Kho Chang Island 12-22nd February

An early morning start saw me walking up Kho San road with a travel agent going from guest house to guest house picking up more travellers along the way ……took the best part of an hour from my 7am departure to actually get on the bus. The bus ride itself was very smooth, the roads in Thailand are in very good condition with multiple 7-11 stop off points. Something was bothering me on the ride though…..the Island I was trying to get to was on the Andaman coast in the north west of the country but the bus seemed to be going towards the Cambodian boarders to the east….hmmm couldn’t get my mental map straight ….it was only as we approached the shoreline that I checked my guide book and realised there are actually two islands off the coast of Thailand with the same name “Kho Chang“….WTF???? I had been hoping to get to a remote and unspoiled hideaway for a week of isolated chilling, however reading more about the Kho Chang I was going to made me realise I was in for a far more touristy affair….oh well cant afford to go back now will have to go with it…..

The bus dropped us near the ferry port where I pre booked a cheap bungalow on the Island at Lonely Beach ( the quietest of beaches according to guidebook). We were then driven to the boat which was so rusty and corroded it looked like it had just been pulled up from the seafloor that morning….and would be sunk back down there again by the evening……. Took about 45 minutes to reach Kho Chang, which looked pretty cool as we drew near, like Gilligan’s island with jungle covered hills…..Got a taxi to the Lonely Beach and met a cool Belgian girl (Sanne) and Italian guy (Neilo) who were checking in at the same time as me. The shack I had was the cheapest in town at around four pounds per night and was pretty rickety ( see photo ), felt like it was going to fall down at any moment at first. The town of Lonely Beach was pretty quiet though and not as touristy as the larger beaches we had passed in the taxi on the way down….

That evening went for a beer and some food with the Italian and Dutch girl and then carried on for a few beers with the Italian guy after….ended up drinking quite a lot of “chang” (local beer) that night and getting pretty drunk in disco bar ….Came back to my shack late and crashed out , so much for isolated chilling……….

Next morning I woke with a hangover and an alarming thought in my head ….where is my bag????…had taken my day pack out with me the night before with all my valuables: passport , wallet with money and cards and laptop as I hadn’t planned to stay out late….three frantic searches of my room confirmed my worst fears that I had left it in the nightclub….remembered putting it down towards the end of the night when talking to some people but couldn’t remember picking it up……oh fuck man this was not good at all! Raced back to the bar at 9am through the haze of a hangover only to find the bar shut and be told by a cleaner to come back in 3 hours……..so I basically spent the next 3 hours freaking out ….soooo pissed of with my self! Had taken the stuff out initially as I thought it would be safer than leaving in the cabin…… hadn’t taken into account my own stupidity ……imagined that I would just have to cancel trip as wouldn’t be able to afford replacement of passport and the visas I had just spent 2 days getting in Bangkok…as for the computer and wallet that also sucked to lesser degree…luckily I had some emergency money to get me back to Bangkok and I had pretty much convinced myself that I should expect the worst ….

At 12pm I went back to the bar and spoke to the owner…as soon as I asked if a bag had been found he asked my name…..this sent a wave of relief over me as it showed he had the bag……he said it had been handed in by a Lady boy ( transvestites common in Thailand) at the end of the night who said someone had given it to him/her to look after, remember the bar filling up with quite a few ladyboys around the time I left ….hmmm this didn’t sound good. The bar owner said he had checked the bag found my pc, passport and wallet and had given it to a barman to hold onto…was told I could pick it up in 2 hours at the start of the barman’s shift….okay thank god not all was lost …felt so relieved the trip would continue…..

When I did collect my bag found everything in order but the 3000 Bhatt ( 60 pounds) in my wallet had been taken…I presume by an opportunist ladyboy who found or taken my bag then made up the story bout being given it to cover for the theft of the money…oh well could have been worse at least I had the important stuff back ( not sure I would have got anything back at all in the U.K.)……decided not to peruse the lost money and draw a line under the incident…..

That afternoon went to the beach with Italian and Belgian friends and another German guy called Sebastian…would end up hanging out together for the next week …a really cool group of people to spend time with, later that evening had a jam with some divers outside the local scuba bar was a good laugh…after a rocky start was beginning to enjoy the island vibe….was wrong to assume my bad luck had stopped though, things were about to take another (painful) turn for the worst……….

Next day went for a swim and then lay on the beach …“one week of this” I thought “I can get used to…“, well it would turn out to be my only swim for the next 3 weeks…later that evening while trying to take a shortcut to get to a beach party caught myself on a razor wire fence that was closing off a section of the beach…don’t know how it happened but while trying to walk through a small gap in the wire, stumbled and then looked down at my leg to see it covered in blood…although I hadn’t felt a thing, ….closer inspection revealed a deep gash just above the ankle gushing blood….ah fuck man…wasn’t even drunk just clumsy…..I turned around straight away to go back to the cabin and try and patch myself up, washed the wound a bit in the ocean on the way but it didn’t show any sign of stopping bleeding ….shit man struggled to stay calm on the 10 minute walk home…hate the sight of my own blood …good thing it was dark cause there was plenty of it escaping from my body ……..by the time I got back to the cabin the wound had stopped bleeding …looked like it probably should get stitches but I decided to patch it up myself and then get a doctor to look at it in the morning…I was hoping I could get it to close overnight by using some medical tape and bandages…… the next morning it was still open when I checked it …shit1.…okay time to go to hospital , got a taxi at 9am all the way back up to the north of the island where I found a good clinic with an emergency room….I asked in reception if they could take a look, and they told me to take a seat….were quite a lot of people in the queue in front of me …this was going to be a long morning …or was it ,…………

