Koh Chang

สวัสดี dear ones.

Oh man... we as the Chaos travel group really live up to the name we gave ourselves. The last three weeks of our trip around the world were absolute madness. Starting from Bangkok, we took a bus towards Trat. The bus was extremely uncomfortable and of course the air conditioning was running at full speed everywhere in Thailand. After 5 hours in which we almost died from the cold and our buttocks threatened to fall off, we finally arrived at the ferry station in Trat. When we got there, we were basically shooed out of the bus and rushed to check in, where we were told that the bungalow we had booked probably wouldn't be there (spoiler... it was). Shortly afterwards, I realized that my cell phone was missing. We ran back to look for it but it was gone. Such a crap! We and our bad mood were taken by ferry to the island of Koh Chang, where a taxi was waiting for us to take us to our very existing bungalow. We drove between the beach and the jungle over some of the windiest and steepest roads we had ever seen to almost the southernmost point of the island.

Quick fact check about Koh Chang: The island is one of the largest islands in Thailand and is located in the eastern region near the border with Cambodia. The entire island consists of a national park, which is why no houses or roads are allowed to be built inside the island. There is only one road on the island, but it doesn't go around the entire island, which is why you always have to drive around the entire island to get to the other side.

Further in the text…

After a while our taxi driver dropped us off at a small bridge and walked along a sandy path to our accommodation. When we arrived there, we were greeted so warmly that the anger about my stolen cell phone began to fade. Our bungalow was small and simple, with no air conditioning or hot water… so perfect for us. We felt so comfortable with our hosts right from the start that we quickly decided to stay there for two weeks instead of one. Well, what can we say… it was so nice that you ended up having three weeks left. The locals call this the Ko Chang fever and I think they are absolutely right. By the way, I didn't get my cell phone back, but fortunately Julian the Fox had packed a second cell phone that I could use. I also still had my old SIM card because I had to buy another one for Thailand. That's why I had almost all of my phone numbers back. Blessing in disguise.

Well... we spent most of the next few days and weeks smoking and drinking on the beautiful beach or in the lovingly furnished Ban Ban Bar, which was part of our accommodation. We met wonderful people like Sheryn and Picee, our hosts, who we grew to love and ultimately became our friends. People like Ale and Adrian, who are diving instructors on Ko Chang and went snorkeling with us for a day. People like Vincent, who made our time on the island so sweet with his warm manner and will remain an absolute running gag with his “Live is good”. And of course Jerome and sweet Baralee from the Rocket Lounge, where they sell records and whose opening ceremony we were able to attend. We saw countless fish and corals while snorkeling in so many different shapes and colors that it felt like we were in another universe. We drove around the island on the scooter and saw beautiful beaches and the jungle. We kayaked to a deserted beach that was so full of plastic trash that we were momentarily speechless. There are so many interesting animals and plants to see on the island that sometimes you don't know where to look. We saw elephants, but they were tied to a short chain on the ground, so we preferred to drive on quickly because we couldn't see them.

One of our highlights was of course the private boat trip to the other side of the island. There we drove through a mangrove forest to our boater's houseboat and drank his homemade coconut wine with him, which tasted a little like my homemade mead. Only with a coconut flavor. So just divine. Afterwards we had the most exciting scooter ride of our lives (five of us on a scooter with a self-made metal sidecar like everyone there probably has), to a taxi where we shared the back seat with a scooter, to a temple festival in Salak It was like a village festival, but it was much louder because someone was constantly shouting into a microphone somewhere.

Our farewell to all of our new friends there was difficult but really nice. We celebrated late into the night, which we somewhat regretted the next morning, three hours later.

With what felt like 1.0 per mille, we set off on the journey to the next destination Koh Rong, which turned out completely differently than planned, but what do you expect from a travel group called Chaos?!

But more on that in the next post. 😊