Still in Pakbeng, Laos, writing about Koh Chang, Thailand. Just saw one of the elephants from the Mekong Elephant Park, across the Mekong from us going down and taking a dip in the river. It must be their male as it was alone and having been to the park yesterday they explained the male was the only one that would go down to the river by himself, with his ever present Mahout of course. Jeez those Mahouts are dedicated. But I’ll write more about the park later. Even though I wasn’t overly impressed by Koh Chang, I feel I should finish writing something about it acknowledging that my last post was probably a bit on the dull side. I spent a lot of time writing about getting money out of ATMs, but you know these are things you need to think about when travelling. Like here in Pakbeng, there’s 2 ATMs, both are not working and nobody, except maybe the hotels, takes cards. So if you wanna eat you need money. Luckily we had brought a few thousand Thai Baht with us to Laos which the guy at the Indian restaurant exchanged for Kip after we paid our dinner bill. It was a nice place actually, thinking of going back there for lunch. But back to Koh Chang. Our second day in Koh Chang we decided to head to Khlong Phlu Waterfall because it was April, and so f*cking hot and a waterfall has water in it. It cost us around 200 baht each way, maybe 150, can’t remember. It’s a great choice to spend your time in the heat. The taxi driver agreed she would come and collect us in 2 and a half hours, which was ample time to swim, sit, and for my wife to be covered in butterflies. There’s lots of little and quite big fishes there as well that like nibbling at your feet. Some gave quite a nip actually and it felt on occasions that big chunks of skin were being taken away. I had a wonderful on my leg caused by a fellow tourist a few days earlier who carelessly whacked his backpack into my leg as he got out of the shared taxi tuk tuk thingy which I can still make out on my leg here, maybe 10 days later, or something like that, I’ve lost track. Well the fish liked chomping on bits of my wound, not sure how hygienic that is but I kept applying my tea-tree ointment I brought from Australia to try and keep it from getting infected. Which it did! I also swear by tea-tree toothpaste when travelling as it helps to avoid bacterial infections. That’s about it for the waterfall, what else can you say about waterfalls,Khlong Phlu Waterfall, a bit of a hike from the carpark, maybe 800 metres, and it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk there. It costs around 200 baht each to get in as it’s a national park. There’s a few birds about, the water is nice and refreshing as opposed to the mostly warm waters you get at the beaches that time of year. And yeah, here’s another butterfly picture! We went back to Lonely Beach after, had some lunch, went up to the hotel, had another swim and more showers then headed back down into town to have dinner having to skirt around some angry dogs on the way. If the beaches of Koh Chang were a little disappointing – though I did certainly enjoy the Lonely Beach vibe much, much more than Klong Prao Beach – partly because Lonely Beach is not that easy to get to, and with no paths you either have to get yourself a moped to drive around (presumably stoned which is probably not advisable) or walk on the road to get there. There’s no long stretches of beaches down that way you can walk along. But, if you go early in the morning you can see monkeys though! Anyway when we decided we’d like to see the islands around Koh Chang, to see if they were any better – the reports being, yes they were. So we organised a snorkelling tour of four islands near Koh Chang for the next day. You can also do 5 islands, 3 islands etc. I’d say in the end it doesn’t matter what number you visit, they are all pretty much the same, and all very nice. I don’t think you’re really getting much more value by seeing 50 in a day. You get to snorkel at each of the 4 islands, or however many you pay for, and on one, don’t ask me the name of it, you have time to wander about on the island for about an hour. The typical tour thing where they’re rushing you about so they can tick off, yes you went to 4 places and they were all islands, so you can’t complain. But, if you’re expecting the oceans to be teaming with life then get ready to be disappointed. Which is where I come to part of the title of this blog entry: where’d the sharks, rays & turtles. Inspire dog course by Ween’s classic song Where’d the cheese go? (I don’t know). We have been to Queensland’s Heron Island, which is on the Great Barrier Reef. There we saw an abundance of coral, even though it’s been bleached and damaged a bit over the years with global warming. We also saw an abundance of fish, rays, turtles and sharks, including some cute baby sharks I was snorkelling with on the last day on the island. We even saw baby turtles hatching out of the sand and a mother turtle laying turtle eggs. You also have plenty of space to swim about and enjoy the reef just off of the coast. It’s a natural paradise. That’s not the experience you’ll get on the islands tour off of Koh Chang though. They gather tourists from all parts of Koh Chang in the morning and they ship them down to Bang Boa harbour – one thing you can certainly say about the Thais is that they are super efficient at herding tourists in tourist activities. – which is full of plastic waste by the way. There they fill up dozens of boats full of tourists and then ship them off to each snorkelling spot, and while you do see a lot of fish there’s nowhere near the biodiversity you’ll see in a truly natural spot like the Great Barrier Reef. There are no rays, no turtles, no sharks, the coral is super mangy and the water, at least at that time of year (April) is super hot, like tepid bath water. Also because they have so overexploited the area there is no concept of doing things in moderation and you end up getting crawled over by tourists trying to stay afloat. So all up, the scenery above the water is pretty nice and you’ll get your nice pics to post on instagram. But the snorkelling is very shit and honestly the Thai government needs to put some effort into controlling the exploitation of its natural resources, maybe limit the amount of people visiting the islands every day or setting aside more protected areas. Because whilst I do find sharks, rays and occasionally even turtles a bit freaky, they are indicators of a healthy ecosystem. And the bottom line is the islands they take you to around Koh Chang are far from healthy. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they get so overexploited that they won’t be worth visiting in years to come. Frankly they are barely worth visiting now. The day trip was pleasant. If you can, go visit a natural reef in Australia or one of the pacific islands if you want to truly explore nature. Well, that was our last day on Koh Chang. I wouldn’t bother going back again, though the waterfalls, and massages on Lonely Beach are nice.