect for anyone other than Thais, they certainly don’t respect any of the tourists in their country. Whilst this is probably the same of English people working in tourist resorts in our home country, to us, these types of Thai people (money hungry sycophants who feed off stupid tourists) are the unfriendliest, nastiest kind of people in SE Asia.
********Rant Over**************

We settled into another nice routine of getting up and having breakfast, strolling across the road to the beach, lazing and swimming, strolling back to a restaurant so Neil could have lunch, then going back to the beach for more lazing and swimming. Before we got to White Sands beach we were very worried about how the beach would be as a lot of people had said it was dirty and the water wasn’t clear. We were very surprised at what we found. The beach was lovely, no rubbish and nice fine, powdery sand and the water was so clear that if you stood neck deep you could see your feet. As you can see from the pictures it is a nice beach, one of the nicest we have seen in Thailand in recent years. We spent a lot of time lounging in the water and Donna even learnt how to swim front crawl properly, something she is very proud of!

Not able to bring ourselves to pay the drinks prices (£2 a vodka and £1.50 a beer) every night we would make up a 600ml bottle of vodka and sprite (from the vodka we had bought super cheap in Cambodia) and take our sarongs down to the beach. We spent several hours a night lying down looking at the stars and gossiping, thoroughly enjoying being able to sit on a beach at night with no-one else around us.

Songkran came and honestly this was something we were dreading. It is tradition to welcome in the lunar New Year by throwing water at each other. In previous years when we have been in Thailand, this practice of water throwing has gone to extremes with ice cold water with big pieces of ice in being thrown over people and skanky fishy smelling water being thrown too. We only hoped it wouldn’t be too bad. On Koh Chang however, the Songkran celebrations were a lot more traditional than we had previously encountered, with water being thrown at your feet if you didn’t want to get wet or them gently splashing some water on your cheeks. Songkran celebrations on Koh Chang also stuck to traditional times of starting at 1pm and ending at 5pm, and it only lasted for 2 days. Other places celebrated Songkran for 6 days and on the last day they started with the water throwing as soon as midnight struck! All in all Koh Chang was a good place to stick out Songkran!

We enjoyed our stay on Koh Chang and felt rested and recuperated after our trauma in Cambodia to brave the horrendous journey to Bangkok to meet Donna’s parents who were coming to visit us. It was meant to take 5 hours...ahem, 10 hours would be closer to the truth, although we really aren’t sure why it takes this long! So we steeled ourselves for the journey ahead and were very excited to see Donna’s parents again, not least because they were bringing us a shiny new ipod and some Galaxy and chocolate orange chocolate!

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Photos

the beach again
it was so nice!

Comments

[james]

alcohol
.. at the risk of sounding like donna's parents.. please lay off the alcohol for a while i'm getting a bit concerned for your health and well-being. stay healthy guys. we love what you do and we want you safe and well.