To say we needed a few days just relaxing on a beach and not doing a lot may sound ludicrous to you all… ‘But, you have been on holiday for months now… how could you possibly need a break?’ The answer is simple. Travelling is tiring and absolutely not the same as a holiday.

Most of our time in Australia and New Zealand was very go go go. We spent many days constantly walking around or driving in the case of New Zealand. We would stop often, clean the camper, cook or prepare 3 meals a day and it was tiring. Especially on the days with early starts and long hikes. I know a lot of you don’t believe me, but I promise it’s true. So when we made it to Thailand we decided that we would take some time out and make the 7 ish hour trip to the second largest island in Thailand (after Phuket) and just relax. Our itinerary until mid March means that we aren’t going to see the beach a whole lot (Northern Thailand and Laos are landlocked, and Vietnam in the North is quite chilly this time of year), so why not?!

Getting the bus tickets was really simple. We used the tour desk at our Bangkok hotel and having completed some research beforehand we knew what a good price was so we didn’t get fooled around. The bus we travelled with was a VIP bus (ooo errr). I honestly think that just means as close to Western standards as possible. There was a toilet on board (i’ll go into toilets in another blog) and we stopped for a snack half way through. Once we made it to Centrepoint ferry terminal we had a short wait before we boarded the 45 minute ferry over to Koh Chang. The company arranged all this for us and gave us our return tickets. The cost was 550 baht each, each way (around £12).

Once we made it to Koh Chang we had to get to where we were staying. Lining the pier were loads of pick up trucks that had been converted into taxis. 12 people could fit uncomfortably in the back, but we heard stories of up to 18 in there. It was a fixed price to our beach, lonely beach, and once the taxi was full we headed off with our bags strapped to the top. As people needed to get off he’d stop, grab their bag and off we went. It started to downpour quite quickly into the ride, so the poor driver had to get out and attach the shutters. He got absolutely soaked. It was then that the whole truck load of us realised no one had the waterproof cover on their bags.  Luckily, both our bags proved to be pretty good investments and not a lot of water got in.

We eventually made it to our accommodation, which was a bungalow that cost us around £12 a night. Bargain. We were told we were going to have to move bungalow after 2 nights, but that didn’t really bother us until we got to the new bungalow. Actually, the new bungalow was nicer than the old one, but it was closer to the main street. It had been noisy from the bars in the first bungalow, but not unbearable.  It was pretty unbearable in the new one.  I had to wear ear plugs every night and even then it wasn’t great. Oh well… live and learn. If we go back we know exactly where to stay and can advise other people better now.

I’m not going to talk about each day individually on the island, because it was a lovely relaxing blur of chilled outness. Here’s what we did:

We rented a scooter one day and Simon drove us around. Very weird to have Simon drive me around for a change. On our day with the scooter we headed to Bang Bao, which is a village with buildings created on stilts on the end of a pier. Very pretty. We drove to Kai Bae beach, which was beautiful and saw some elephants on the beach. They are used for the tourist industry, with people paying to bathe them in the ocean. We are quite passionately against using elephants in the tourist industry, but will go into that in another blog. Other than watching the elephants, we read and went for swims in the ocean. Our last stop when we had the scooter was to head up to Khlong Phlu waterfall. We had to pay quite a large amount (in Thai terms) as the waterfall was based in a National Park. We walked through the jungle and ended up at the beautiful waterfall. We had a swim and had our feet eaten by the fish in the waterfall.

We went diving on 2 days. The first day we were hoping to dive the HTMS Chang and then do a local reef dive. There was quite a lot of surge on the first day so we completed 2 reef dives instead. The company we dived with, BB divers, was really good, providing us with a buffet lunch, drinks all day and a lot of laughs. The reef dives were ok, but we didn’t see a huge amount. No turtles or sharks, but plenty of pretty reef fish and barracudas. On the second day we were able to dive the HTMS Chang. It was my first wreck dive and I loved it. The wreck was sunk as an artificial reef in 2011. There were SOOOO many shoals of fish around the wreck. Unfortunately, we didn’t see a whale shark, but there is always more time. The second dive of that day was more like the one on the first day. Enjoyable, but not the best.

This adorable dive shop cat stole my heart…

Other days on the island were spent just lying on lonely beach, reading our books, sun bathing and swimming in the sea. Perfect!!!

We saw monkeys.

We drank some beers with some girls we met whilst we were there.

We ate loads of excellent Thai food at some beautiful restaurants.

and Tapas

I would definitely recommend Koh Chang as a holiday destination. It’s an island that isn’t commonly on the backpacking trail so it’s a bit quieter and very pretty. Definitely visit.