Thailand Day 3 - Yet Another Tropical Paradise

The next morning we got up and headed over to the bus station to go off to Ko Chang an island not four from the Thai-Cambodian border. The bus was cheap and much nicer and then these sort of intercity buses in China. It had air conditioning and relatively nice seats and no one playing loud music on their cell phones, though there were a group of Australian tourists putting away the beers at about ten in the morning. I once mentioned to an Australian that it must be five o’clock somewhere to which he responded, “What the fuck is five o’clock?” It took about five hours to reach the city near Ko Chang making very few stops.

Once there we had to buy tickets on a ferry over to the island. I could just see the island from the coast though it was so big and mountainous that I thought I was just looking across to another part of the mainland. The ferry took cars as well and perceived to cross over to the island at an extremely leisurely pace. The island was big maybe 36km across and 15km wide. The whole interior was a series of mountains covered in extremely dense jungle. Some islands I’ve been to just are entirely ringed by beaches but this one had a lot of space where the trees came right up to the edge of the water. We got off and got some lunch from one of the ubiquitous little food shops that seem to have only one person cooking so by the time the last meal came the first three people would be finished.

We got a taxi to one of the beaches. The taxi had a sign on as showing a price per person to the various beaches but due to the worst negotiating I’ve ever seen we actually paid more than the listed price. The driver wanted more from everyone since a few of the people were going somewhere further. Before any of us could say anything a few of the other people agreed. As we were still trying to argue for what his own sign said the price should be one of the other people gave him a 200 baht tip. I’m don’t know what sort of budget of these people were traveling with, but mine generally doesn’t allow me to pay twice the listed price than tip the same again.

Even though we had to pay far too much we got there eventually. We add a few hotels and eventually settled on a nice one right off the beach. The sun was already setting but we took a dip in the fairly warm water of anyways. I’m not the world’s biggest beach fan as I tend to just get sort of board after few hours, but the jungle running up to the sandy beach was really gorgeous. We went to a nice restaurant that had a Thai band doing covers of pretty much every popular 60’s song. Looking around the tables at all the white people sitting with Thai girls we started playing “Prostitute, Date, or Mail Order Bride” where we tried to guess the relationship between people. To keep it covert we just would look over at a couple then turn back and say something like, “They’re definitely a one.”

There are a lot of good part about my job teaching English in Changzhou but maybe the best part is just how much time I have to travel. In some ways being in Changzhou just sort of seems like a permanent vacation, and not just because I don’t have very much work to do. I also get enough time and enough money to go to some really interesting places. Since I’ve come to China I’ve had time to go to Vietnam, Laos, Korea, Thailand, and soon all have been to Cambodia and India as well. It’s hard to think about just having four weeks of vacation when here it seems like I do more traveling then working. It’s also been nice to find some very easygoing people to travel with. It can be hard to get along with people when you spend so much time together, but all the people I’ve been traveling with have been able to get along great.

That’s even more amazing when you consider how many different places and backgrounds are now represented at our school. Ken is from Iowa and went to school in Oklahoma. Sean and Sarah are from a little town in Michigan, actually the same place one of my roommates in Australia was from. Peter is from the hills of North Carolina. But we all get along really well, Alisa the time of this writing.

P.S.
We still get along well.