Buckets and Khazacks

// July 6th, 2008 // No Comments » // Koh Chang

With our new plan sorted and us both really exited we got up at a respectable time, threw a leg over our awesome ped and headed off for a quick breakfast and then up into the town at Whitesands beach for dollars for Cambodia and some books about Vietnam and Cambodia to iron out the last details of our plan. We did that and had a wander around a few shops and stalls then rolled back to Nature beach for lunch, swim and sunset… it never gets old!
We decided a nice social drink was in order up at tree house seeing as we were going to be leaving soon and we had made pretty good friends with the people who run it, so off we trotted and got the beers in and just as we did Jason, cedrick and another chap strolled in and came and sat with us. They were all pretty tired and in the same mind as us, a few before bed not too much but the new chap they had met earlier, Ohlak from Khazackstan had other ideas. I was chatting away to Ohlak for a bit about all sorts of shit and it was brilliant Ive never met anyone from Khazackstan before and he used words like “motherland” and called me “englishman” and told me a story about being fishing in the Ukraine and not having a driving liscence, being stopped at the border and having to bribe the official with the catch of the day… A 60kg catfish… of course thats where the drinking started! Not 10 minutes after he sat down there was a bottle of vodka and shot glasses on the table and he was showing us the traditions of his “motherland”… Apart from Cedrick who had to dive the next day we were all knocking the vodkas back and any opportunity he had Ohlak would make a toast and pour some more. It was a complete cliché but so much fun! The vodka flowed and then the buckets started creeping out and Jason saw some Dutch girls he knew and they came over, then the Thais that run treehouse came over and got stuck in too…
Many buckets and lots of dancing and talking of eastern european shenanigans later we said our goodbyes and all staggered back a little worse for wear…

Hamburger Feet

// July 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // Koh Chang

Yesterday was one of not very much at all, Georgie woke up feeling a bit under the weather and it was a bit overcast so I let her lounge about all morning and played the nurse but by the afternoon she perked up so we went on a burn on our beloved moped. As we got further round the sun broke through the clouds more and more, we only went up as far as the main pier on the north of the island, sat on some concrete posts with our legs dangling and just kicked our feet about for a while in the sunshine. For some reason the light was really intense and all the colours of the mainland and the sea were really bright and vivid it was just one of them moments when your not actually doing anything, but you dont have anything better to do and because of that it makes you feel so completely content.
We rode back around the island stopping at a view point overlooking white sand beach to watch the sun start to set and tied to a big water storage tank was a big cow or buffalo… it looked like a cow but had a hump. I walked up to stand on a tank to take a snap of the sunkissed vista when Georgie piped up that the cow was “giving me the eyeball and looked all suspicious”!.. So I peered over and threw my best stare at the suspicious cow only for him to proove us both idiots by dribbling all down himself, thus prooving he was not in fact suspicious but just a normal, stupid cow. But by this point all the talk of crazy farm animals and putting our crash helmets on his hump had lesft us giddy with the giggles so we hit the tarmac and headed back, stopped at the irish pub for grub then back to our shack for a swim in the sea while the sun set over the islands just off shore. It was a beautiful sunset and made all the better by the calm warm water… It was at this point that Georgie took a peek at a cut on her foot that she hadn’t reall payed due attention to and realised it was all gammy and horrible so we hobbled back to the hut and cleaned it up a goodu’n. She was still feeling abit poorly so we popped out for dinner then had a quiet night in with our books and mucky feet…

Today however she felt alot better so we were up nice and early and off to our treehouse for breakfast, we always go there because 1) its damn good food and 2) its so fucking tasty! The only problem with it is there are loads of hamocks about the place so after your done eating you go for a swing and breakfast time has tendancy to bleed into lunch time and so on, but today we were not going to let that happen so we had a quick swing and headed out for foot supplies and and a little burn but then came lunch, it was amazing I was so excited I could have shit myself… I had a cup of tea, a newspaper, cigarettes and a hamock… needless to say we were there for a while.
We saw our friends and had a chat for a bit with them at their hut and watched half a dodgy scary movie in an internet cafe before getting some dinner and drinking some beers, again in the ultimate sea side comfort that is Treehouse…
p.s. Georgies foot is much better and not in fact going to fall off!

