Our final stop on our travels, the quiet island of Koh Chang, has allowed us to relax and reflect, but we've still managed to pack in some great experiences - more snorkelling and kayaking, along with a first for us - elephant trekking!

Sunday was a long day - mainly because our original flight out of Bangkok was cancelled due to lack of demand, so we were put on a later flight, resulting in a five hour wait at Bangkok Airport. We didn't mind too much however because Bangkok Airways provide complementary drinks and snacks in their departure lounges - we spent the day eating popcorn and drinking ice tea! When we eventually boarded our flight to Trat it was clear why the earlier flight had been cancelled - this later flight only had about 15 people on it!! Forty minutes later (barely having had time to eat the on-flight sandwich that was provided!) we landed in Trat - home to the smallest airport we've ever seen! A car brought our bags from the plane and dumped them on the pavement, so we collected them then headed off to the van which was to transfer us to the island of Koh Chang (the driver had a sign with our names on - oh how important we felt!) There wasn't even any kind of customs to go through before leaving the airport! Thirty minutes later we were on the car ferry heading towards Koh Chang. Alongside us on the ferry was a horse, a load of men sitting in the back of a pickup truck drinking whisky and a car which arrived just as we were leaving and so was practically hanging off the back of the ferry - i.e. the kind of things that we've become accustomed to seeing in Asia that we'd be kind of surprised to see elsewhere! Once on Koh Chang we were taken straight to Baan Rim Nam, our home for our final few days. We'd booked this place back in November after reading great reviews about it and as soon as we arrived, we knew we weren't going to be disappointed. It's a collection of five rooms, based on a river (the whole place is on stilts!), so incredibly peaceful. There's a beach just a few minutes walk away and some great little places to eat all around - perfect!

We headed straight for the beach on Monday morning, but soon realised that it was too hot to sunbathe (it wouldn't be so bad if you could cool off in the sea, but this too was at least 30 degrees!) even though there was a short but heavy rain shower whilst we were sunbathing! After finding out what there was in the way of shops nearby, we decided to take out one of the canoes that are kept at Baan Rim Nam. We'd spotted an island from the beach that we naively thought we could probably swim to, so thought it would be a doddle to canoe to - how wrong we were! Our first problem was getting out of the river. As the tide was coming in, we just couldn't paddle fast enough to overcome the current at its mouth! We disembarked and dragged the canoe into the sea, then got back in it to make our way to the island - only we didn't! We just couldn't get anywhere against the current and had to give up, vowing to try again another day when the tides were with us! In the evening we went to a restaurant on the other side of the river. They picked us up with a little paddle boat, then after the meal, paddled us up river to see some fireflies - a spectacular sight with regular lightening flashes up in the hills adding to the light show.

We'd booked ourselves onto a snorkelling trip on Tuesday. This was different to the Koh Samui trip in that we were on a bigger slow boat with people who'd clearly never snorkelled before and we had our suspicions some could even swim (there were a lot of life jackets and some frantic doggy-paddling going on!) This aside, the spots that we snorkelled (off the islands of Koh Thonglang, Koh Yak, Koh Lon and Koh Wai) were very nice with some colourful coral. We also met a really great couple, Steve and Emma from Southhampton, who we agreed to meet up with the next day (their hotel had a pool - something that we were lacking!) That evening there was a huge rainstorm, but we braved it in order to get some food. It was pretty eerie walking along the beach in the rain, trying to avoid all the crabs, with great flashes of lightening all around us!

The next morning with the tide on our side and in a lighter kayak, we attempted our island hop again and were successful! The only difficulty we encountered this time was shallow coral around the island that we had to carefully wade through. Once on the island though we were able to experience true desert island life - just the two of us and a whole island to ourselves! We were no Captain Cooks though as it was clear that other people had been on this island before us - the trees all had loads of "things" attached to string hanging off them (coral, shells, rocks etc) - each of which had clearly been put there by people visiting the island. So we decided to get to work leaving our mark on the island and were pretty pleased with the result! In the afternoon we went over to Steve and Emma's hotel to join them in making use of its olympic length pool, beach volleyball court and happy hour drinks (Alex had his first G&T for five months!) In the evening we headed to another restaurant across the river from our guesthouse (again we were picked up by boat) and ended up gatecrashing Emma's birthday meal! We didn't know they were going to be at the same restaurant, so it was starting to look like we were stalking them! We had a great meal though (sat on the floor!) and afterwards went to the smallest bar we've ever been into - owned by a very nice, but slightly weird English guy called Dave. After a few beers, he dropped us back at our guesthouse in his fishing boat!


On Thursday morning we'd booked an elephant trek, so we were picked up and taken into the wild highlands in the middle of Koh Chang to the Ban Kwan Chang elephant sanctuary. Our first activity was to bathe a couple of elephants in a dubiously coloured, but refreshingly cold stream. Alex was last to give the elephants a scrub and the elephant clearly knew that bathtime was nearly over because he got up and took himself back to the sanctuary still with Alex on his back! We then set off on our trek through jungle and forest on the back of "Chinchila", a 27 year old massive bull. We started off seated on a sort of chair saddle with our guide "steering" from his place on the elephant's head, but about halfway through the trek, the guide got off the elephant to take photos and videos of us, allowing Alex to resume his preferred position on the elephant's head! With Alex in charge (or so he liked to think!) our progress was a bit slower! We got back to camp and rewarded Chinchila with lots of bananas! It was a great experience to get so close to these amazing, huge animals and have them walk us through their natural habitat. In the afternoon we walked around the towns of White Sands and Bang Bao (where we bumped into Steve and Emma again!) before going for dinner on the beach at the cute little "Tiger Huts" restaurant.

We're leaving Koh Chang this afternoon to fly back to Bangkok and from there we catch our flight back to the UK - arriving in the early hours of tomorrow morning. We cannot believe how quickly our time away has gone, although in other ways it seems like a lifetime ago that we landed in Sydney. We're so grateful that we've had a chance to do this trip and for all the amazing things that we've been lucky enough to experience along the way. Are we looking forward to coming home? Of course... we've missed you all and are looking forward to catching up with everyone :-) xxx