Advertisement
Published: December 1st 2010
Edit Blog Post
Phoebe & Ida
Painting each others nails We arrived in Kuala Lumpur jet lagged up to our eyeballs. After much discussion Nick and I have decided that flying East around the globe is definitely worse than flying West. Who knows whether its because of a change in magnetic forces, that feeling of chasing time or simply the fact that to avoid jet lag flying East you need to sleep more on your flights, and a good sleep is almost impossible to get on a plane. Who knows? But what we did know was that we were TOTALLY out of wack. The next three days consisted of sleeping deeply at 3pm in the afternoon, only to wake up and feel like cereal for dinner. By midnight we'd be buzzing with activity and forcing ourselves to lie down with the lights off, only to give up four hours later and start reading books. Try as we might we just could not get into the right rhythm.
During our tossing and turning during the night, and sleeping during the day we managed to piece together the rest of our time in Asia. We weren't too keen to return to the countries we visited earlier in the year, but we needed
Relaxing in the Pool
Phoebe and I kicking back on our li-lo to go somewhere cheap, and after our ordeal we were hoping to find somewhere quiet with a beautiful beach. The obvious answer was Thailand! As we had heard so many positive things about the island of Koh Chang from Birgit and Lukas, we decided that that was where we'd go. It took 15 hours of travel in one day to get there but it was worth it. Koh Chang.is that largest island in the gulf of Thailand, very mountainous and covered in forest. Tourism is a relatively recent industry there, but is quickly taking off, particularly for visitors seeking a quieter Thailand. However, take a walk down the main drag 'White Sand Beach' and you'll soon discover that Koh Chang hasn't managed to escape the seedier side of tourism with dubiously named bars such as 'Honey Bar', 'Up2You Bar' or 'Double Lucky Bar', *sigh* some things never change.
We stayed about 2kms down from White Sand Beach at Pearl Beach, a very quiet spot about 300 metres off the main road (which is the only road), at a place called Penny's. We stayed there for the entire time we were on Koh Chang, as Penny's had a pool, free
Sunset by the Pool
Fantastic sunsets were to be had every night wifi and a restaurant serving nice, good value meals. It was PERFECT! Well, apart from the absolutely infernal easy listening instrumental music that was played continuously, from the day we arrived until the day we left, including such classics as 'Wind of Change' (Scorpions), 'Mandy' (Barry Manilow) and 'From a Distance' (Better Midler)......oh, SO painful. But despite feeling like these songs were etched into our brains, we really did have a great time.
When reading about Koh Chang we had been informed to expect such characters such as Sven and Anneke and their four children from Sweden to be at our resort, and when we arrived, guess what there was Sven and Anneke (ok, those probably weren't their names) and their three children from Sweden....nearly hit the nail on the head there! Phoebe quickly befriended Ida, the girl closest in age to her and despite a significant language barrier, played wonderfully. By the end of their stay, Ida had learnt “Hello”, “Good-bye” and “Thank-you” so some of their games consisted of only these three words! When games got tiring, they did colouring in together, and painted each others nails. Both girls were quite sad when Ida's family moved on
Swimming with Malai
Us sitting on lovely Malai before falling off and it was cute to see how even language doesn't get in the way of kids playtime and friendhsips.
We intentionally kept a pretty low profile while we were on Koh Chang. All pretenses of travel were abandoned and we instead used the time to get Phoebe up to speed with school work, me to apply for jobs, and Nick to put together a business plan for his business next year (yes, exciting!). So everyday we started with fresh fruits, yoghurt, eggs, and Phoebe's favourite, a bacon sandwich. After that would be maths for Phoebe and following that we'd alternate time on the computer with more school work for Phoebe plus plenty of time in the pool. Every now and then we catch a songthaew (a ute adapted to carry people in the tray) down to White Sand Beach for some shopping and maybe a change in cuisine from the stadard Penny's fare. However I did insist that if we do one thing during our time in Koh Chang we should go elephant riding. We'd promised Phoebe this earlier in the year and it never happened so this time we were going to do it! We booked into a
Phoebe's Been Thai-ified!
Complete with braids, beads and fisherman pants place and the three of us hopped onto Malai, a beautiful 30 year old female elephant for a jungle trek. Malai navigated the jungle perfectly, even up a rocky river with fast running water. Then we went down into a waterway and we all had a swim! Malai graciously allowed up onto her back where she would let us jump off, or she would go underwater and we all sink in. Phoebe squealed with delight the whole time and it was a wonderful experience for us all.
Elephant riding done, it was now time to go home, as in back to New Zealand, Nick's home. It's been 10 months since we've been away from anything either of us can call a home, and while we've certainly had many 'homes away from home' this time it's for real.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.154s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 19; qc: 54; dbt: 0.0774s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
christine giles
non-member comment
coming home
what a beautiful ending to journey.X Ac