Koh Chang
THAILAND
Separate Ways
By LYNDI
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
When given the option to continue traveling overland through Cambodia to visit Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat before arriving in Thailand – or to fly directly to Thailand and arrive to the beach a week early – the choice was simple. Aaron would travel by old, bumpy, overheated buses through the developing world while I took a cheap AirAsia flight from Saigon to Bangkok and beelined for Ko Chang. Cambodia is an amazing country – or it was seven years ago when I was there – but the beaches beckoned and I got the call. So we split.
Apparently that’s kind of weird. I mean a couple traveling together does everything together, right? In my humble opinion – that traveling couple is going to end up bickering and fighting about everything due to overexposure of each other, so Aaron and I have tried to maintain our independence as we’ve gone along. So if we wanted to go see different places, people honestly could not wrap their heads around the fact that we were splitting for a week in order to do that. Though, to be fair, it’s not like I was going downtown for a night with the friends while Aaron was headed uptown – but the principle is the same.
So I arrived into Bangkok around 7:30pm, took the train to the last stop, then needed to find another traveler or two to split the cab to Khao San Road. Luckily, every single person with a backpack on was headed to Khao San – or the Backpacker’s Mecca – so it didn’t take long to find Paul and Steve on holiday from the UK headed the same direction.
Paul apparently was the only one of us intelligent enough to book a hostel in advance, so Steve and I knocked on the same hostel door to see if they still had room at 9pm. Funny enough, we met an Australian girl named Sophie that was waiting for another single female to look for a room so she could go halvesies, which is exactly what we did. That may sound like a strange scenario to many, but it’s kind of the way Khao San functions. So we all took quick showers and then my three new friends and I had a great night out with beer towers, lady boy spotting, and pad thai street food.
And as quickly as we’d met and become BFFs, we separated the very next day. I booked a bus from Bangkok to Ko Chang island on Thailand’s east coast – “only 5 hours from Bangkok”! Well, 11 hours later, my taxi dropped me off at Nature’s Beach Resort on Lonely Beach, so I’d say the timing was a bit off, but no matter. I’d finally made it to a beautiful tropical island. As I settled down in my $10 beach hut, the sun was setting in a bright red sky, so I was sure the next few days would be just what the doctor ordered after six hard months of backpacking.
Except that it rained for the next 20 hours. Kinda hard. To be honest, it didn’t bother me all that much. I wanted to just relax on the beach, read, write, walk around, and do nothing. So I just did it in the rain. I wasn’t there to get a tan or go to all night beach parties, so the bad weather really didn’t ruin any of my plans.
When it did clear up in the late afternoon, it went from dreary rain to crystal clear skies – someone just showing up would never have known it had been lousy weather the entire day. The weather pattern repeated itself to a lesser extent the entire four days I was there – always rainy in the morning but beautiful by around 2pm and into the night.
Because it’s low season on Ko Chang, Nature’s Beach Resort was really just about the only thing open on the beach. There were a few other hotels and hostels with about two people staying at them, so everyone just came to our hostel to hang out. Sometimes there were beach parties, sometimes there was live music, but the food was always excellent and relatively cheap which was nice.
Traveling solo at a beautiful beach was a new experience. Typically when you travel alone, you attract all the other solo travelers and band together like you’ve been friends forever. But on tropical islands, everyone is traveling with their boyfriend or girlfriend, so the dynamics changed a bit. Most of the time I was fine making casual conversation with one or both in the couple, but always tried to respect their “alone time” so never dwelled too long. Until one night I did go to a beach party (hey – free barbecue!) and didn’t want to hang out at a party by myself, so instead crashed two couples enjoying a double date. They were nice enough to not shoo me away or change tables, so it ended up being a pretty fun night with free food, fire dancing, and cheap buckets.
Ko Chang was great for relaxing, but after three nights of the island’s slowest time of year, I was ready for a bit more action. So only 9 hours back to Bangkok and the reunion with my husband. I’ve been told I had a good time that night, though the details are a bit hazy… so the next day was filled with planning our final stop on our three and a half year around the world tour. A lot of pressure for a girl with a hangover.
