The most popular tourist country in South East Asia is Thailand, and for good reason. We love Thailand. On our last trip in 2023 we visited 4 different Thai Island, and enjoyed all of them for different reasons. We had to come back and see more islands. Our first stop is Koh Chang. It is an island about the same size of Orcas Island in Washington State with about 9000 people mostly working in tourism. This island is a very hilly island with almost all the settlements along the coast. We splurged a bit this week and stayed in a nicer resort on the water with 2 pools. We didn’t have an ocean view from our cabin but we really enjoyed the resort and especially the excellent free breakfast every morning. With European Cheese!!!! Cheese is rare in Asia.
Obviously, we didn’t seem to want to leave the resort much this week. We didn’t really get out past our pool and our beach except for a few times. We took a truck/bus (songthaew) to the next village one day to have lunch at a backpacker type of town. One day, we went on a bird walk and I got 8 new lifers. Birding was really good on this island after being very bad in Vietnam and the Philippines. We saw some Great Hornbill’s one morning although I didn’t get any pics.
Koh Chang is named after “Chang” the word for elephant. Elephants are no longer used for farming in Thailand so they are either in “sanctuaries” or are used to bring in tourist money. There were several elephants on the beach next to ours but it didn’t look like the elephants were having much fun. The keepers took them on walks along the beach every day with chains and metal hooks and took money from tourists to get their pics taken. I’m not sure if this is really animal mistreatment but I didn’t want to be involved. It was weird to walk by elephants on the beach though… and still kinda cool.
The water was warm (86 F) but snorkeling wasn’t the best. We really spent most of our time around the pools or eating our favorite Thai food. The food is amazing and so affordable and really is one of the best reasons to come to this country. We did see a few monkeys, but I can’t brag about much more. The Thailand beaches just took over us and we didn’t do much exciting.
This week wasn’t enough Thailand for us this year. We have another week left. More Thai Food!!! and we are hoping to do a snorkeling trip. Next week is the smaller Thai island of Koh Mak.
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