8 Jun

8 Jun - As Koh Chang is officially hibernating at the moment. We've decided to have June as a holiday month which means spending a bit of time on KC, a bit in Bangkok, a bit in nearby parts of Thailand and a bit out of the country.

The photo on the right is a vision of Koh Chang in the future, a beach populated almost entirely by hoards of Chinese day trippers. Behold the beauty of Koh Larn, a 20 baht, 1 hour boat ride away from beautiful downtown Pattaya if you do it yourself, or a few hundred baht by a far faster speedboat.

Highly recommended if you love travelling as part of a shepherded tour group, swimming in petrol fumes, paying over the odds for everything. (The exception being the guy selling 'Nam Kheng Sai' - shaved ice dessert - for 10 baht.)

This was only my 3rd or 4th visit to Pattaya in 9 years, and we only went because I can get a free hotel room there easily. On the plus side - Gullivers at the northern end of Beach Road does very good Thai and western food & cheap cocktails, we had delicious Vietnamese food at Vientiane Restaurant on Walking Street and Angelwitch, just off Walking Street is the place to go to see naked girls cavorting in foam, if such a thing takes your fancy.

Want to do something to help the local community on KC? Travel to Teach run volunteer programs throughout Thailand. I had an email from a recent volunteer couple relaying their experiences:

"The reality is that this program was started more as a place for volunteers from other part of Thailand to come for a free vacation. The program coordinator was leaving Thailand for England in 2 weeks and was more concerned with how to get a free bucket at the Sabay Bar than running a worthwhile program. When I asked her about the purpose of the program and why we weren't doing any environmental work which is what we had been originally promised her response (as a Thai person) was that Thai people don't want westerners help. True or not it makes me wonder what the point of the program was in the first place."

The couple were also supposed to be doing some English teaching for local kids, something worthwhile. In reality they taught two classes at 4 star hotels on Klong Prao beach for hotel GMs who are too miserly to pay for proper training for their staff.

However, the head of T-to-T, after hearing of their time on KC, agreed to refund most of the fees paid to the couple and reports on various discussion boards seems to indicate that the organisation does a lot of good work in the North of Thailand.