{"id":2358,"date":"2012-08-04T03:56:40","date_gmt":"2012-08-04T11:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=2358"},"modified":"2012-08-16T20:22:50","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T04:22:50","slug":"koh-chang-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=2358","title":{"rendered":"Koh Chang Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each morning at our resort a breakfast was served, and each successive morning the self-serve part of the menu got smaller and smaller. \u00a0On Saturday breakfast had an omelet bar, cooked tomatoes, potatoes and onions, cereal bar, toast bar, various cooked sausages, various Thai style cooked meats, fried rice, noodles and more. \u00a0By our last breakfast on Monday this had whittled down to the only thing self served being ketchup, with our meals ordered off of the menu.<\/p>\n

The only tour we\u2019d already purchased on Saturday was the \u201cTree-top Adventure<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0That didn\u2019t start till 2pm, so we decided to go to the beach first. \u00a0We were informed that the white-sands beach transport was only available twice a day, so we went to Emerald Cove<\/a> instead.<\/p>\n

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We saw all ages of skittering white sand crabs running across the beach to dive in their holes.<\/p>\n

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\nAfter sitting on the deck chairs for a few minutes we got back in the two-rows transport and headed to the Khlong Phlu Waterfall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The waterfall was reached by taking a 600 meter hike through the jungle.<\/p>\n

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After the short hike, waterfall visitors are free to dive into the cool waters at the fall\u2019s edge. \u00a0We couldn\u2019t pass up the opportunity to swim in a real life tropical island waterfall (pool). \u00a0There were already ten or fifteen tourists in the more shallow end, so Sam and I hiked up to a more dangerous deep end where the waterfall surging water becomes the placid pool. \u00a0I suppose \u201cpool\u201d may be a poor description as the water does keep on flowing down the hill eventually ending up at a creek that flows beside a small air strip and out onto the beach where we\u2019d waded only an hour before.<\/p>\n

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Sam and I took turns swimming to the other side of the pool. \u00a0It was actually much more exhausting than it looks since the water was churning rapidly. \u00a0As soon as I touched the surface on the other side I came face to face on the black rocks with a monster spider. \u00a0Look where my gaze is going in the photo (tightly cropped from a photo from the other side of the pool) and you can just make out the stripe on the spider’s back. If you still can’t find it look for the “triangle” at the bottom of the checkmark.<\/p>\n

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It wasn\u2019t quite a tarantula, but it was certainly larger than anything I\u2019d ever seen in the forest back in the States. \u00a0The abdomen section was a big bulbous black blob at least the size of my thumb with a yellow racing stripe, followed by two smaller sections and held aloft by long spindly legs stretching from end to end about the size of my extended thumb to pinkie. Ironically my first thought wasn\u2019t \u201coh crap, that\u2019s probably poisonous\u201d, it was \u201cmy camera is over there on the other side of the pool – damn!\u201d<\/p>\n

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By 11am the pool was teaming with tourists. \u00a0It was so bad that we could no longer get our photo taken at the entrance with an unobstructed view of the waterfall. \u00a0The photo below was the best we could get after waiting for the constant stream of incoming gawkers to pass by.<\/p>\n

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\nAfter walking back from the waterfall we had lunch at the first vendors on the side of the road. \u00a0It was rotisserie chicken and maybe one of the best I\u2019d ever had. \u00a0It sounds silly, but this was perhaps the most enjoyable meal I had on the trip. We spent our meal trying to guess the spices they\u2019d used in the marinade.<\/p>\n

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A short hop into another two-rows and we were back at the hotel to change into our close-toed shoes to go to the Tree-top Adventure.<\/p>\n

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We decided to take a quick dip in the pool before going to the zipline.<\/p>\n

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After our ziplining in Chiang Mai last year the Tree-Top Adventure here was kind of a let down. \u00a0However, our opinions were heavily tempered by two things that were (probably) beyond the proprietors’ control: slow guests ahead of us and a massive nest of mosquitoes.<\/p>\n

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We had both sprayed ourselves with mosquito spray before beginning the adventure, but after literally hours of standing around in the nest – getting bitten was an inevitability. \u00a024 hours later it would become apparent just how much the little vampires sucked out of us. \u00a0On Sunday my legs looked like I\u2019d contracted chicken pox out in the jungle.<\/p>\n

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The \u201cadventures\u201d themselves were fun as we were largely left unguided after a short training session. \u00a0It could have been a great deal of fun if we weren\u2019t stuck behind a family of European tourists who were apparently very scared of heights. \u00a0This compounded the mosquito problem for us as our only option while a scared 14 year old Belgian girl wobbled at the beginning of a cable bridge was to stand on the forest floor and swat at the bugs circling our legs like sharks to chum.<\/p>\n

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In between smashing blood bubbles on our legs we had fun swinging, zipping, climbing and walking through the tree tops.<\/p>\n

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Two days later I took a photo of my leg and all the bites:<\/p>\n

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After getting back to the hotel I splashed in the pool while Sam read and then we showered up and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. \u00a0I decided to have my first Mai Tai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each morning at our resort a breakfast was served, and each successive morning the self-serve part of the menu got smaller and smaller. \u00a0On Saturday breakfast had an omelet bar, cooked tomatoes, potatoes and onions, cereal bar, toast bar, various cooked sausages, various Thai style cooked meats, fried rice, noodles and more. \u00a0By our last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2358"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2375,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions\/2375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}