Koh Chang

[expatgaz]

Iam planning to visit Koh Chang, anyone recommend a good place to stay, nice beach, good rooms etc.Not to fussed abt the price, if we say 3,000 per night what will that get me ? Also is it worth while taking the car over ? Are the roads o.k or full of pot holes ? How long is the ferry crossing etc.Any good general info much appreciated.

EPG.

[expatgaz]

Checked a website and come up with 3 hotels, anyone have experiance with any of them or advise which is best.

1.Ramayana

2.Aiyapura Resort & Spa

3.Grand Orchid Resort & Spa

[think_too_mut]

Iam planning to visit Koh Chang, anyone recommend a good place to stay, nice beach, good rooms etc.Not to fussed abt the price, if we say 3,000 per night what will that get me ? Also is it worth while taking the car over ? Are the roads o.k or full of pot holes ? How long is the ferry crossing etc.Any good general info much appreciated.

EPG.

Taking a car over is almost a must, the road is windy but no potholes.The largest beach is over the hill, could be 10K or so.

It is dirt cheap to take the car over, could be 30-40 Baht (I have a photo of 2 tickets for 100 + 30 baht, can't remember what was for the car what was for 4 adults and 2 children). It may be in the photo, can't read Thai.

Ferry ride is 20-25 minutes, they are frequent and only once I had to wait for next one.

Accommodation: I changed my reservation 3 times and frankly can't remember the name where we ended up. This is what it was, right on the beach (their silver sand beach).

It was 3500B. Accommodation and things (other than in the backpackers colony) are not cheap there. It was just after New Year, January 2005.

The last pic is from the lookaout above the main place.

[onlooker]

I'm in Koh Chang several times ayear. Of the hotels you mention I wouldnt choose any of them as none of them are on good beaches - two arent even by the sea.

Bungalow in the photo (above) is at KC Grande Resort - stayed there once, nice place but can get busy.

Drop Ian at www.iamkohchang.com a line and he'll sort you out with information on hotels, beaches etc.

[wilko]

Checked a website and come up with 3 hotels, anyone have experiance with any of them or advise which is best.

1.Ramayana

2.Aiyapura Resort & Spa

3.Grand Orchid Resort & Spa

I wouldn't recommend the Ramayana - no beach for a start and incompetant staff.....all looks and very poor design....had a revotling Xmas dinner there 2 years ago.

Try Klong Prao beach...NOT Klong Prao resort!

The road along the coast to Koh Chang is fine, on the island they're very hilly and narrow...no longer up to the traffic, but once you get to whereever your'e staying you will SOOOOO nedd wheels of some form or another, so I'd recommend taking your car, just so you can go do some shoppping or find a beach that doesn't belong to a hotel or resort.

Ian on iamkohchang.com is the site to go to.....has a nice sounding guesthouse too!

This is a bit dated now....it's got worse!

Koh Chang - A Paradise Lost…

It is unfortunate that many travelers to Thailand are rather uncritical about their environment and the effect tourism is having on the islands of the Kingdom. Koh Chang is a terrible example of unregulated tourist development gone mad.

I first went to Koh Chang in 2003 and was rather disturbed by what I found and what has happened in the subsequent years I find deeply disturbing.

Koh Chang is the second largest island in Thailand. And now with the sudden post-tsunami unpopularity of the west coast (i.e. Phuket) there is an ever increasing number of western tourists heading for this island...here is my polemic on why this is not so good....

I've been to Koh Chang many times over the past three years, largely because it's near to where I live, and every time a friend comes to stay this is the most convenient "paradise island” to take them to... My brother even got married there in March 2005.

So what’s wrong with this slice of “bounty” advert?

(Deep breath)

Koh Chang is a tragedy....it’s being badly developed, it’s overpriced and it's going down hill at a rate of knots......

Why? The land for development was all bought up by bigwig friends of the "great and powerful" and now anyone who wants to set up a business there has to pay through the nose for it. All the hotels are overpriced even when you compare with Phuket and Samui. The insensitive despoiling of the island had started before the Tsunami as the island had been ear-marked for development by releasing the flat coastal land a few years before. Whether it ever appeared for sale on the open market I don’t know. In the post tsunami era the island’s desecration has continued with increased vigour as developers realised the new potential.

