Koh Chang, Again! March 2009

To wrap up March, we took one more beach trip. We liked visiting Koh Chang, the little tropical island in the Gulf of Thailand, so much in January that we went back in March for a long weekend! This time we met up with our friends, the McDermotts, (also our neighbors) and their three kids. Their kids match up pretty well with ours - two boys, ages 8 and 7, and one girl, age 5 - and they all play together pretty well. We stayed in teensy tiny bungalows on right on the beach. The location couldn’t be beaten – you stepped out of the bungalow and right onto the beach, with the waves just 30 or 40 feet away! However, as I said, they were tiny. I mean TINY! We had two of them and it was a very tight fit for the six of us in our family! We also had a Tokay lizard that lived on one of our bungalows. Tokays are big lizards that make A LOT of noise…they are nocturnal so throughout the night, about every 20 minutes, I’d hear “tokay, tokay, tokay, tokay” (always 4 times!) right outside the wall, and then the lizard’s claws scrabbling across the wall outside. Ick! Very noisy guy! Tokays are also on the big side and known to attack and bite if startled or provoked, so we didn’t mess with this one, no matter how loud he was! This trip to Koh Chang we didn’t do elephant rides or go look at fireflies, like in January. We did, however, spend a ton of time on the beach and in the pool (love the swim up bar!) which was also right off the beach. We ate a lot, walked along a neat fishing pier that goes way out over the water (interesting…people live in the teeny tiny huts over the water – you can even rent a room to sleep in for about 6 dollars a night! Not exactly luxury accommodations, though!) We also saw some pretty cool fire shows on the beach at night while we had dinner – men throwing flaming hoops, daggers, sticks, etc. all over the place – neat!