mandag 4. august 2014

Long weekend in Koh Chang

One of the gifts for our wedding was a long weekend to Koh Chang, the Elephant Island, from my husbands colleagues. Koh Chang is south-east of Bangkok, almost at the border of Cambodia.

Transportation was included (though we decided to pay a little extra to avoid leaving sunday morning at 8:30 am! I think we might have overpaid quite a bit, but taking into consideration that we did not want to fuzz too much about it, it was still ok. We paid 600 bath per person for minivan back to Bangkok, with pick-up at hotel. I think you can get almost half the price if you book from Bangkok, or go to the pier in Koh Chang and book from there..). It takes about 6 hours from Bangkok to Koh Chang, including a 15-20 minutes ferry ride. You can also fly down - which is probably a little bit faster, but then again, you have to wait at the airport and then drive to the island, take the ferry and then drive some more.. Anyhow.. Not worth it if you only have the weekend! You need at LEAST 3 full days, knowing that 12 h will be "wasted in a van". 4 days would probably be better.

Our hotel, the Dewa, was approximately in the middle from white sand beach and the fishermans village (we only visited white sand beach). The Dewa is located very near the beach, which is nice, and the place is a good 4 star.

Included in our package was a 3 course dinner (yummy!) which we enjoyed the first night. We were arriving a bit later than scheduled. This was due  to a "saving operation" on the ferry - a guy was floating in the water - and they managed to get him on board. We are not really sure what he was doing in the water, but he had some sort of "floating device".. Our driver was filming it all from very close by, but his english was too poor to explain to us what the poor guy had been doing. (Though he tried!).

After the dinner and drinks, we went back to our room for a quick change - and a little surprise awaited us! We had the honeymoon package, and the staff had put rose petals everywhere! It was very nice of them, they had even filled a bath for us with rose petals in!

The next morning, we were supposed to go on a snorkeling day trip, but my husband was not feeling to well, so we managed to change it to the other option: 1 hour massage and lunch at the beach front restaurant.

After the lunch we decided to go to white sand beach. We walked for about 4-5km, before jumping in one of those "island taxis", which reminds me a little about a big tuktuk, and the price being fixed to 50 bath per person for any distance. On the way we saw elephants, but I felt rather sad than happy, as they were all wearing chains :/

White sand beach - I cannot say much about this beach - It is supposed to be a nice beach with lots of things happening. But we are in low season, and about 5 minutes after entering the beach it started raining. A Lot! So we took shelter in the closest restaurant when the sky fell down, and stayed there a bit longer than we normally would. We had booked return transfer from white sand beach with our hotel (a free transfer) but since the rain did not want to stop, we decided to take a taxi. The only problem with some of these island /tuktuk taxies are that you get wet when it is raining. Ah well! We went back to the hotel, and on the little walkway down to the hotel, my husband got his hair cut. At 9 pm a saturday night, it was possible to get a haircut for 300 bath! After that we enjoyed some time at the hotel bar..

On Sunday we did nothing particularly exciting, a walk on the beach, late breakfast and packing up and checking out. After lunch we were picked up and we drove back to Bangkok..

Tror de mangler en "d"... hehe:) / I think they are missing a "d"...
White sand beach before the rain REALLY started to fall!
On the beach you can find many things...
The people might be happy, the elephants.. I dunno..
Elephants in shackles
We are, we are...



First night dinner..

Fruit for dessert
View of the pool from the breakfast restaurant

Kitty at the tourist information..
Kitty's got many responsibilities..






Not really sure what this meant.. But there were A LOT of Russians on Koh Chang

We first thought someone had seen dolphins.. but it was a floating man..


And clapping /filming when the guy was finally safe!

Ingen kommentarer:

Legg inn en kommentar