21 Jul

21 July - Koh Chang 'Atlantis of the East' so goes the tourist authority's new advertising slogan dreamt up by copywriters who never let a bit of rain get them down.

Zoltan, the Hungarian photographer, not the nemesis of Superman, stayed at our place earlier this year and took a few rather arty photos. One, of Klong Prao beach, is opposite. See his photo site with pics from various countries here.

Info on a new private minivan service between Siem Reap & Phnom Penh and Koh Chang. This service is designed to ensure that anyone wanting to combine the delights of Angkor Wat or Phnom Penh's riverside bars and the beaches of Koh Chang can do so safe in the knowledge they aren't going to be taken on a magical mystery tour by the van driver. All the details here

If you're staying at our place and have your laptop then you can now spend all day hiding in your room or sitting on the deck by the river surfing the web for free. No-nonsense with passwords etc, just power up your lap top and you'll have access to our 1MB connection and you too will quickly come to learn that not all 1MB connections actually work at that speed, some, such as those on Thai islands, are much slower.

There's a rather large fisherman's house for sale in Bangbao - area 25m x 15m, can park a boat outside, price 3 million. Would make a good spot for a dive shop or seafood restaurant.

Following statistics courtesy of the TAT, who are putting the 'anal' back into 'analysis'. Were you one of the 149,108 foreigners who visited Koh Chang last year? The TAT's number crunchers have finally come up with that figure which represents a 49% year-on-year increase over 2004. Pretty impressive, but two things to consider . . .

. . . first it's only slightly larger in terms of the number of additional visitors than the increase of 41,000 more visitors in 2004 over 2003. Plus a large proportion of 2005s increase over 2004 can almost certainly be attributed to people who would have otherwise visited Phuket or Khao Lak - had their resorts not been wiped out by the Tsunami. Thus bumping up figures for the first few months of 2005. 'Make Koh Chang your first choice when your original vacation destination gets wiped out by a natural disaster' Maybe that's too long to fit on an advertising hoarding.

Anyway, if you were one of the lucky 149,108 then you probably spent around 3.84 days on Koh Chang, spent 2,330 baht daily and stayed in a hotel/resort with 41% occupancy rate.