Unreal paradise

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Main Ko Chang beach in the rush hours.

I reached the state that I needed a short holidays from my traveling. Traveling is great but sometimes one need a short break. Matthias sent me recently a nice story about the caravan that was traveling fast through a desert and it stooped only before reaching it final destination for a longer stop. Western tourist asked the Arabs why do they stop only few hours before reaching their destination. Arab told him that the souls need to catch up with theirs bodies.I am still far to my final destination but I had a feeling that indeed I had to allow my soul to catch up with me.

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My bungalow with amazing view.

Ko Chang island (on the Andaman see) is underdeveloped island. There is no proper road there, and the electricity is only for 2-3 hours a day from generators. The beaches on the island are kind of black and the water visibility is poor. There are many others neighboring island that most tourists can find much better water visibility and beaches with the white sand, but thanks to this Ko Chang did not really change a lot in the last 10 years. In order to get to the island one takes a long boat, and since there is no peer one have to jump out to the water close to the beach after reaching Ko Chang. On the beach in the high peak time there were maximum 5 people around! It is cheap I manage to get my bungalow with amazing view for less than 4 euros a night. Every two weeks there is apparently a party happening on one of the three reggae pubs on the island. In order to attract people to get out from their own bungalows and join the party, they offered a FREE sea food barbecue - all you can eat.

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Citizen of Ko Chang.

There is very slow paste for all the action on the island. During the whole 8 days that I spent in the island I managed to do only one serious hike around half of the island. The rest time I spent in my hammock reading a book, writing a bit, studding Spanish and sleeping more than 12 hours a day.
This island is described both in the English Lonely Planet and German traveling guide. In both they write the same: black beaches, no water visibility, nothing happens, but with different conclusion. Lonely Planet say do not come there is nothing to do, German tourist guide say come if you want to do nothing. And this resulted that 80% of tourist are German speakers. Power of travel guides.
Very specific people are coming to this island. I met Ti a dutch guy that planned to go for one year meditation retreat to Myanmar. I had a great discussions with him and he manage to handle me some of my doubts concerning detachment. Very interesting fellow.
When I was leaving Ko Chang after eight days I had a feeling that I am leaving paradise. Ti came and to say good bye and he waved when I was denaturing. I guess except Laos when quite a few people were waving when I was departure, this was the first case that someone was saying good bye like this.

There are two Ko Chang island in Thailand. One is close to Bangkok in Eastern Thailand and is very much touristic developed. The paradise Ko Chang is on Andaman sea next to Ranong, close to Burma.