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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'.

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Location: Ko Chang Tai, Ko Chang, Trat, Thailand

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