Koh Chang

After the bustle of Bangkok, where I was finally able to get my act together and take a cooking class, I wanted to go somewhere to lay on the beach and do a whole lot of nothing. I decided to head down to the island of Koh Chang, which is a little off the eastern coast near a town called Trat. With a beach named Lonely Beach and a tiny fishing village where you can stay in a bungalow off the dock in the town, I figured it would be a perfect place to get away from it all. Wrong.

The first night I stayed at a town called White Sands Beach (it seems that all these places here have recently been re-named in a branding effort). Decent beach, more people than I wanted to deal with and sort of a tourist trap. So I decided to mosey along down the coast, looking for a more remote town, with less euro-tourists. Picking Lonely Beach, mainly because of its name and a short writeup in Lonely Planet that said it was pretty remote, I stayed the next day there. It really failed to live up to it's name. Apparently the town has undergone quite a change in the past few years, and was more packed than White Sands. The beach wasn't very good either.

My journey in search of a semi-deserted beach continued to Bang Bao. This fishing village isn't much of a fishing village anymore. It's now more of a diving center/tourist trap. Sick of searching for somewhere semi-deserted, I've stayed here the last two days sleeping in a hut over the water off the main dock. I wandered around in the jungle the other day a bit (forgot my camera though) and spent all day today on the beach a few kilometers out of town. It was pretty crowded, but better than Loney Beach. I'm ready to get off this island, so I'm headed to Siem Reap tommorow, to meet back up with Wendy and Winnie and go see Ankgor Wat. I've heard it is amazing, so am really looking forward to it.

The one saving grace of Bang Bao was last night when I got back to my very rustic bungalo, and the guy who runs it (Dia) was grilling squid off the dock. He invited me to join him and after getting across to me that the sauce was VERY spicy we dug in. We ate nearly a kilo of squid and the chilli sauce. Was the best meal I've had here on Koh Chang. I was quite proud of myself that I was able to handle the spice better than he was.