Reading and Tanning, and Reading and Tanning
Trip Start
Sep 30, 2005
1
26
101
Trip End
Ongoing
Koh Chang, Thailand
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
We have thoroughly been enjoying our time here on Koh Chang! What an amazing thing to be doing. Every once in a while, we have to stop to remind ourselves that we are on an island in Thailand, living in a bamboo hut, having the ocean waves lapping under us everyday. It is a little surreal! Our days here have not consisted of anything very exciting - lots of reading, lots of tanning, lots of relaxing. It has been WONDERFUL!
To make it more clear, we have prepared a little itinerary of our days on this beautiful island. Enjoy.
December 5:
We boarded the bus out of Bangkok, and headed for the small town of Trat. We actually spent the night in Trat, which turned out to be a very good idea, because it was very unlikely that there would hve been any available guesthouses left by the time we arrived on the island that night. Other backpackers arrived in the evening when we had already been there a couple of days. Everything was booked, and these poor guys had to sleep on the ground in a restaurant until morning when some guests would be checking out.
December 6:
Arrived on Koh Chang. To get to the island, we paid a Songtheaow (back of a truck) to drive us to the ferry, and then paid $3.00 dollars for a return ticket on the ferry. Once the ferry got us to Koh Chang, (it only took about an hour), we boarded another Songtheaow to head to the backpacker beaches. Unfortunately we were the last on, and there was no room but the tailgate. So Trevor and I were standing on the tailgate of the Songthaeow holding onto the topping and grimmacing as we held on for dear life on the hairpin twists and turns of the roads. Seriously! The roads turned 180 degrees and the only way a driver would know if it was safe to make the turn, was the cleverly placed mirrors that displayed the road after the turn. Anyways, we arrived safe and sound and booked ourselves in to our humble bamboo hut over the ocean! (I love saying that!)
December 7:
Reading and Tanning.
It was scorcher today! We took our books and read on the beach. For the afternoon, we rented a motorbike and checked out the entire island. It is bigger than we thought it would be, and the ride was a bit longer than anticipated, but good all the less!
December 8:
Reading and Tanning
December 9:
Reading and Tanning
December 10:
Reading, Tanning, and Swimming - (busy day!)
December 11:
Reading and Tanning
We actually left the beach for a bit today and headed to a 7-11 type store. Here we bought cornflakes and milk for breakfast. Let me tell you that this was the greatest breakfast in the world! Those little flakes of corn are glorious!
In the evening, we headed to a beach party. It was pretty neat. We sat on a mat on the beach and had drinks and food. They actually BBQ right on the beach for you! All their seafood and everything was set up in a old wooden canoe (basically a carved out tree trunk), you just had to pick your food, and they BBQ'd it for you and brought it to your beach mat. At around 10:00 that night, a fire show began. This was mesmerizing. Staff members from the bar came out infront of us (we were front row baby!) and they lit put on a great show. There were basically 3 types of exciting things to watch. The first was a long stick, that was lit on fire at both ends and twirled like crazy in the night, the second was what we call the "Balls of Fire". These were just that, balls, lit on fire, connected to chain or rope and then endless numbers of tricks were done. It is hard to explain! The final one was what we called the "Ring of Fire". This was two ringsattached to two thin metal sticks that were pounded into the sand. The rings were lit on fire, and the staff would run and jump through them. They even had tourists, rather drunken tourists, giving it a go - not gracefully - but they were trying. One guy did a nice face plant in the sand, and was a little slow to get up. Imagine how much it would have hurt without the liquid courage! We've got some video of these and lots of pictures. It's way to difficult to explain!
December 12:
Reading and Tanning
December 13:
Snorkeling! We went to four islands and got to do some snorkeling today. I have never in my life seen so many fish!! There were so many at times, that you basically pushed them out of the way as you swam! It took a little getting used to at first, but it was pretty cool!
December 14:
Reading and Tanning - (It's okay, we're teachers, we're used to the multitasking).
It was a tough week, but we perservered.
Hugs and Love,
Dana and Trevor!