Koh Chang Lazy days

// July 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Koh Chang

Today has been one of much laziness and it feels good! It started off a little shakey, all the cash points nearby stopped working and Georgie was sitting waiting in the resturant, had already ordered breakfast and spent the last of our cash on the room and as i tried the last cash point it froze for a few minutes which were the longest few minutes of our travelling so far. Georgie was 2km in a resturant with no way of paying probably thinking I had crashed, we had no money what so ever, Toby had left so no hope of borrowing some to tide us over and to top it all off the error message on the ATM was all in Thai… But thank fuck it gave me a choice of two buttons and I must have pressed the right one because it spat the card out and when I got back to Georgie they let us pay later. It did however make me realise that in making our money so secure it also made it a nightmare if something like that happens.
Anyway apart from eating at the resturant nearby and swinging in the hamocks reading the only thing we did all day was ride down to the pier to the south where the ATM’s worked and had some bakery delights for the journey, while I had popped to the loo I walked past the kitchen sink and spotted probably the best view from a sink I have ever seen out across the bay to a strip of golden sand and palm trees framed by green hills and blue skies, it almost made me offer to wash up… But not quite!
The weather is a bit rainy today as well so thats another reason for our lazy mood but we have a good bookshop nearby and nothing but time on our hands…
We do have a rough plan however for after Koh Chang (whenever we get bored) and that is go east to Cambodia and follow the coast until we get near to the Vietnam boorder, then head north to Phnom Penh and from there we will cross the border into Vietnam and go to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
then follow the coast of Vietnam hopefully by train and with Toby after his volounteer work all the way north to Hanoi at which point we will decide on what to do next. Of course this could all change on a whim but as it stands we are both really exited about it and cant wait, at the same time we are really enjoying Koh Chang and there are still plenty of days of fun to be had Im sure…

Koh Chang beach bums

// July 2nd, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Koh Chang

By the time we got up today (by that I mean when Georgie got up) Toby and his parents had already left for Bangkok. We said our goodbyes last night because they both had to be up before 8 so we left them to it…
The last two days though have been spent wisely, on monday we took Tobys parents all around the island stopping at all the viewpoints and fun places we had been and a few we hadn’t including a stop in the jungle to pick bananas and grapefruits from trees and eat them with a pen knife, Ray Mears would be so proud!!! Then that evening they had a party at tree house from what I remember so we went there for food and stayed all night getting stuck into the buckets with our new friends Jason, Heather and Cedric on the water recovering from the night before. We went back to Tobys wicked balcony for a smoke and a drunken Philisophical debate and of course ends up in me and Toby ganging up on Georgie just to at least try and be a little bit right. But she knows her shit and as usual put us both in our place and we headed home to leave Toby to another night under the stars in his mighty hammock.
3am… The heavens open and do so for hours accompanied by some almighty thunder and lighting…
The next morning we get woken by Toby knocking on our door… seems hes been up for a while something to do with heavy rain and hammocks!? Anyway we go for breakfast at Treehouse and then with no plans decide to just poodle about the place on our peds looking for cool stuff.. we find some tracks that lead up high into the hills then just stop for no reason and a fallen bridge across a river, which Toby naturally has to attemp to cross an a moped and in true Toby style he does it with ease, bouncing the poor little thing across the river on lumps of broken tarmac and wet pebbles throwing water into the air with the back wheel and stinking the place up with tyre smoke trying to get up the other side… It was good fun to watch.
We felt satisfied with our adventure and went for a sunset beachside massage. Its a hard life.
We went for dinner at a flashy place on the corner of the beach but we were only people in and half way through eating they locked up and went home leaving us to it, we didnt mind though. Then off to Treehouse and we met up with our new friends again and got stuck in… Tobys dad had to take his mum home after a good number of buckets and this time we left with them deciding a bit of sleep would be good for everyone.
The following day we were woken up again by Toby and again went off to Treehouse for breakfast…its so cheap and nice its the only real choice! We had made plans the day before while exploring to pay 150b to get into a big flash resort called Koh Chang Grand Lagoon in its own entire bay on the south of the island just around from lonely beach, once inside we took a spin up to a waterfall on the grounds and on the walk up to it Toby nearly stood on a snake which made him jump out of his skin, for the next 100 metres we all watched every single footstep! Once at the fall we all stripped to our swimmers and went for a refreshing natural shower on the rocks blindly hoping that just above the waterfall there was nothing but jungle, i.e. a little village or resort leaving little treats in the falling water in the shape of mars bars…you know what I mean.
That done we pressed on and explored the rest of the resort… Its was deserted! we were the only guests and it felt alot like a tropical centre parcs… It had big fake elephants everywhere and all the bungalows were surrounded by water and called houseboats, naturally Georgie fell in love with the tackiness and thought it was amazing but I couldnt help feeling it was all very weird, all that aside the beach it was all perched on was beautiful and just hammered home how unneccessary the gordy resort was. We had a swim in the calm warm water before heading to a beach bar for our free snack which came with the entry fee, our choices were coconut cakes, jelly cubes, what looked like frog spawn and they were only the things I could identify!! We ate our coconut cakes which were of course measely and ordered some lunch before making very good use of a deserted swimming pool with its own bar.
By now time was getting on so we razzed back to lonely beach to take tobys moped back and then Georgie and I had another sunset beachside massage before dinner and a fire show at Nature beach which was pretty damn good and lasted well over an hour at which point we said our goodbyes to Toby and his parents and turned in with another storm looming…

