Elephant Island

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We've stepped back into the land of smiling Thais, only this time we're in the more-touristy and more-costly regions of the south. From Cambodia's border Chris and I traveled to Trat, the jumping off point to Ko Chang. This island, deemed by Lonely Planet as an "untouched magical realm of waterfalls and mystic mountains" turned out to be highly developed and quite crowded. From the ferry dock we shared a seangtow up along the steep roads to Lonely Beach, where we camped on the small stretch of white sand nearby some of the bungalow operations. I had been feeling quite ill since the night before, so our first 3 days on the island I was almost completely nonfunctional, with a high fever and terrible body pains. I'd been sick before, so my insistence (stubbornness?) to wait it out lasted quite awhile, but eventually I gave in and Chris held my hand (and dragged me) to the local hospital. We ended up not staying there for treatment (which was 20,000 baht!), but went to a government clinic nearby to get the necessary rehydration packets, anti-biotics, and pain-killers for a whopping 100 baht (that's $3). The women working at the clinic were very nice and sympathetic to my condition, and after a rest on the hot, dusty street corner waiting for a passing seangtow, we trooped back to our beach. A fellow passenger in the truck, Kat from Germany, offered to let me rest in her bungalow while she and Chris went to frolick on the beach swimming and building sand castles. This bunglow, Treehouse, is probably the nicest and most backpacker-oriented, with cheap food, bamboo stilt structures, live music, shared-tropical-outdoor-bucket-showers, and a comfortable lounge restaurant with cushions and hammocks. To top it off, they have a sister site on another beach completely isolated on the other side of the island where the road is not paved. Next morning we lucked out and got to hop on their free taxi (linking one Treehouse to the other), meeting a friendly Japanese traveler, Ty, and spent the next 3 nights camping on another stretch of white sand lined with dense coconut palms. The water here was even better-- topaz blue and warm! It was pretty shallow quite a ways out, but we did jump in quite often in between scarfing down plates of green curry with tofu, reading, and meeting other wanderers...

When our time was up we hopped back on the truck to the ferry dock, sailed across the water to Trat, and boarded a bus to Bangkok...

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