We spent the latter part of our Thai holiday at the beach. We chose Ko Chang, an island near Cambodia, primarily because of elephants.

We took a short (and cheap) flight on bangkok airways and besides the fruit in the lunch smeeling exactly like bleu cheese, it was pleasant. Trat airport is tiny - an airstrip and a couple small pavilions. Then a shuttle takes you though some durian and rubber orchards to the ferry to the island.

Ko chang is a jungle island that is in some way supposed to resemble an elephant, but I don't get it. But they do have elephants here, and we rode one (I bathed and Allison fed it too). Allison asked our elephant's name and the mahout said "sii nueng" which means "41" in thai. But the elephant riding was great - we had a long ride though the jungle.

The beach was very nice too, the water was crystal clear and warm. One big problem of Ko Chang is transportation. The island is big enough that you can't walk to places but there are no real taxis/tuk tuks/ any hireable transport. On top of this our hotel would shuttle you around but at truly exorbitant fees (we're talking $20 US one way for a couple of miles and no way back, when we had maybe paid $20 total so far in the trip for taxi type transportation) This may have to do with the islands status as a national park, and I'm all for that, but it meant for us that we had to eat in the hotel a lot (the hotel's food was good though). Finally we solved this dilemma by taking our lives in our (my) hands and renting the ever popular motorbike, which I then drove us around the mountainous island on the left side of the road on.

The other thing Ko Chang is famous for is waterfalls, and the one we went to (Klong phu) was very cool, literally and figuratively. You hike up a sort trail to the waterfall where you can swim in the icy, pristine, water. I loved it, though I got in trouble from a thai park ranger (I guess that's what he was) for swimming in the upper pool of the falls - I thought I had seen other people do it.