|  |
TONY T's 6th THAILAND TRAVELS
Page 9
KO CHANG
continued
To start this page, here's some images of Bang Bao.
Once a sleepy fishing village built on stilts out on the sea, Bang Bao is now a destination popular with tourists who stay in hillside boutique resorts or backpacker hostel. A busy covered flea market with all manner of souvenir shops and seafood eateries occupies part of the Bang Bao Pier, at the end of which is a local fishing spot and an enduring lighthouse [photo above]. Traditional wood houses on stilts cluster around a small harbour.
SATURDAY 23rd:
SUNDAY 24th:
As planned, up early at 6:45am and got ready for our Songthaew (open sided taxi) pick-up to go to Bang Bao to meet up with our boat. The boat cast off at 9:15 and it was an hours sailing to the island of Koh Rang.
The heat was stifling in the port with little or no breeze, so I was glad when we cast off and head out to Koh Rang.
Koh Rang is a protected island and is patrolled by rangers on boats. There is a charge for each and every visitor to the island
What is a joke is that the tour operators advertise this as “you visit 4 islands on an all day trip”. Bullshit! Koh Rang is one island with 3 or more outlying tiny islets; 4 island indeed.
It’s a truly gorgeous island and only spoiled by the fact that dozens of large tourist boats descend on the island at the same time. The boat stops at a total 4 different locations around the islets and invite all to snorkel away. The scene is of total and utter mayhem with 100's of people all wearing bright orange lifejackets bobbing about on the surface. How the hell can you go snorkelling wearing an pre-inflated lifejacket?
Needless to say Aom & I wore no such thing and thus were able to snorkel away and dive down to view the corals.
Back at Bang Bao at around 4pm. Songthaew trip back along the hairy coast road back to our resort.
Spent the morning driving along the western coast again. Called into a few places we missed out on the last tour. No beaches impressed so we stopped off for drinks at a beach bar then back to our resort for a session in one of the pools. Jack getting good at diving down and recovering things from the bottom.
Had dinner at a good beach restaurant. We are not impressed with our resort's restaurant at all
Big decision arrived at: because we missed out on at least one day because we were unwell, we decided to see if we could hang on to our room for an extra day. So an extra day on the island!