Beach adventure in Koh Chang!

Our first traveling snafu has finally occurred. On Friday, our bus driver was late picking us up and it took us 4 hours to drive to Trat. We arrived about 10:30 only to find that the last ferry had left at 7. We had already paid for the night on the island and were determined to get a ferry. After an hour or so of begging random people (with the help of our lovely bus driver!), we chartered a ferry across. The ferry took an hour and thankfully our driver called us a taxi and then it was another whole hour in songtow (basically the back of a pick-up) to get to our bungalows. Our bungalows were secluded in a small fishing village away from the main beach activity and NOTHING was open. The place was silent until a huge dog ran out of nowhere barking and snapping at us. I really thought one of us was going to get bit but after 10 straight minutes of fear, we found some other people awake. Since they were Thai, and offering us rooms, we first assumed they worked there. We quickly discovered they were all hammered and just offering us THEIR rooms. Well that was no help. We banged on the manager's door for about 30 minutes straight and there was NO way he didn't hear us. After finally resigning ourselves to sleeping in hammocks outside, the manager finally decided to grace us with his presence and yell at us for being late. Ah well, at least he gave us the keys. We all just crashed since it was about 2:30 already.

The next day though, we gloriously woke up to sun and the ocean! Our bungalow place was beautiful and we were pretty close to some little shops and a great restaurant. After catching some breakfast, we all headed to the beach for the whole day and it was fantastic! (We had to trek throught the jungle and over this shady bridge covered by the tide made of sandbags...) All I did was nap, go swimming, drink fresh smoothies and eat delicious food all day long. I got a massage in the late afternoon with Sarah and Erica and we all watched the sunset on the beach. We went back to our bungalow, rested up and showered and then headed out for dinner and drinks. When Sarah and I got back to our bungalow, there were 2 humongous cockroaches sitting on my towel right next to the bed. I nearly lost it! I've been killing spiders and mosquitos for weeks and the sight of those huge roaches just did it. Thankfully, Sarah kept her wits about her and killed one and the other one hid. The next night, we definitely left our lights on while we were out.

The next day was pretty much a repeat but it was Erica's birthday so her, Sarah and I rented a kayak (conveniently called a Tri-yak for 3 people) and paddled around to some of the smaller islands that are inhabitable. We landed on one of the bigger islands for a couple of hours and swam around and relaxed completely by ourselves. It was seriously amazing! We paddled back in the late afternoon and enjoyed the sun until evening. We all went back, showered and got ready to celebrate! We found a hilarious mini-cake at 7/11 and sang happy birthday in the restaurant so I think Erica was really pleased. We ate a great dinner and went out for drinks on the beach bar. We ran into some of the people from our original CIEE group later on but then all split up into smaller groups to explore. There were about 6 of us, including the birthday girl, that found our own little private bar and it ended up being great. I think they were just excited to get any business so most of our stuff was free the whole night and the birthday girl ended up with a great night. Taxis stopped running around 11, unfortunatley we discovered this at about 3 in the morning so getting home was interesting. Some taxi man tried to charge us each 100 baht ($3) and that was just outrageous! We eventually bartered him down to about 50 baht a person. The next morning we went to explore some of the shops, ate at this great little restaurant right on the pier where you can hang your legs down in the water under the table. Then we had to unfortunately hop on our bus back to Chachoengsao.