Ever since we arrived in Thailand 6 months ago, I’ve been wanting to have some great beach and snorkeling time. With Grandma and Grandpa here, we decided to use the kid’s time off from school and head down to an island in the South: Koh Chang (Elephant Island).
Day 1
We all piled into our Innova and threw all of our luggage into the car top carrier, and with our FULL car, we made the 6.5 hour drive down to the ferry that took us across. The drive down was uneventful and full of rubber tree farms, pineapple plantations, and some crazy Thai drivers! :-)
While the kids only watched one movie there, it was a golden 2 hours of quiet
Our ferry was a major bucket of rust, but it looked safe “enough,” so on we went! We left right about sunset and got some amazing views of dusk and the painted skyline against the island backdrop. It was a pretty magical ride at the end of the day.
Candace got us a great 4 bedroom house on the quiet side of the island for our first 3 days there. It had plenty of room for everyone and backed up against what I can only describe as a Jurassic Park jungle mountain. It was amazing.
Day 2
Woke up to the sound of waves lapping against our beach and this view from our upstairs room:
Great start to the day! We spent the morning booking our adventures for the day and then driving the insanely narrow, steep (20% grade) road around the island (I deserve a medal for driving on this thing for 4 days without an accident). Our first stop was a hike to a tropical waterfall. We hiked about 20 minutes through the jungle, seeing some amazing trees and views and wound up at a very cool swimming hole. I decided to jump in and quickly talked the kids into it to!
Waterfall hike
Check out this crazy pokey tree – probably 30-50 feet tall.
Elephant Ride
Grandpa Ball REALLY wanted to ride an elephant while here, so we found a great local elephant trek place that hooked him up. We sent grandma and grandpa off on what turned out to be a time-of-a-lifetime 2 hour adventure while we scouted out some lunch and amazing views:
We did find an amazing bakery on the island. Our oldest later told me that was his favorite part of the trip – the bakery. Um, ok. Glad he liked the food! :-)
Once we collected grandparents and heard about their amazing adventure with the elephant and jungle, we drove another 30-40 minutes around the island, over some more STEEP, NARROW roads, saw a bunch of monkeys crossing the road several times, and wound up on an amazing beach.
Viewpoint
South Beach
After a great 2 hours on this beach, we de-sanded and piled back into the car for another harrowing ride back to our side of the island. We happened upon a local restaurant, The Souk, and, WOW, what an amazing find. We had dinner right on the beach with the best Thai food I’ve had since we got here. There was a gentle cool breeze and it could not have been a more perfect ending to our perfect day!
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