Arrival
You can travel from Bangkok to Koh Chang using (mini-)busses or fly to Trat – the latter is much more expensive though and you still need to take the ferry for the transfer from the east coast to the island, so it’s not that much faster anyway. We took a minibus starting from the Khao San road in Bangkok near out hotel. There are several bus services and stations available, all of them priced quite similar. Depending on the driver the journey can be kind of an adventure – it sure was for me. You need to be calm and tolerant when it comes to the driving style of your driver ;). It will take about seven hours to get from Bangkok to Koh Chang.
Location and accommodation
About 30 minutes more and you arrive at the accommodation of your choice, in my case the Little Eden at Lonely Beach. Lonely Beach is a small area with a nice and not too excessive night life. There are many nice restaurants and a rather small but comfortable beach with a bar. Like with other areas on the island it’s possible to book many tours, I will talk about this later.
The Little Eden has about a dozen affordable bungalows with different equipment. The cheapest have no tv or air conditioning while the slightly more expensive ones are equipped with these conveniences. Overall every bungalow is very affordable, you can check the current prices on the owners (David) homepage. David is a very helpful host, he assisted in about everything we needed – e.g. booking of tours or organization of our trip back to Bangkok. If you don’t need luxury accommodation I highly recommend that place, the food is awesome and having monkeys on your roof is a nice experience, making you feel really close to the jungle. David also has a nice cat, enough reason for me to come back some day ;).
Tours around the island
Even though Koh Chang is the third biggest island in Thailand it possible to see the most interesting locations on a day trip. Since you can see some waterfalls, the rainforest, mangroves and monkeys it’s a trip you shouldn’t miss. Just remember to have some good shoes for the trekking to the waterfalls, the ground is not the easiest to walk on. These are impressions from our day trip:
Snorkeling
I’m not a diver so snorkeling was my choice to have some fun underwater. Again, there are many providers on the island who normally show you a couple of islands where you can snorkel. Koh Chang itself is not a good place for this because there are no corals and you will see mostly sand. in our case it was also possible to go fishing and the fish has been prepared for dinner afterwards.
I’ve been on Koh Chang for only a couple of days so there are even more nice places for sure. If you have any further tips please feel free to write them down in the comments, thanks. The following pictures are some examples of what to expect on your snorkeling tour. The complete set of Koh Chang pictures is available on the corresponding gallery of this homepage.
