Koh Chang
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2008
1
63
68
Trip End
Ongoing
Koh Mak,
Thailand
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
There's a long-standing rumour amongst travellers that airlines pay the Cambodian government a yearly amount, and in return they fail to improve this road, as a good quality road would be a disincentive to fly. Personally, I think that travellers are whingeing as they can't afford the air fare, and that more likely reasons are that 1) Cambodia is one of the poorest countries on Earth, and that particular road isn't a priority and 2) relations with the Thais aren't exactly good, so why improve the road leading there?
Three hours later we'd passed a road that was actually better than most in India, and we were at the border. We walked across, entered Thailand and weighed up our options. There was a cab that had come from Koh Chang, the island next to our destination of Koh Mak, and was about to return. For a reasonable fee, we jumped in.
Three hours later we had arrived at the small port of Ngop Laem and a 45 minute ferry trip later we were on Koh Chang. We would have to spend the night here as there were no onward ferries to our destination of Koh Mak til the morning.
We started out looking for accomodation. We quickly learnt that this place was busy and expensive. And being busy, when we did find somewhere with free rooms there was no question of bargaining over prices. Most of the cheaper places we saw were horrendous.
We settled for "Apple Bungalows". They use the word "bungalow" liberally in this part of the world. It essentially means a hotel where the rooms open into the outdoors, rather than into a corridor. It was 600Baht (£10) per room per night. We checked in to two rooms and went for some well needed dinner before going for an early night. Amazing how tiring sitting in a cab all day can be.
At 1am Catherine woke me up.
"What's that noise?" she asked. There was a noise of rustling plastic in the corner of the room, where she'd left a pack of biscuits in a plastic bag.
"It's just the fan blowing a plastic bag, that's all." I tried to calm her with, not really believing it but far more interested in carrying on kipping. The problem was that as we spoke the noise stopped.
"The bag just moved" Catherine added, a little panicked, and immediately ending any plans that I had of getting my head back down in the next hour or so.
We turned on the light and sat in the bed, weighing up what it could be that made this noise, and what "we" were going about it. I was looking at the offending corner of the room when the sight of a large rat made me jump. I placated Catherine by reporting that I'd just seen a small mouse, gesturing it to be a size about half that of the behemoth I'd just witnessed. The rat itself wasn't an enormous problem; I'd just have to pick up the plastic bag and throw it outside. But if it bit me, which it might if I picked up a bag that it was inside, then I was in real trouble.
Catherine did the decent thing and left to spend the rest of the night in her mum's room. She urged me to join her, but sharing a bed with my wife and my mother-in-law would be weird beyond weird and not a direction that I think any of us wanted this holiday to head in.
I sat there looking at this plastic bag, wondering what to do. I took a photo of it so that I could zoom in on the picture and see what the black shape I could make out inside the bag was. There was no movement with the flash, so I threw a book at it. Again no movement, so I figured it had gone. How it might have left I don't know as it had been on a table in a corner on the opposite side of the room to the crack under the door which was the only obvious rodent entry/exit point, and I had barely taken my eyes off the table.
Anyway, I opened the door, went to the bag and swung it out of the "bungalow". Nothing. It had gone. I warily turned over the rest of the bags in the room to make sure it wasn't still in hiding, then I tried to get back to sleep.
Comments
howdy punks,
hey you all, hi to Annie. so jealous of your trip, how do you fancy swopping? i will take your extended bus journeys and you take my 2 kids?? !! Yes? go on you know you want to!!
xx