Koh Chang

For those of you who don’t know, my friend Revonna arrived in Bangkok last Wednesday for a three week stay. After she had more or less recovered from jetlag, I whisked her away to Koh Chang, a mellow island in the Gulf of Thailand, not too far from Cambodia. I had Monday off from school so we had a nice three day weekend to relax. We traveled with Courtney (I went to elephant camp with her) and Sunny, Daylin, and Mike (my Tiger Temple travel companions). Friday afternoon right after school we caught a bus down to Trad (a five hour ride) where we spent the night at Pop’s Guest house before taking the ferry over to Koh Chang in the morning.
Saturday we awoke to a beautiful and bright sun, which was a nice gift after nearly a full week of rain and clouds. (The rainy season doesn’t officially start until June, but for whatever reason, we have been plagued with rain.) We arrived in Koh Chang (the second largest island in Thailand) and Sunny had us delivered to White Sands beach. This stretch of beach is the most unpretentious and relaxed place I have ever been. I took my shoes off when we got there and didn’t put them back on until we left. Everything we needed was right on the beach or just a short walk away to the main street.
Along the beach there is a quaint string of slightly ramshackle guest houses and restaurants. We passed up the expensive place ($28/night) for one of the cheaper places ($12/night). This simple little bungalow is right on the beach, although I don’t know how much longer it will be there. At high tide, the water reached the bottom of the stairs to our little room and literally washed away the bottom step Saturday night. We had one room and a small bathroom. Quite rustic. In addition to the bed, the only other furnishing in the room was a complicated looking mosquito net piled up above the bed that we didn’t bother with. The two windows did not have screens or glass, they were just big rectangular openings through which to view and hear the sea. The shutter type enclosures stayed open the whole time we were there, mocking the padlock on the door. These open windows also allowed a fairly large lizard to sneak in and greet me when I woke up Monday morning.

There was something magical about the weekend. The way time seemed to be irrelevant while on the island. I felt totally removed from the rest of the world. No cars, no distressing news, no obligations—just the crashing waves, the ocean breeze, the busy sand crabs. The way the mist hung above the surf and framed the islands in the distance. I had planned on reading (I had packed three books) but I didn’t read much. I was perfectly content to lie on the bed and listen to the eternal rhythm of the sea. Happy to sit on the porch and watch the tide go out. I did get a massage one day and a foot scrub the next which was probably the extent of my productivity while on the island. I took naps, walked on the beach with Daylin, watched other travelers playing in the surf. After we were both wakened in the wee hours of Sunday morning by a terrific thunderstorm, Revonna and I stayed up and caught up on some lost time. The slow pace coupled with the beauty of the ocean, the way the colors changed from blue to green to gray, was simply sublime.