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Published: November 19th 2015
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I should have known when I stepped on the boat and they were playing 80's soft rock that this was not the place for me. My legs were all for running away but we'd already paid our money and I had to give it a chance. The trip had been sold to us as a 'Four Island Tour' and I was hoping to tour four islands.
The reality was that it was just a snorkelling trip which is OK for a few hours but not all bloody day long. I'd not even brought a book because I thought it would be interesting. A truck had picked us up in the morning and tbh, the trip to the boat from our hotel was the highlight. We saw elephants waiting to go on safari and monkeys picking their food out of the litter, just like I've seen urban foxes do in the UK outside fast 'food' joints. Some of the hill were so steep that the truck really struggled.
I saw that the coast of Koh Chang is tourism, tourism and tourism. We went through some crappy looking areas that were run down, with rotting wood, paint peeling and lots of
litter. The streets lined with tattoo parlours offering cheesy cheap tattoos. This area was trustafarian land (for those who don't know, a trustafarian is usually a white kid with bleached 'dreadlocks', hippy clothes and living off a trust fund from their rich parents back home) crossed with middle aged boring hippyville.
It took over ten minutes to walk up the pier to where the boat was moored due to a very long pier saddled with excessive amounts of tourist tat shops.
The first stop was in a cove of a small island 1.5 hours boat ride away from Koh Chang. I had a go at snorkelling, hoping to see some fish at a good distance as they usually swim away when I start disturbing the water with my flailing style swimming. But the sea was absolutely swarming with fish, coming right to the surface, touching you and practically eating your face off. The majority of people enjoyed it, but I'm a bit fish phobic and it was too much for me. Especially when the boat staff started throwing food into the sea to lure the fish in -it was a fish frenzy, not dissimilar to feeding time with
the velociraptors. I had to get out.
After 45 minutes, the boat set off to the other side of the cove, this was island number 2. Slightly better in that there were less fish (until rice was thrown to them) and we could go onto the beach which was totally empty bar a boat load of squealing tourists. Snorkelling.
Island 3 was a few rocks with two trees. More snorkelling. Yawn.
Island 4 had scope to be interesting as they had a nature trail, however this cost extra, was not connected to the trip and we didn't have enough time for it.
On the way back we stopped at a coastline where monkeys came down the rocks to the sea edge for leftover food tossed from the boat by tossers. They clearly were expecting us.
We did not get back to the pier until 5pm and then to our hotel at 5.45pm. We just missed the sunset but got good photos of a pinky orange sky sans sun.
Later on, the six of us went up town for tea. I had a Vegetable Tom Yam which may be one of the best meals of
the trip. The Cambodian and Vietnamese food had been a bit bland compared to Thai food. I also had a banana daiquiri which turned out to be pineapple - whatever.
Walking back in the dark, we saw lots of sheet lightening in the sky, but no rain or thunder, how strange.
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