Island Life
Trip Start
Jul 07, 2008
1
38
65
Trip End
Jun 20, 2009
Koh Chang,
Thailand
Monday, December 1, 2008
The journey to Koh Chang (Elephant Island because it's a jumbo - no honestly!) involves a little ferry ride from the mainland. It was a beautiful day with the promise of unspoilt ocean views - in fact we hadn't seen the sea since a windy day in Weymouth many months earlier. We arrived and got on our air con transport (well no doors and windows anyway) to Lonely Beach and wended our way over hills and round stunning coastline until our guesthouse, Magic Garden, came into view at the end of an interesting line of bars, shops and other places to stay. We met Travis, our American host, and were shown to our room by a local with his monkey?!
So far so good and then we saw the bathroom. On the up side you could take a shower looking at palm trees and the stars but on the downside it was dirty, full of ants and other non-identifiable scaly friends. I'm generally not too bothered by the odd dodgy bathroom but it kind of reflected the general management of the place. To be fair it was cheap but I just hate it when people don't have pride in their work. The food was terrible, the full on DJ parties were just loud and not really worth attending and after five days of spending as little time there as possible we decided to move on (the views expressed here are mine only and Dean would probably have written a slightly different piece!). However, we had explored the territory, the local beach was a beauty, the island itself had lots of development ongoing but we still felt very drawn to the quieter places, hammocks at Warapura, crazy road to Long Beach and the fishing port of Bang Bao.
In our roamings on Honda Dreamzzzzzzzzz we came across a lovely spot on the other side of the island. Funky Hut, had just re-opened under new management, we had a look around and really liked the look of it. We are on a pretty tight budget and in the local guide they suggested prices started at 600 Baht, about 12 pounds for a room. So when we saw the rooms we were very excited about the possibility of staying.....then we realised the book was out of date and the old huts behind the lovely rooms was what the previous owner had hired out last season at this price. So we thought that we better move on and find somewhere else.
But we couldn't find anywhere that we liked as much, so we went back! Cheryl and Julian made us welcome straight away. They had been living in the UK for five years, originally from South Africa and found Funky Hut when they had been looking for a holiday in Thailand. They ended up buying the place! We spent a brilliant nine days there...swimming in the pool, sunbathing (unheard of for Dean and I), reading, kayaking, eating lots, discussing politics and putting the world to rights. Dean started off the UK Best Seller for Christmas 2009 and I applied for some funding to do some work in India next year. A very good time had by all.
We liked Koh Chang lots and hope that it manages to retain its quiet, natural corners for a while yet...with the batteries recharged to buzzing we planned our route into Cambodia.