Toby returns to Koh Chang with his parents

// June 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Koh Chang

This morning Im woken by a troop of monkeys all screaming at each other really close to our hut, it sounds like someone is being murdered! Thats quickly followed by a text from Toby saying Laura is on the plane and he is on his way back to Koh Chang with his folks. Georgie rolls out of the pit pretty early by her standards… by that I mean in the :am, and we take a spin to Tree House for some breakfast in hammocks and then make our way along the main road to check out some more beaches. We found a really nice bay called siam bay with a tiny island just off shore and walked all the way along it kicking the tiny sand balls made by the beach crabs. It had a really nice view back over the island with the hills hanging with big dark clouds from the very tops like massive fluffy lampshades.
We stopped again further up the road for some food at a liitle place by the road and headed back to lonely beach for a splash in the waves and a bit of beach bumming…. by that I mean doing not much on the beach. But then our peace is shattered again by screams as Toby and his mum stroll along the beach and Georgie goes mad…of course.
We left them to get settled then all went to tree house for a curry and a few drinks until a long days travelling caught up with them and we left them to turn in…
The next day by the time we were all up and had eaten breakfast it was time for the beach, Georgie, Toby and I all went and got a boogie board for the waves while his parents just relaxed on the beach, the waves here are so much fun but there is a really dangerous mix of undercurrents and the locals warn you about them everytime you go near the water. But we stayed well in our depth and just got smashed about by the waves for an hour or two then showered off and and then Toby popped his mum on the back of his moped and we all tore off to the pier like a bunch of sunkissed hells angels except instead of harleys we had…mopeds!
We took thm along to Buddha view returant and bless them Tobys parents treated us all to a lovely meal with our feet swinging above the sea below and watching the fish all lit up by an underwater light through the glass topped tables. Bellies full, we all roared back to Nature beach for a fire show and got Tobys mum on the buckets much to the dissapointment of Tobys dad. But despite the fact his mum was pretty far gone she insisted on a stop at tree house for one last one before bed, while there we met a group of people one from Holland, Cecil I think, a Canadian called Jason, An English girl called Heather and another chap from France. We had several buckets with them before Toby had to show his mum the way home before she passed out then a few more buckets in we staggered back to Tobys seafront shack and crashed out in his bed and Toby slept on the balcony in his hammock with two stray dogs that had followed us home… And thats where I found him this morning…