Koh Chang!

Oh my gosh! What a weekend! This weekend was the first time in the 3 weeks I've been in Thailand that I got a chance to leave the city! What an amazing trip it was! A bunch of the exchange students decided together that we were going to spend our weekend in Koh Chang. It's a little island off the Eastern Coast of Thailand and only about 6 hours away from Bangkok by bus. So, Thursday morning, we all woke up early, hopped on a bus and headed out of the city. I was sooo excited to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city and finally get to smell some fresh air! The bus ride wasn't too bad, there were 14 of us all together and the bus wasn't sold out so we were able to stretch out and have plenty of room. After about an hour, the bus stopped for a break and we jumped out and grabbed some food. There was a little roadside stand that was serving Thai food and sandwiches. I jumped at the chance to have a sandwich! Normally it is very difficult to find cheese here in Thailand because it's not a part of their traditional diet.

After about 30 minutes, the driver got up and went back on the bus so we all followed. The bus ride went by fairly fast and before we knew it, we were at the Center-Pointe ferry waiting for the ferry to take us to Koh Chang! Almost there! It was about 1pm, we all decided well if we are just going to sit here waiting, we might as well have some beers. Chang beer it was! simple and classic Thai. After about an hour on the ferry we got to the island. When we got off the boat we had to find a taxi to take us to our hotel. Everyone decided to grab the first taxi we saw which ended up charging us 70 Baht each! Now I know your are thinking, hey thats not bad! thats only like $2 each, well that's really expensive when you are used to paying 20 Baht at the most for cabs here in the city. But we had no choice.

Once we got to the hotel, we had a very interesting path to get to the bungalows.

After crossing a very jenky wooden bridge, we had to get across this floating bridge! believe me not that fun when you have gone out and done a bit of drinking on a beach before hand.

After getting settled, we got into our bathing suits, and laid around on the beach! It was sooo nice. It was amazing to just sit and not hear cars honking, or buses going by and to be able to smell fresh air was absolutely amazing. We could look up at the sky at night and actually see the stars! Oh the little things in life that you don't realize are so amazing until you don't have them anymore. 

The first night we all went to grab some dinner in town and went to a club right on the beach. I didn't stay out too late because after traveling all day I was super tired. The next morning I woke up much earlier than everyone else because I had gone home earlier. I went out by my self and walked along the beach and tried to get some good pictures of where we were staying. 

After checking out the beach, we grabbed some food and then got massages! 300 Baht for an hour oil massage! I wasn't passing that up! It was amazing to lay by the sea, listen to the ocean and get a massage. I absolutely loved it! so much that I actually got another one the day after. After our massage, we all got ready and hiked to this waterfall that my friend Maria read about. It was supposed to be about 600 meters to the waterfall, buuuut I believe we walked about 2 miles. Thats alright though because we got to see a bunch of stuff! There were elephant camps, which are actually really sad cause you can tell that they don't treat the elephants right. We also saw these HUGE spiders that are, not even joking, about 10 inches from leg to leg.

Here's a picture!

These suckers are HUGE! don't get too close to them. We really have no idea if they are poisonous or not but I wasn't trying to find out. After walking for about 30 mins or so, we finally reached the entrance to the national park where the waterfall was. With out student cards, it was only 100 baht to get in. We realized that the 600 meters, was from the entrance of the park to the waterfall. So we started on our way. It only took about 20 minutes and we finally reached this beautiful waterfall!

These are the elephant camps that we saw, but we just didn't feel like they were treated well so we decided against riding them. We are going to go elephant trekking when we go up to Chang Mai. 

We found a puppy!!

Hiking up to the waterfall!!

We finally made it!

Lucas trying to do some modeling haha. 

When we got back from the waterfall we just laid by the beach and got some food. That night we decided that we were all going to stay at the hotel and lay by the beach drinking some beer. It made me think of the Zac Brown Band song Knee Deep. It was amazing. 

The next morning we woke up and I got another massage. Hey you can't blame me! It only costs $10!! Then Hannah, Lizette and I decided we were going to spend the day riding scooters around the island. After spending most of our time with everyone else (there were about 20 of us in the group) it was nice to have some time with our small little group. It was really fun being able to ride where we wanted to and for a second I really started to understand why my dad LOVES riding motorcycles so much. While I love riding horses more, I do understand the freedom of being able to go where you want and to have the wind in your hair! 

Part of the motorbike gang!

This is how you buy gasoline on the island!! 

For some reason this little guy kept giving me the dirtiest looks! he was mad at something! 

After riding around all day it was time to go back to the hotel, take showers and get ready for dinner. We went out for dinner and drinking at a local bar which was really fun. The next day we just packed up our stuff and jumped on the ferry to go home. It was an amazing weekend and I am so happy we got a chance to get out of the city. 

More to come on our next adventures later!