Trip to Koh Si Chang – Part 1

Koh Si Chang is somewhere that I’ve wanted to visit for a few years now. Yesterday I finally got around to it. One of the great attractions of this island is that it is so close to where we live in Minburi. The motorway means that I can get down to the port in Sri Racha in just over an hour – in theory anyway. I packed the family into the car and joined the hordes moving south. I had forgotten that this was a bank holiday weekend. The extra traffic slowed things down a bit and it took us nearer to two hours. I was a bit miffed to find that there was no parking space at the service area half-way down Motorway 7 – no nice Starbucks Coffee for me.

Arrival at Koh Loi

We also struggled to find a parking space at Koh Loi as crowds had descended on the temple. I ended up parking uncomfortably close to the sea. I have never explored this area but we could see the boat for Koh Si Chang, and it was already blowing its horn for departure. I took my son up in my arms and ran with my wife for the boat. We had been told that there was only one every hour so we didn’t want to miss it. The boat was already packed but we need not have rushed. They waited another twenty minutes to see how many more people they could squeeze into the vessel.

The journey across to Koh Si Chang was pleasant enough. My son Timmy was excited because this was his first trip on a boat. My wife is a terrible traveler but luckily there were no complaints of sea sickness from her. I had never seen so many ships in the one place before, and this part of the Gulf of Thailand looks like a car-park for these vessels. Many of them appeared so rusty that I was surprised that they hadn’t been decommissioned. I looked at the names on the back of the ships and some had traveled to Thailand form places as far away as Belize. The crossing took about forty minutes.

Arrival on Koh Si Chang

It was only when we got off the boat in Koh Si Chang that I realised that my plans had not gone further than the boat. My wife looked at me expectantly as she had assumed that I had it all planned out. I didn’t even have a map of the island never mind a plan. There were plenty of Tuk-Tuks waiting in the port, but they didn’t seem that desperate for business. I approached one of them and was delighted when he suggested a tour of the island for 250 THB. I would never normally hire a Tuk-Tuk for a tour, but it seemed like a good deal. It would also be another new transport experience for my son. The sea air had made us all hungry so we asked to be taken to a restaurant first of all.

Read Part Two