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Elephant Island
Entry 18 of 117 | show all | print this entry |
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After a few days in Bangkok waiting for the long weekend to be over, I decide to head to Koh Chang for a week in the sun on an island relatively close to Bangkok (6 hours). It's funny how travel times become relative when you are wandering around the world. A 6 hour bus trip in the States sounds preposturous to me. That would definately be a SWA flight.
Koh Chang is a perfect example of what is wrong with tourist development in Thailand today. I knew things would be different this time back after so many years away from Thailand. But in Koh Chang, development has grown exponentially in the past few years. 13 years ago it wasn't much more than a spec on the ocean, 5 years ago it was mostly full of basic beach front huts with no real road to speak of. Now there is a car ferry, a road that almost covers the entire island, and full resort developments pushing out the people that were first on the island running the huts.
Fortunately for me, I was looking for nicer accomodations with aircon attached bath and satellite TV right on the beach.
LOL The 1st 2 nights I got a great place in the middle of White Sands Beach for 1200THB/night with a balcony that sat right on the beach. Ahhh... Lovely! Didn't do much else but sit on the balcony watching the world go by and all the other people with "Bungalow Envy" point and say WOW! that'd be a nice place to stay. Unfortunately, the bungalow was booked ahead of time and I had to move. So I hired a motorbike and headed down towards Lonely Beach where I had heard there were more simple huts and less package tourists.
My friend Ben said he had stayed at Paradise Cottage (doesn't that sound nice) so after searching for another resort for a couple hours, I ended up there. A nice simple little place with no TV, no AC and a cold shower, but right on the water with a nice view of the sunsets even from my bed. Now this was my kinda place. A relatively cheap clean bungalow right on the water. (300THB waterfront, 200THB behind) Unfortunately, there wasn't a beach right in front of the bungalow. But, I ended up staying here for 5 days.
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