As I sat down, took my bag and put it on the floor it knocked painfully against my cut leg ..,ouch…didn’t give it much thought but just after the knock a nurse noticed that I was bleeding again really heavily, in fact within seconds the whole bandage was soaked and there was a pool of blood around my foot …“ah fuck man” ….they rushed me into the treatment room passed the horrified faces of the other waiting patients , left a blood trail into the treatment room like something from Friday the 13th …….seemed my bag had knocked against a partially cut vein that was now open and bleeding heavily…took them about 10minutes of painful compression to stop the bleeding during which time I blacked out briefly from blood loss…not cool ….but hey, at least I had jumped the queue!!…after the wound stopped bleeding the doctor, who was really cool guy who spoke good English, stitched me up while telling me stories about the wounds he had treated when he was in the Thai army….

Okay so one hour later I had nine stitches in my leg and a bill for around 200 pounds that I had to pay up front before I could claim back on my insurance…further treatment and check ups in the week would push this figure up even more……shit another financial disaster!…oh well was just glad I had managed to find a good doctor so quickly and lucky the wound hadn’t opened up again before I got to the hospital…..that would have really sucked.

So no swimming for a least a week, on antibiotics and painkillers, hardly mobile on the wrong island with 60 pounds taken from my wallet …..after losing money in Bangkok and having to shell out to fix my laptop in Taipei…not a good week!

Spent the next few days going to the beach and hanging out in bars with my pan-continental friends…..was frustrating as hell not being able to swim ( my favourite sport and whole reason for coming to the island) and also annoying having to clean the wound and change dressings every day after having a one legged shower ( don’t ask how that works)…but the evening were always fun…there were plenty of promotions on in town for free drinks and food so we would collect flyers in the afternoon on the beach and then spend the evening moving around town between various different timed happy hours and checking out some live music ( of varied quality) .

One of the funniest venues we frequented was a Ladyboy bar that had a free pool table … a very strange scene at first…… but the free pool table was always vacant and once the “ladies” knew you weren’t interested they wouldn’t bother you…in fact some were pretty good at pool and would play doubles against us, although the Lady Gaga Glastonbury 2009 video on repeat all the time did get very annoying after a while….There was also a cool reggae bar in town that did really good Pad Thai and had a decent covers band every night…..maybe the best place in town to hang out though was outside the local mini market, where you could buy a cheap beer and drink with all manner of crazy travellers from around the world…..there certainly seem to be some colourful characters travelling in south east Asia….a lot of people with substance and alcohol abuse problems who are here long term, mixed with gap year types , sex tourists, middle aged Russians on short term resort holidays …to be fair there seem to be a lot more crazy people travelling in south east Asia than there were in India

After Sanne and Sebastian had gone to Bangkok later in the week I spent a lot of time hanging out with the Italian guy Neilo, an interesting character who had some crazy life stories to tell……Played a lot of guitar that week also and met a really cool Dutch musician towards the end of the week who I jammed with a few times…was really into Tom Waites and played the Ukulele and sang really well much better than most of the local musicians in town in fact….

So my time on Kho chang was pretty much like the movie groundhog day ….get up , go to shop to buy breakfast, check emails, go to beach get frustrated and sandy , come home have an awkward shower and then clean and re-dress leg wound, play guitar on porch until dark, go to eat and get free drinks in various bar promotions…..repeat as required……Have to admit it did get really annoying being stuck in one place for longer that I had planned despite being perfect on paper the first week on the island was not one of the strong points of the trip……..

On the morning I got my stitches out I rented a motorbike to drive to hospital and then do some exploring on the island after….stitches came out okay but the wound wasn’t fully healed yet so they taped it up and told me to leave it another 2 days …also no swimming for another week ( gutted!! ).

After paying yet another hospital bill drove the scooter to an inland waterfall and got a good view of some of the nature available on the island , this including passing a group on an elephant trek (photo). The waterfall trail was deserted so walked up the river for some time and found a quiet place to be alone with my thoughts for an hour or so near an isolated pool…..after being so frustrated over the last week with bad luck and finding it hard to fully enjoy my time on Kho Chang it felt good to be out of Lonely Beach and in a new environment….that afternoon went by Bike to a couple of other areas on the island with Neilo….First a quiet but touristy fishing village built on a pier and then the busiest beach on the island “White Sands”….this seemed to be full of middle aged, fat Germans and Russian wearing terrible Speedos….went for a walk on the beach and found it was filthy with lots of barnacle covered garbage and lost shoes washing up on the shore….terrible, terrible ….dint mind not being able to take a dip for once……

So after staying four days longer than planned in Thailand to get stitches out and having not such a great time of it all, its time to head to Cambodia and the temples at Angkor Watt for some historical explorations…..someone told me recently bad things happen in threes….. so with :
1) broken computer ,2) lost bag, and 3) 9 stitches in leg…. I think ( and hope to God ) I’ve exhausted my bad luck for the time being …will see how things pan out next week…..