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Published: August 25th 2023
Tina Writes Day 7 I'd like to apologise for Robs blog. He is all up for bringing the terrible ancient notebook and writing a blog because we have regretted the times when we haven't but when its time for him to write it he complains endlessly and then writes a terrible blog, which he sits sniggering at as he writes it. I think I will be firing him soon. Please place your vote in the comments. Yes for firing, No for keeping his shit blogs. It was time to leave Bangkok and head for Koh Chang. Our flight was at 11.40am and we decided to get the MRT/Airport train. It takes a bit more travel time but is way cheaper and doesn't put me in a bad mood dealing with the taxi drivers. Plus it is a bit more interesting. So we were on our way by 9am. I was feeling bit sick, so I didn't chance eating any breakfast. You know that feeling you get after you have eaten something dodgy and you know your going to have food poisoning. You feel ok but you know it's coming. I have felt like that pretty much
the whole time. It could be spice, my wee belly not being used to so much of it, or it could be the heat or it could be that the food takes a bit of getting used to (bacteria wise). We took the MRT to Petchaburi and switched over to the Suvrnabhumi Airport line for about £1 each. Once at the airport we headed to the Bangkok Airlines lounge. All Bangkok Airlines passengers can use the lounge which provides a decent choice in drinks and some snacks. I had a sandwich and a sticky rice sweet thing. I wasn't meant to be eating but I couldn't resist. They used to do popcorn but they seem to have removed that. I'm guessing its a covid thing. Most Thai people still wear masks when they are out and about and they had the plastic gloves and hand sanitizer at the food if you wanted.
Our flight was delayed by about 30 minutes. It was only a 40 minute flight and in that time, they served the whole plane a hot meal and tea and coffee. Unbelievable and frankly, stupid. But I was super impressed with the crew and felt a bit
sorry for them. I had done a bit of research before arriving and had been informed that when we arrived there would be a load of people offering a transfer from airport to hotel for about £14 each. That includes a 20 minute minibus journey to the port, a 30 minute ferry over to the island and back in the minibus to the hotel which was only 10 minutes away, thankfully, as the air-con on the minibus basically didn't work so it was a bit torturous.
We checked into the hotel, the KC Grande Resort and Spa in White Sand Beach. Nice check in with a welcome drink and cold face towel. They whisked us in a golf cart to our room. I had booked the best room they have as there is some construction works going on here at the moment, I think I got it quite cheap for around £100pn. We had a Paradise Beach Villa which is right on the beach. A lovely big, fancy-ish room with big patio windows looking out directly to the sea which is no more than 30 or 40 meters away. After we settled in, we shoved on our swimmies and
made for the beach and into the sea. It was pretty rough. Big, powerful waves knocking us over but as I could stand it was fine. I did go a bit far and found I couldn't stand any more and the waves were really tumbling me around, so after a slight panic I got myself back to standing depth. It was already about 5pm so we got showered and headed for a walk along the beach to get dinner as the sun went down. It was quite overcast, which brought some relief from the heat so the sun set was a bit obscured but the sky turned vibrant reds, purples and oranges and it was just stunning.
We sat at a table in one of the restaurant right on the beach and ordered a bunch of food and drinks. Its not as cheap as Bangkok here, given its an island and a lot of the food will be imported, and its a tourist place but its still ridiculously cheap compared to home or Europe or most places. About £3.50 a dish. It's also not as tasty but again, still better then any Thai food anywhere else. We sat and
watched a fireshow as we ate, which was fairly entertaining. Then a drag cabaret started in the bar area which was actually quite good too. They used some really old skool tunes in the fireshow from when I was a teen that I haven't heard for years, made me nostalgic. I thought of one of my pals as I sang out '
gimmie a baked bean' and giggled away to myself, Rob looking on in bemusement. After dinner we strolled back along the now very dark beach, staring out into the open sea, which was pitch black and feeling a bit intimidated by its unforgiving vastness. Oohh imagine being stuck out in the ocean in the dark. As we settled to go to sleep, we started to hear some distant rumbles of thunder. Hopefully, it would rain and clear the sky the next day. I say that, but actually I like it cloudy. Bright sunshine looks fantastic but thats it. The cons heavily out way the pros and as we are not sunbathers or tanners, the sun can really ruin our day. Throughout the night I was aware of being roused now and then by the thunder but at 4am I
woke up with a bang. A literal giant bang of thunder right above us. It was so loud and gave us such a fright. We then became aware of the continuous, very loud thunder that would occasionally be a massive crack or bang but it was constant. Not stopping at all. I opened the curtains to what can only be described as a nightclub with a serious strobe light on. I have never seen or heard anything like this and i've see some good thunder and lightning storms before but this was 'end of the world' level. It was terrifying! We kept saying it was exactly like horror movie thunder and lightning. Rob said he was just waiting on Dracula appearing. I went outside and watched for a while, but I was pretty scared. We managed to get back to sleep and in the morning it was as if nothing had happened. I made a wee video for you.
