Koh Chang: Finally, the Beach!

I've never lived so far away from the ocean. The closest beach to Ubon Ratchathani is in Vietnam... yep, you have to drive through Laos and then Vietnam just to get there. Or you can head southwest to Koh Chang and its surrounding islands, just by the Cambodian border. I often ask myself why I chose to live in a city so far away from Thailand's renowned beaches... But not to worry, as after a few days on the road, we found ourselves on a ferry powering towards Koh Chang.


Koh Chang has been labelled the second Phuket and tourist crowds are still growing. The island consists of mountainous national park blanketed in jungle, ringed by calm sandy beaches. Most of the people we saw were foreign tourists. It wasn't quite the tropical paradise I had hoped: the constant stream of visitors has left an impact. But when you haven't seen the beach for a year, perfection doesn't seem as important.


The cheapest inn we could find was 400 baht per person per night ($12.00). That might sound really cheap to you... Well, I was glad we'd brought along tents, because camping was just 30 baht per person. It was my first time sleeping in a tent in years. I don't think I've gone that long without camping in my life since my family started camping when I was a kid.

But all was not peachy. Something dark and sinister prowled our campsite. Its cries would wake me up in the middle of the night, and if you turned your back, it would try to possess everything that was yours.


I picked up the cat, placed it gently outside my tent, and it leapt back inside again. For every time I picked it up, I threw it farther and farther away. But each time, it simply landed on its paws and crept none-too-subtley back into my tent.

I really like cats, but I'm more wary of animals in Thailand - dogs in particular. While the Western world may see dogs as "man's best friend", in Thailand they are the lowest/dirtiest of creatures. I guess this is because they dig through rubbish and roam the streets. Some of them carry diseases. I've almost been attacked by snarling "soi dogs" (as we foreigners call them here; means 'streetdogs') and one of my friends was even bitten. He had to go straight to hopsital for a rabies shot, because the risk is too high to ignore.

Fortunately, the few dogs I did encounter on Koh Chang had adopted the lazy beach attitude.


On the second day, our group split up. While the others went on a day-tour of four nearby islands, my good friend Popsie and I headed to Koh Mak. And finally we found the pristine beaches we'd been searching for...