Koh Chang has been an amazing place to spend a week at. We have been relaxing on the beach and it has been extremely pleasant. We found some really cool backpacker beach hut's right by the ocean and it has been so nice to be so close to the water. I go to sleep with waves crashing in the background, and I wake up to the same sound. I was the lucky one out of my brothers as we rotate through with who gets first choice for where we sleep, and I ended up getting first choice for the time we were here. Therefore, I got to have my very own room for the past five days and it's been very relaxing to have my own space. Overall, it has been a lot of fun to spend some time here.
There is a market that is about a ten minute walk from where we're staying, and we've been going there every evening to find some type of dinner. I tried many different things such as Pad Thai, Spicy BBQ pork with rice, papaya salad, chicken skewers and much more. One thing that we had almost every night were fresh made pancakes with toppings like banana, mango, pineapple, strawberries and chocolate sauce. There was also a fresh fruit shake stand where we tried multiple different flavors of delicious fresh shakes. In general, there was barely any debate about possibly going somewhere else for dinner.
The beach has been beautiful. Because of the white sand, the water appears turquoise and it is so amazing to swim in such a pretty place. The island is made up of a bunch of different mountains and it's the largest island in Thailand. We went on a waterfall hike one day, and it was lots of fun to swim around in the basin. There were a bunch of fish at the base of the waterfall, and it was sort of like those fish massages that you sometimes hear about because they nibbled at our legs as we sat on the rocks. It was pretty funny. The hike was gorgeous and it was really cool to feel so engulfed by the jungle.
The photo above was taken a few nights ago where I watched an amazing fire show. I have been learning about different techniques when taking photos and for this shot I had to play around with the shutter speed and the ISO level. The guy is actually just waving two balls of fire that are attached by strings, but by setting the shutter speed so that the shutter stayed open for longer, the streaks from the balls were left in the picture and the sparks show as well. I am actually going to see them perform tonight as well. I will hopefully take some more shots and will update you with any news that I have.
We are planning to cross the border into Cambodia in less than a week, and then we will be biking through Cambodia for about a month. As for now, we are leaving Koh Chang tomorrow and I will be taking my Grade 11 English Final on Friday. Enjoy the photos on the photography page and I will keep you updated as we travel through Southeast Asia!
