Koh Chang

We've just had a fabulous long weekend at the Koh Change Paradise resort.  Koh Change is, I believe, the second biggest island in Thailand and is near the Cambodian border. To get there, we rode to the bus station to get a mini-bus but there wasn't one, so instead we took a taxi which took about an hour to get to the ferry terminal.  The ferry takes 25 minutes to get to the island and once there, you have to be quick to get into a shared taxi with various drop-offs and for us, this took about another 25 minutes.  The centre of the island is quite mountainous and going up and down the hill in an open taxi is quite an experience.  If you can open your eyes long enough, the views are spectacular!

We save about a third of Mr John's wages every month - and pretty much blew the lot on this weekend.  It was so worth it.  Mr John booked us a beach villa with its own pool.  Because it's rainy season it cost a third of what it would during the dry - which really helped.

Paradise Resort sits on Klong Prau beach.  As you come out of the resort and turn left, there are quite a few shops including a small Tesco Lotus for any last minute forgotten things.  Before you get to Louts, there's a coffee shop - Marin - which does good coffee though a little pricier than we are used to.  Behind Marin is a little cocktail bar called The Malibu Bar.  The owners are very friendly - even before they found out Mr John had taught their eldest daughter last year!  They play reggae music and, whilst I'm not a huge fan of this genre, it provides a very relaxed atmosphere in which to enjoy a cocktail or two.

Past the Lotus, on your right, is an avenue of shops which contains an Italian restaurant called I buoni a nulla.  We found the food to be excellent and discovered afterwards its currently rated 2 of 120 odd restaurants on Koh Chang by Trip Advisor.  They sold red wine in a half litre carafe which was perfectly good quaffing wine.  It was a rare treat as we haven't drunk wine since we arrived three months ago.  Again, the owners were very friendly and hailed from Milan.  Mr John didn't know whether to ask for the bill in Thai, Italian or English!

So instead of moving in permanently, which we wanted to, we headed back to Chanthaburi.  Mr John still had another day of holiday but he didn't want to arrive back and go straight into school next day.  As it turns out, we could have stayed an extra day as the school is closed today due to the flooding in the town.  We're OK at the minute and I'm hoping there's not another "News Alert" post required.  The river is very high but we're keeping our fingers crossed.  In the meantime I have a very happy teacher at home who is messing with my daily routine!