Koh Chang, 10 years later

The bus journey to the Thai/Cambodia border was effortless as always, and with no queues at all with either immigration it was all a breeze (although a very sudden, and short-lived, downpour got me soaked walking the 200m between the border posts).

On the Thai side I had to wait around for the minibus to depart towards the travel hub town of Trat. Once at Trat I had to wait around again for over an hour for the songthaw to fill up before heading to the ferry departure point. Once there it was just a short wait for the ferry to arrive, and after a quick turn-around I was off on the 1-hour ferry crossing. Then it was a 45-minute songthaw to Lonely Beach, getting dropped off at Siam Hut, where Sarah was sitting in the doorway of hut 24D waiting.

Due to all the waiting around for transport connections, it was nearly 8pm at this stage, and poor Sarah had been getting worried about me. After a very quick shower it was out for a tasty dinner in the nearby local restaurant, and then a well-deserved early night for me, exhausted as I was by the long day of travel.

The next day we just relaxed on the lovely stretch of beach beside our hotel, swimming in the sea to cool down from the fierce heat. That night we had a good laugh at that night's party place - it was very much low season, and so the various bars alternate their party nights, offering free finger food and cheap booze, of which we freely partook of course.

The following day was again just chilling out on the beach, and although I was very careful of the fierce sun, I still managed to get sunburnt again! Both myself and Sarah thought we were sitting in the shade, but somehow I still managed to get burnt whilst reading the newspaper. So after that I really needed to avoid the sun completely, as so the next day we rented a moped to explore the island properly.

First stop was the small village of Bang Boa, which is weirdly built on a pier extending out into the sea. The tide was out when we got there, so the pier extended out over muddy flats, although the lighthouse at the very end was nicely over pristine water and gave nice views back along the 'town'. We had a tasty curry breakfast here before heading back on the road.

We stopped off at Thor's Palace for a few more nibbles, as it was a fairly hyped place, but we both thought the food there was just average. Then we trekked all the way out to Long Beach, as Sarah thought the blurb about it being 'amazing' sounded good. It turned out that after quite a rough ride when the road turned to bad rough track (and the moped suffered a few nasty-sounding cracks), that the beach was nice, but certainly nothing special. All the hype is based on the fact that the area is undeveloped with just 2 places to stay, but being low-season, our beach at Lonely Beach had much the same number of people hanging around (and had a lot more options for food, drink, etc.).

So then I really wanted to revisit the main stretch of beach on the island, White Sands beach. This was where I had stayed 10 years ago, and which was definitely one of the highlights of my last big trip. I knew that the whole area had been seriously developed in the intervening years, but when I got down to White Sand Beach Resort, which was, and still is, the last resort at one end of the long stretch of still pristine beach, it really hadn't changed that much at all.

It was still a long walk along the beach (the resort had no road access at all 10 years ago), and with me wearing my rain jacket, socks and long trousers to keep the sun off, I must have looked a right sight in the searing sun. Anyway, the resort has certainly moved up-market (the bungalows on the beachfront were 1200 baht in low-season, when 10 years ago I think they were 150 baht in high-season!), and the huts are far more sturdy now (and therefore far less romantic of course), but the location is still fantastic and the rustic feel of the development, and the individual-ness of the isolated beach-front huts has been well maintained.

So after that nice wee trip down memory lane (and a yellow curry in the restaurant, which was nothing like the amazing curries I remembered from 10 years ago), it was back to Siam Hut for a sundowner before bed.

We could have stayed another day on Koh Chang, but with me having to avoid the sun completely, and Sarah getting a bit bored with it all after being there over a week, we decided to head back to Bangkok and start organising getting down to Malaysia.