Koh Chang

The kids were off school this week, so Tim and I took them to the Koh Chang. Koh Chang is the third largest island in Thailand and has become a popular tourist destination. It also is the home to a large national park.

The drive to Koh Chang took about six hours. Top had borrowed the van, so we took the Mercedes. The kids were fighting with each other quite a bit. There is no bridge from the mainland to the island, so you have to take a ferry from the town of Trat. We had to wait about thirty minutes for the ferry, and the trip over took another thirty.

The roads on Koh Chang are narrow and winding. There were places were the road was in an "S" shape.

We stayed at the Barali Beach resort on Klong Prao Beach. It was a nice quiet place a bit off the main road and very close to the water. We liked the location. It helped though that we had a car and weren't really interested in walking around and shopping. If we were interested in the night life, we would have been better suited staying in the White Beach area.

We didn't arrive until 6:00 pm, so we had dinner, spent some time with the kids and went to bed. We had dinner at night at a non-descript Thai-European restaurant. There were a lot of restaurants that advertised Thai and European cuisine, but almost nothing that mentioned American cuisine. This may be in part because most of the tourists to Thailand are European rather than American. Thailand is a lot closer to Europe.

On our first full day in Koh Chang we hung around at the hotel beach and pool. We tried to go see one of the waterfalls on the island, but didn't arrive until thirty minutes before it closed for the day. Instead, we enjoyed a Thai desert called Lothi. Its kind of like a crepe with your choice of sweet topings. Traditionally its served with condensed milk and sugar. Its very good as its made fresh. Of course this means that getting lothi for five takes ten or fifteen minutes; if you are first in line.

That night we had dinner at a seafood restaurant highly recommended by the hotel. It was pretty good food, although a bit pricey. The fried calamari was very good. Aleena slept through this entire meal. She is such a trooper on vacation. She tries to keep up with everyone, but when things slow down a bit, her exhaustion shows and she falls asleep.

On our second full day we booked a trip on a speed boat that took us to four islands for snorkeling and sight seeing. This was by far the best day of the trip. Snorkeling was a lot of fun. Aleena floated along side us as the rest of us snorkeled. We had lunch at one of the finest restaurants in the world that afternoon. The food was a simple container of fried rice in a Styrofoam container, and there was no service to speak of, but the view was absolutely spectacular. Of course, Jacob and Nalin both managed to get sea water in their food at different points of the meal. Kids will be kids.

Perhaps the highlight for the kids was when we floated along side an island populated with monkeys. We had already fed the left over water melon to the fish, so we fed the rinds and scraps to the monkeys. Given the scramble to get this bounty, I'd say the monkeys didn't mind.

That night we had dinner at another place recommended by the hotel. This restaurant was a bit strange in that they had you take off your shoes. Taking off ones shoes when entering a home or temple is standard protocol in Thailand. Tim and I were pretty adamant about it in our home in the U.S. for a while, but became kind of lax later on. Truth be told, this is a Thai custom that I really like. In any case, taking your shoes off in a place of business is not all that typical here. What was even stranger was when Tim stopped at a convenience store later in the evening and they required customers to take off their shoes. Tim was even annoyed by that.

In addition to the food, which was decent, the big deal about this restaurant was that after your meal, they took you on a boat ride to see fireflies. Growing up in Kentucky, I am not a stranger to fireflies. I remember catching them in my hands as a boy. Sitting in a canoe for forty minutes to see some fireflies (we always called them lightning bugs) in the trees was hardly my idea of exciting or fun. For some strange reason, perhaps the dark, Jacob was worried that some ill fate would befall us. Jacob's desperately clutching my arm while Tim was teaching a fellow Thai passenger the words to the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" made a strange if not interesting trip.

We had a few hours of sight seeing available on the day of our departure. We went and saw the elusive waterfall from earlier in the trip. I had injured my ankle a bit the previous day, so the half-kilometer trek to the waterfall really sucked. By the time we arrived, I was in a pretty foul mood and didn't take any pictures there.

Tim actually had planned a one day vacation with some of her employees that started the day our vacation ended. She had someone pick us up in Trak and take us home. This trip was in a conversion van with a television, which helped the kids pass the time nicely.

Overall we had fun. Below are some pictures and a link to the albumn on Picasaweb.

Here is the albumn

Here is the albumn.