A Weekend Away

The boys had their first school holiday on Friday so we took the opportunity to get away for a few days to Koh Chang. Koh means island in Thai and Chang is elephant. Koh Chang is the second largest island in Thailand, second to Phuket. Supposedly, the island takes on the shape of an elephant from a distance and has a lot of elephants on the island. The boys and I made the 3 hour,southern, trek down on Thursday and Mark joined us on Friday. We arrived to the ferry site at about 4:30 for the 40 minute trip across the waters of the Bay of Thailand. It was an open air ferry that also transported cars, trucks and lots of motorbikes. We were told that our hotel van would be awaiting our arrival-NOT! By the time we got to the other side it was beginning to get dark. There were several Baht buses awaiting the ferry but we waved them off as we had hotel transportation-NOT! We were quickly reminded that this is a third world country. I had told the boys we would eat dinner on the other side when we reached the island, thinking that if for some reason we had to wait on our hotel transportation we could use up some time eating. After the taxis had all departed and the ferry totally disembarked it became a very dark, foreign, small place. I contacted the hotel and was unable to tell them which ferry we had arrived at because of the poor lighting and lacking of any signs. I handed the phone to a lady on the road motioning for her to please tell the hotel where we were exactly. (I have got to learn Thai!) The hotel informed me they would arrive in 25 minutes. Okay, I have to put on a brave front for 30 minutes, especially for Ethan. It was dark with two little huts by the ferry ticket office. One of the huts sold fruit the other was a cantina with six men setting around smoking and drinking, directly across from the ticket office where we were waiting because that had the only decent light. Ethan was getting really nervous because the men were staring at the farangs. I was praying and trying to encourage the boys. We occupied ourselves by counting gecko lizards, watching the stray dogs, (one of which was busily trying to rid itself of fleas near our stoop.) and trying to avoid the rude stares of the drinking men. After about 20 minutes the hotel called and said they were unable to find us. There was a nice older looking lady in the ticket booth who I handed our phone to. She scared me because she told me we weren't at Koh Chang (there are a lot of islands in the vicinity) but she meant the Koh Chang ferry but we were at the Centerpoint ferry. So the hotel assured me they would now arrive in 15 minutes, I really thought Ethan was going to lose it. Dustin and Nathan were a big help in encouraging him and thankfully after only about 10 minutes our van arrived on the dark, lonely road. We were so glad to be found! We were able to direct Mark on Friday to the correct ferry site and he was going to just hop on a Baht bus as the hotel had already dispatched our one free hotel transport on Friday night. Not to many things are easy here or go as planned. After about 30 minutes of waiting for his ride to depart the ferry site it was finally understood that the taxi man wasn't leaving for just 6 people, they would have to wait for next ferry to get at least 6 more people which would be at least 30 more minutes. Mark was the only non-Thai person on board but one of the younger girls understood English and they decided as a group to pay double to get them moving. There was an older woman with 3 young kids, Mark guessed they were 9, 5, and 3 years old. When they came to her home about 20 minutes into the trip she didn't have enough money and left the 3 children by the taxi while she went to search for more money. After about 10 minutes of waiting, the taxi man reloaded the oldest child (perhaps for ransom?) left the other two beside the road in the dark and drove off to deposit his other customers. Mark assumed that he would take the child back after everyone else got off to collect his money, he said the young girl put up no protest. Things are so different here.

The trip may have got off to a rough start but we ended up having a great restful weekend. We had a nice bungalow by the beach. On Friday, the boys and I enjoyed the beach and then we went on ATV tour through the rainforest, it was really beautiful. On Saturday we took a tour of the entire island and visited a fishing village entirely built on stilts above the water. We bought the most interesting ice cream cone I have ever had from a village woman on her bike and cart. On the bottom of the cone was sticky rice, followed by a small piece of fruit, ice cream topped with some sort of salty dried corn, it was really yummy with the sweet and salty combinations.
Sunday morning we went snorkeling before departing at 2 to head home. Every day we have to take off our Western mindset, today was no different. Two things that struck us, on the island we didn't see one gas station, gas is sold in glass jars, it looks like some sort of alcohol, like whiskey sold on the road side. The other is the lack of safety concerns-the number of people they squeeze into a Baht bus, no seat belts...but today it really struck us. We had scheduled the half-day snorkel tour through our hotel. At 9 am they van takes us to a pier where a man with a boat is waiting for us. There is no exchange of money, no pleasantries, no release forms to sign, no snorkel instruction...We were taken about 1 mile across the bay to this small uninhabited island, handed our snorkel masks, 5 life jackets and asked, "what time?" Mark said, "Noon." Which I quickly reminded him that noon means one in Thai, we flipped through our Thai book and found the correct time. I happened to ask for, "Naum?" and he handed us two waters and sped away. It just cracks us up, thankfully we all have snorkeled before, we had no idea we would be left all alone on this island to snorkel just trusting that they would return for us, otherwise it would be a loooonng swim back to Koh Chang. After we got used to the set-up it became really neat to have a whole island to ourselves and we so enjoyed our snorkel time and he didn't leave us stranded! He came back as promised. Another weekend for the memory book! I'll post some pictures of our weekend away.