Skip to main content

Bang Bao, Koh Chang


I went to Koh Chang on the advice of my brother. Good advice. Though talking to the owner of where I am staying, he wouldn't recognise the place if he came back now.

It's the low season so there are not too many people around. I'm staying in a little wooden hut on top of a cliff just on the outside of Bang Bao which is quieter still. At night it is quieter still, just myself, the owner and his family, 2 labs, 3 cats and the infinite sound of the ocean. Which is why I'm pretty stoked that I managed to swap the *shitest novel Stephen King ever wrote for Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov'. It should keep me occupied for a while.  A very rare thing to find a decent novel in a hostel bookswap - usually it's Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Andy McNab or Stephen King or German.

I quite like Bang Bao, even though it's a tourist village it's worlds apart from Phuket. I've walked down the main drag a few times ( a pier in this case) and no one has offered to sell me a suit yet.

The first thing I learnt about riding scooters in Thailand is that Thai helmets are not made for Schumann heads.  The second is that you don't follow trucks up hill, they have a tendency to not quite make it and start rolling back down. So i spent the day riding around the island, ignoring the beaches (beached az) and seeking out little waterfalls and fishing villages.

After that it rained. a lot. and I didn't do to much more. Did go 'fishing' though. I had more luck fishing for gold fish from a second story hotel balcony using nothing but dental floss, a safety pin and hot chips. Needless to say I didn't catch anything. Ended up fishing on the end of a pier in what was probably less than two feet of water, if only because the view was pretty amazing and the two dogs from the guest house took pity on me and kept me company.


* It's also the only Stephen King novel I have ever read but he seems quite popular and the Shawshank redemption is quite a good movie so have to take it on good faith that anything else he has written is better than 'The Cell'.
Labels:
Location: Ko Chang Tai, Ko Chang, Trat, Thailand

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amasya

Lonely Planet suggested that Amasya is one of the prettiest towns in Turkey. Set in a mountain valley with a river running down the middle, I couldn't agree more. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves when I eventually post them. Once again the weather was perfect and it hadn't snowed here at all which was good because I had a lot of walking to do. It was a strange town. Mostly because it was one of the more modern towns I had come across, it almost had a cosmopolitan feel to it. But then there would be a horse and cart parked in the street. Most people spoke some English. They would come up to me (blond hair = foreigner), especially children and say hello, welcome, what is your name? where are you from? but that would be it as if that was as far as their grasp on the English language would go. This was excellent but as the conservation wasn't going to go any further (my Turkish matches their English) it made for a weird silence until one of us went on our way. I d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kampot

Hired a bike. problem with such amazing scenery is that you can easily get disorientated and end up in Vietnam. Weird that the more appeal somewhere has, as a tourist anyway, the fewer tourists there are. Sihounkvile was a shit hole. Lots of places to drink yes but not much else. Kampot was built around an estuary. Watch the fishing boats going out and in. Walking amongst the rice fields watching people go about their business. A lot the farming still used old techniques. Water buffalo doing the bulk of the work, lots of hands doing the rest. Not much machinery to be seen. Kep was nicer than Kampot still, Mountains and rice fields to one side, the ocean and crab markets on the other. Had a name for itself with pepper. Was a time that any French restaurant worth it salt would have pepper from Cambodia. War and the Khmer Rouge putting a stop to that. Making something of a comeback apparently. Either way the salt and pepper crab was pretty nice.  Tried to find a few caves, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pamukkale

Pamukkale was a just a short bus rıde from Selçuk. I must say I never fail to be impressed wıth the level of service and quality of buses that I travel on. This one even had inflight movies. It was a little weırd when ı got to the hotel ın Pamukkale as ı was the only guest ın a hotel wıth over 100 rooms. It was lıttle borıng wıth no one else theır but ıt dıd mean I got a lot of attentıon from the owners ıncludıng an excellent home made meal. The maın attraction was the calcified waterfalls on the mountaıns borderıng the town and the ruıns o f Hıerapolıs above thıs. Impressıve stuff and up there wıth the best natural wonders ı have seen. Next stop Eğırdır. Cheers, schuey.
Post a Comment
Read more