Day 8 Time for breakfast, ooooh exciting. This is it, this is a big reason I picked this type of accommodation. Similar to the resort we stayed in both Phuket and Koh Samui. This was gonna be
epic!........SHIT, absolute shit, Can't believe it. They don't even have Nutella. That says it all. So after that we decided we would hire a moped. Its pretty cheap at about £8 a day. We got the more powerful one as this island is like a roller-coaster, hill-wise and the less powerful one wasn't getting up those hills with my fat arse on the back. Usually, I have to fight/persuade Rob to do this as he is the worlds biggest shitbag. He is a great driver and he knows how to ride a bike. We have done it in several places including Thailand and Cambodia. Each time he moans about how dangerous it is and we're going to get pulled over and fined by the corrupt polis. Then we get it and within five minutes of driving he is on cloud 9, loving life. He usually forgets this every time and I have to go through the whole thing each time but he finally remembered and was the first to suggest we hire it. Off we went on our adventures. Having a bike is so freeing as well as fun. The hills certainly were steep and I was so scared we
would just start going backwards as we neared the top but we were fine. The trucks and some cars in front of us were not so lucky and we had to stop for several to reverse/roll back down and change their plans.
As we drove down the east coast, passed through many towns/tourist resorts. A lot of it was closed. They haven't recovered well from covid here at all. The island seems pretty dead and what is open is mainly girlie bars. Ive seen a lot of western men with younger Thai men that look a lot like women. More than I'v seen in any of our previous trips. Koh Chang is underdeveloped, which in my eyes was a great thing, but I think it might be a wee bit too undeveloped/quiet. Ive decided for our two week holidays, I will check if there is a McDonalds wherever we decide to go. Writing those words makes me want to puke! Its not to go to the McDonalds, its a way of telling if the amenities and stuff to do will be enough for us. If there is no McDonalds, it ain't busy cause they don't miss a trick. As
we drove along, we came across three elephants on the side of the road. Next to them was a van selling food to feed them. We stopped and and bought two baskets of food each. As we neared the elephants we realised they were chained up. I don't know why I we didn't realise that. I mean three elephants aren't just hanging out by the road by themselves. Their feet were chained quite tightly with no room to move much. We felt bad and stupid! We fed them the food we had bought quickly and left. We stopped at a bar on the side of the road to check the map and see where the Ghost Ship Hotel was. I had seem this on a YouTube video and, if you know me at all, I love abandoned shit! We decided to have a drink in the bar which was Rasta themed, like 50% of the bars on the island seemingly. I overheard the young guy at the bar talking to the barman and realised he was one of Robs type, so I let him order so I could see the 'eh-up ducky' interaction that was inevitable. We had a drink
and lay on the floor, hippy-style, cushions overlooking the bay before heading to the Ghost Ship Hotel. This place is an abandoned resort called The Galaxy hotel. It is a repurposed cruise ship and is surrounded by about 15 other little boat 'rooms' on the lake. It was abandoned 20 years ago apparently but it looks to me like it's only been abandoned 5 years. You need to pay £2 each to go on the grounds. You used to be able to go inside it and explore but that's been stopped now which is a real shame because that is right up my street. We had a wonder around and it looks like they are using one of the outbuildings as something and one of the wee boat rooms/villas looks like it in use too. There is a waterfall here to so we rode up to that but you had to get in the water to cross over a bit of the 'road' to the waterfall and we didn't want to take our shoes off or have a towel with us so we just headed back. My butt was starting to hurt and the journey back was a bit uncomfortable.
