It was kind of strange last night waving good bye to Cass at the airport then turning around and heading back to the hostel in Bangkok.  Today started off fairly relaxed and lazy as I’d brought a bus ticket to Koh Chang yesterday with a couple of guys, Matt (Canadian) and David (English) who were also heading in that direction.  I sat around drinking coffee in the common room, yes I know its odd for me to drink coffee and generally chatting with some of the other travellers.

Finally it was time to pickup the bags and head off for the bus.  Matt had a beer in hand already, although in his defence it was nearly mid-day…

We split the cost of a taxi to the bus station, got there with about 15 minutes to spare.  The bus station was its normal chaotic self with buses in every direction, food/snack stand sellers everywhere and the helpful (in this case) cry of ‘where you go..’  They looked at our ticket and pointed us in the direction of the correct bus.  I must say about the Thai people that they are friendly and extremely willing to help out travellers, at least those in official capacities.  The bus trip was uneventful and it dropped us off at the office for the ferry to Koh Chang.  We all brought tickets and had a brief discussion on our chances of getting accommodation.  The people at the ferry office were also trying to get people to book accommodation through them though the the price seemed slightly inflated, surprise surprise.  We decided not to book even though it was getting late.  We figured that we were on the last ferry over to Koh Chang so even if we had to jump up several beaches (Koh Chang really isn’t that big and apparently you can drive around the island in about 3hrs) we would end up with some form of accommodation even if it is only for one night.  We’d also teamed up with Mo (a girl from Holland) which meant that we could split the cost of the Tuk-Tuk between us making it more affordable.

We made it to Koh Chang and found a tuk-tuk without a problem and by mutual accord asked to be taken to Lonely Beach since it was on the other side from the Ferry Terminal figuring due to the hour that most people would try the places closer to the terminal.  Sure enough people were dropped off in twos and threes and as we wound our way to Lonely Beach we found we were the last ones from the Ferry left.  Now Lonely beach really isn’t that lonely.  There are bars along both sides of the road interspersed with various places offering Bungalows.  Thankfully unlike the previous place we’d driven through the bars weren’t filled with young Thai girls all waiting for older men to pick up.

We asked at about three places before we finally found somewhere to stay and just ended up dumping our bags then heading out to find some food.  Not at all hard since this place really isn’t that big and all the places are on either side of the road for about 200m.  We ate, quite responsible really, honest, then headed to one of the bars that was pumping out music and drinks of the alcoholic kind in buckets.  No I’m not kidding, in buckets… so of course we ordered two of them.  One for the boys and one for the girls.  It seemed sensible at the time.  At some point we also ended up drinking a tequila shot.  That seemed perfectly reasonable as well along with the second round of buckets followed by the third.  I think Mo and I called it a night sometime around that point though the boys decided to party on.

We walked down the road and missed our bungalows on the first attempt, the lights were off so it looked different…...