Koh Chang

Stop #2 Koh Chang, Thailand

Leaving our town was surreal, our rooms were empty, and our luggage packed away in storage awaiting our return from our wild journey ahead. We were embarking on two months of backpacking, buses, flights, hostels, beaches, different languages and currencies and a whole bunch of unknown moments. Being a planner, I was naturally freaking out, trying to combine my things into an acceptable weight for a hiking backpack, and prepare mysel

 for all of the things that could go wrong that I couldn't even begin to predict. I even spent the last two months face time interviewing with counseling positions back home so that when I got home from this trip of a lifetime, I wouldn't feel as horrible about the amount of money I was about to give away for the things I would always regret not having tried. After many interviews, follow up interviews and no specific responses or promises from any of the agencies I had been interested in, I decided I did as much as I could from a country across the world, and that I would just take a rest from it all. 

Two minutes before I fell asleep, the night before I was about to backpack Southeast Asia for two straight months, I got an email. I had received the job I wanted as Clinician for a residential school for children with both trauma disorders and disabilities. It was a sign, I now knew that I would at least make it through my adventure with a financial support in place when I returned back to the states. The timing could not have been more perfect. The best advice I have for anyone who is still reading my travel stories is to understand that there is no right time to drop everything you have an go travel. You can plan as much as you want, and save as much as you want, but life doesn't wait for you to be ready, sometime life can through you a wrench like getting invasive knee surgery two months before moving to a foreign country for a year just a month after having turned 26 having come off your parents health insurance and having to pay for all the surgery and rehab costs on top of student loans. I refused to let this change my plans to travel. I have always been taught that when you work hard enough for something you really want no matter how much life might get in the way. Through extra tutoring and saving money earned as an English Teacher in Thailand, I was able to plan the most perfect journey with dream destinations throughout SouthEast Asia. Timing is everything I know when I say trust your process, you have every right to get up from your computer and just roll your eyes but don't miss the chances you could have taken because I promise you will never regret saying yes. If you work hard and you believe in yourself, you can do anything. 

It was 5 am, and I was meeting my friend Meg at the Ekkamai Bus terminal in Bangkok so we could catch a ride to Koh Chang, an island in Southeast Thailand known for its untouched beauty. I took my sheets off the bed, moved my luggage into storage, threw on my hiking back pack, and  hopped on a motor taxi, something that had become so natural to me to the nearest bus station into Bangkok. Looking back on this now, I remember just how amazing it had become to me that in such a short amount of time, I had become so familiar with these wild forms of transportation all on my own. Its truly a sense of freedom that in inexplicable. Meg was returning home from a trip in Bali with her boyfriend who had met here there as a last minute surprise and god bless her soul, jumped right back onto transportation to Koh Chang with me. We took an extremely grueling and confusing mini van ride 6 hours to the south of Thailand, being told to transfer vehicles with no explanation two times dropped 8 miles from the pier and ripped off by a local Song Thaew driver who got us to the pier just in time for the last ferry to Koh Chang. All we had known of this small island, was that like most other extremely crowded and tourist infested islands in Thailand, the level of corruption for those who dared to find Koh Chang was a little more pressured on "Farangs" than other islands. After another mess of bartering and failed transportation, we finally made it to our hostel at 10pm, leaving Bangkok at merely 1pm. What we thought would be a room turned out to be a clay hut, bug infested room with open windows, no fan and a door that did not lock. If this was not the most perfect way to begin a back packing trip around SouthEast Asia, then I don't know what was! 

It was in this moment, Meg with stomach bug remnants after food poisoning from Bali and two days of nonstop traveling under her belt and I decided to use some of that emergency budget and find a comfortable and safe place to stay for the night. We paid our deposit, thanked the very disappointed hostel attendant and took our hiking backpacks to the streets. Due to the isolation of this island, public transportation ends at 6 pm. Luckily, Meg happens to be amazing at hitchhiking and found a very sweet young man to let us throw ourselves into his trunk and bring us towards the most populated beach nearby where we came across our saving grace. The Elephant Bay Resort. This mini resort was immediately hospitable, taking our bags from us to our room with a bathroom attached ( a rare and highly appreciated entity in Thailand) and a large comfy bed with bug nets windows and a nice fan. It was like going from hell to heaven. I don't remember much from the night we arrived besides the fact that we put ourselves to bed and woke up to watch the sunrise over the resort pool and ocean. This first leg of our trip proved to be rejuvenating. We spent our 3 days in Koh Chang swimming, journaling, reading exploring new restaurants and kayaking the coast of the Island. Its almost as if the entire time we were at school or traveling on the weekends, we hadn't had a trip that truly allowed us to take our time and recenter ourselves before the chaos that laid ahead.

Koh Chang is the perfect Island to let yourself breathe. Not only are there not a lot of tourists, but the resorts offer amazing prices and the island although difficult to navigate with windy mountain roads and narrow coastlines, untouched and natural. Not many places you will find these days will be able to maintain this quality. In this moment, it was truly needed. Sometimes you just need the reminder to come back to yourself and allow the environment around you to be fully present. For this I am extremely thankful. 

Tips for Koh Chang:

• Great place for family vacations
• Tough places for groups based on the lack of public transportation
• Never pay more than 150 Bhat per Song Theaw ride around the island
• For good Mexican food go to Barrio Bonito, moderate price, amazing quality!
• If you get carsick this is not the island for you
• Make sure to have an early dinner or night out unless you live in the party beach area "Lonely Beach" Where the main street, shops and clubs don't close all night ( if thats the kind of trip you want)
• If you get a van to Sihanounkville, Cambodia please read my upcoming blog post on crossing the border of Thailand to Cambodia via land