KO CHANG2 24TH-29TH OCTOBER 2006

As much as we both be-grudge paying the 400B National park entrance fee's, there are two big waterfalls either side of the island inside the national park that we thought would be nice to go to. On the 24th we hired another mo-ped nd set off round the island to check them out. The mo-peds on this island are so knackered and all of the manual gear ones back-fire about every 20 seconds or so. Its funny when you're driving through a quiet village with women peacefully cooking over a stove, for us to drive through on our back-firing ped and watch them completely jump out of their skins! mean but funny! The one we had hired on this day, Lewis managed to brake before we even set off. He went to move the wing mirror and pulled it clean off! dont know how but snapped it at the metal part? we quickly claimed to have just noticed it and not actually broken it, which they seemed to believe!

Both the waterfalls were lovely, one had a large swimming area at the bottom and seemed a popular picnic place for locals and the other had two smaller pools to swim in and we were the only ones there which was pretty cool. We took our time at the waterfalls then drove down to the bottom of the island and found a gorgeous small beach with very few people around, just past the fishing village of Ban Pee. We took a dip before the sun went down and drove to a view point to watch it set onto the neighbouring islands. We ate out of Whitesands that night, seen as we had the mo-ped and was nice to see some other parts of the island. There seems to be a lot of English men that have had enough of england and moved out here. Most have bought guesthouses or bars, its mad how many actually make the move. Its a nice life but not enough to keep your mind occupied to move here for life? I think you'd get bored. There is no work-life and home-life out here its all a oner, and no-one makes a lot of money, just enough to live on day to day, it seems.

On the 26th we went scuba diving for the day. It was a lot more expensive than we thought it would be... 25 pounds each for the day, two dives, all equipment and lunch, which is a lot of money out here and you could do a day for about the same in england. It had to be done though and we aren't going to be on any more good dive spots for a while so it didnt really matter about the cost. We went to two different small reefs, the last being the better for marine life and corel. The visability was 15-20 meters which was good. The worst thing was we were diving in a group of 4 and one of the other guys was a huge unit who spent most of the time floating up near the surface somewhere and golping his air down as if it was fizzy pop. So he had to go back up when we still had half a tank left. He was just a complete plank and it would have been better for us if we didnt have him there. It was a great day though and glad we did it.

The day after diving we were shattered so had a very relaxing day which consisted of walking down the beach for a fruit shake then had an hour long Thai massage then back to Bo's for a mongolian BBQ.

We booked our boat and bus back to Bangkok for the 29th. Thats two weeks on Ko Chang which has been great and more like a holiday than anything but we are both ready to move on and see what in-land and Northern Thailand has to offer.