Thailand: Koh Chang เกาะช้าง
We woke on our first morning in Bangkok and jumped in the car with Jong and headed 7 hours East/Southeast. Jong is a professional photographer and had a wedding to shoot, Bryan & I were just lucky enough to tag along for the ride!
Our destination...Koh Chang, ('Elephant Island' in Thai; เกาะช้าง) named because of its elephant shaped headland, is part of the Mu Ko Chang National Park, and is the largest and most popular of the islands in eastern Thailand. It is located around 300 kilometres east of Bangkok in Trat Province, in the Gulf of Thailand near the Cambodian border. Koh Chang is Thailand's third largest island but is nowhere near as developed or bustling as the two largest - Phuket and Samui. It is far less touristy and far less well-known.
To get on the island, we decided to catch the ‘Koh Chang Ferry’ to cross. This is considered the better of the two car ferry companies, with a shorter crossing time and sailings every 45 minutes. Before heading to our cabana where we would stay on the western side of the island we made the 25 km drive down the much more remote southeastern side to the lovely little village and mangrove forests of Ban Salak Kok. (**see pics in the “galary” below)
The place we stayed is called Gajapuri Resort & Spa on Kai Bae Beach. I’ve read that “compared to other islands there is a dearth of what travel magazines like to call ’boutique’ hotels on Koh Chang” yet I would call this a boutique hut resort with lush grounds and a lovely little beach on the Gulf of Thailand. We received a very high standard of service and accommodation, it is peaceful and private yet only a few minutes walk to numerous restaurants and small shops, it certainly gets my recommendation.
The resort consists of 19 teak wood cottages, including four pool villas, which are linked together by raised wooden walkways that run through the resorts lush gardens from the breakfast room at the rear to the four beachfront bungalows. There is a lovely, large communal pool and plenty of outdoor space in the beachfront garden area. A great location for those who want to relax and just chill!
The island's main beaches are all on the west coast, with White Sand Beach in the north and Lonely Beach in the south. In between, you have Klong Prao Beach - the longest beach on the island and Kai Bae Beach. It’s impossible to say which one is best because they all the beaches have a different vibe, it’s all about personal choice.
Here is some fun history I found about the Kai Bae Beach area where we stayed:
“One extended family owns virtually all the land in the southern half of the beach and inland. They wisely refused to sell to outsiders and are now reaping the rewards. The story of the original village of Kai Bae goes that although a few Thai fishermen lived around the island, most of the current population of the island are descended from immigrants who came to Koh Chang by boat from southern China. They stopped off, looked around, saw plenty of edible wildlife and thought that the island would suit them nicely.
The families here originally settled in Salakaphet, the large bay in the southeast of the island, and then headed off to explore the island and eventually settled here. A few generations later and the patriarch of the family that owned most of the land in the Kai Bae area decided to split his land between his children.
The favored kids, the males, got the valuable, inland farmland where they could grow rubber, and fruit. The four unfortunate kids, all female, who must have upset Dad at some point in their lives, got the virtually useless, infertile land by the sea.
How could you ever make money out of a few coconut palms and a beach?
And then, in the mid 80s, a few adventurous backpackers began to appear and started asking around for places to stay, there weren’t any so the families near the beach let people stay for free or a token 20 baht a night. Those backpackers told their friends and soon the first guesthouses on the island opened up in Kai Bae.
The rest as they say is history. Many of the beachfront resorts in Kai Bae are all still owned by members of the same family and they seem to be making a pretty good living off what was until twenty years ago considered worthless land.”
Koh Chang has a number of locations where you can experience waterfalls. We chose to explore Klong Plu waterfall. It’s fairly easy to reach from any of the west coast beaches. It’s managed by the National Park so you have to pay an entrance fee to go in. Then you have a 15 – 20 minute walk to the waterfall itself. This is along a well maintained trail, complete with concrete steps and guide ropes in certain places. There’s a large plunge pool at the foot of the falls where you can swim and smaller pools a little further downstream. In addition, there are easily accessible rocks and cliffs where you can jump into the pool below.