We stopped at one of the other wee towns and had a drink and some spring rolls. It was a tiny wee place so it took less than two minutes to walk it. We headed back to the hotel. We had the bike until 12.30pm the next day but we were booked to go diving at 8am the next morning, so we took the bike back and headed for some dinner. We ended up just next door in a bar/restaurant where I had a massamam curry and Rob had salt and chilli squid . The bar had a Celtic scarf hanging up. It was the only football scarf or football related thing up there so that's weird.
Day 9 Early start today. So we headed to breakfast at 7.30am and were picked up at 8am. We had booked a 'discover diving' trip. For £100+ each. We were to dive twice and have lunch and time to snorkel. I have done a couple of fun dives in the past, like 20 years ago. Rob has done a fun dive in a pool in Glasgow once about 10 years ago. Rob was shitting himself. He is such a scardy cat.
Whereas i'm all
'I can do can do anything, lets jump into this volcano, it'll be fun' until I get o the volcano and i'm like '
oh no never mind'. We filled in our medical forms and took some anti sickness pills for the boat and got on board with our dive master Noo. Noo wasn't actually a dive master but he was about to be. They used us as part of his training which made me feel a bit cheated. He was a lovely man though and took us through everything carefully under the supervision of one of the Belgian owners. We arrived at the dive spot and geared up. We were to 'step' into the water from the side of the boat with our mask and regulator in. Rob went straight in. I just stood there staring. I thought '
oh no, I cannae dae it' but I found myself taking the step and I was in no bother. We started the dive by holding onto a rope hanging from the boat that was anchored. We had to go through a few exercises first just below the surface. Taking the regulator out our mouth and finding it again and
clearing the water from our mouths after putting it back in and clearing our mask when it fills with water. I did not do well at this. When water touches my nose that I don't have pinched, I panic. It took a few attempts and a lot of sea water up my nose before we could continue. I got there eventually and off we went. Noo was above us at all times and had us on a leash! And the other guy, Pierre ('
oh Pierre' is all I said in my head every time I heard his name) was around us watching Noo. This was a bit restricting. He kicked me a lot because we were so close. The regulator had to be held in place in your mouth by biting down on it and it felt like it was fighting to escape your mouth all the time, so our teeth and jaws were killing us. We only went shallow to, about 7 meters or so, and it was raining so the water was murky and visibility was poor but there were thousands of fish all around all the time. Super colourful ones too. After about 50 minutes, we surfaced
and had to swim on our backs to the boat that was about 30 meters away. This was the hardest part. I don't know why we didn't just go back under the water., It was hard work. We changed out of the gear and had lunch and snorkel time, about 2 hours before the next dive. We weren't sure about doing it at all. Rob was bored during the first one and it had made his back hurt a bit. It felt a bit like too much hard work for me too and I was a bit panicky with it. Once the 2 hours had gone by, we were calmed down and ready to try again. It was completely different this time. We kinda knew what we were doing now and we went deeper this time. We were to both hold Noo's arm instead which was slightly more free, although he still kicked me a lot. We seen a Moray Eel, two stingrays, giant Angel fish, multi coloured fluorescent fishes, schools of mackerel, sea cucumbers and the coral was nuts. If you drained the water, you'd be on a planet from No Man's Sky. We surfaced and had to do
the swim back to the boat again. This time he didn't take my oxygen tank off my back to get out. It was almost impossible to stand on the daft wee ladder into the boat. I was just crushed by it. I eventually got on though. This dive was much better but we had done this dive to see if we wanted to do our PADI here. It only takes 2 days and something I've always wanted to do but we decided not to. Mainly because it was really hard work and I didn't want to spend 2 days of the 6 we are here panicking haha. Plus, the next time I get an opportunity to dive will probably be a year from now and I will have forgotten the lot. There's no way i'm diving Scotland!
I couldn't wait to be back in the hotel room. We were both shattered and my hair was the biggest tangled mess you ever seen. I also forgot to bring my knickers and bra so I was going commando in my skin tight shorts and floaty top. I don't like scaring the locals this much. Got myself another roti (Nutella,
banana and condensed milk) and lay about the hotel room after our much needed showers. Eventually we headed out to eat and randomly chose one near us where we ordered too much food as usual and then I got a foot massage. It was one of the best i've had in the shittest massage place i've been in. Ill be going back there. Exhausted we happily went to sleep fairly early and slept for about 10 hours.
More pics below if you scroll all the way down especially on a phone.
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Louise
non-member comment
I see a little silhouetto of a man … the Robster !
Not too shabby, doon by the water.