Almost all the west coast is now covered with awful self-contained resorts, built with no thought for the environment, conservation or island infrastructure. They are for the most part badly designed and ill finished. Appearance is all, the places are little more than decorated concrete sheds. Health and safety is simply not addressed - some of the pool designs look positively lethal. Slippery tiles adorn pool-side and bathroom alike. The building never stops; frequently you can find your room is on a building site. It is unlikely the hotel will warn you of this. This is now greatly restricting the amount of beach that is accessible to the public; it can only be a matter of time before all the good sandy beaches become resort owned or dominated sea fronts.

If you're coming from Europe or the States you'll find that the cost of living and rooms is cheap but not compared to elsewhere in Thailand. You'll love the sunsets and the white sand, you won't wonder where all the sewage is going and what happened to the mangroves or the fishing industry that gets smaller catches every year, or the fishing villages being turned into souvenir arcades-com-hotels.

The centre of Koh Chang is a national park , but unlike all of Thailand's other National Parks, apart from the odd waterfall, no-one is allowed inside, you can get a guide who will take you in but strictly speaking that's against the law. There is virtually no effort made to set up a good system of eco-tourism in the park as you might find in Australia.

There is only one road around KC and it doesn't go all the way round, it's a horse-shoe affair. There is a motorbike track that connects the two ends but it's not for the faint of heart! The main road is barely more than single track (asphalted) but cannot cope with the ever increasing load of traffic pouring onto the island.

As KC is the second biggest island in Thailand, walking around it in a day is not an option. KC is also very mountainous and the roads are very windy and hilly and the resorts can be a long way from any shops, night-life etc, the baht taxi service (song taew) is very patchy and any where you want to go is further than you want to walk, so it’s really essential to hire a motorbike or car; these are about 50% to 100 % more than on the mainland. It might even be worth hiring a vehicle on the mainland and driving there (Pattaya is about a 4 ½ hour drive to the KC ferries - fare approximately 350 baht).

The main town, if you could call it that is White Sands a long strip of hotels, resorts and motley bars about 3 km long. The building over the last 3 years has completely filled the space between hills and shore. If you arrive on foot with no hotel booked a baht taxi will take you from the ferry to Whitesands and drop you there. (So long as he has a full load at the ferry or he'll want you to foot the extra money before he sets off.) You will then have to find somewhere to stay this is impossible on foot and with luggage so book in advance at least for the first night. Then get some wheels, car/Jeep or motorbike and look around the next day for a place you like.

There is no airport on KC itself, if you go by plane you'll land at Trat airport which is on the mainland quite near to the ferries to KC. Get a taxi to the ferry - only a few baht. There are several ferries across, the crossing takes 45 to 90 min, depending on which ferry you take. On one ferry I paid 30 e/w for me and my car, on another I paid 360 baht for my car an five people return.

Now you may think I hate the place, well I don't, I just get very disappointed in the direction the powers-that-be have taken KC, it's lack of infrastructure and any forward planning will mean that sooner rather than later this place will become a collection of overpriced resorts and nothing else.

Where to stay? - Klong Prao Beach is probably as good as it gets, there are about 4 resorts there actually with beach frontage, The Paradise is all nicely built new bungalows, Coconut and Royal Coconut are next to that and Klong Prao resort has a long beach front and good pool beside the sea.

However, the last time I stayed at Klong Prao Resort in last August (2005) the place was a building site. They didn't tell me until the day I arrived even though I was a regular guest there. If you do book in advance you must ask about this sort of thing because you will very likely not be told by the staff. Building also precedes a hike in prices. I used to pay 1800 baht to stay there. That time I paid 1750, a discount of 50 baht (just over a dollar) because it was the wet season and there was building going on! I was told the new price is 3500 baht and that was what they would still charge whilst the building was continuing.

Wherever you decide to stay - CHECK BEFORE YOU GO ABOUT BUILDING WORK.....ESPECIALLY IN THE WET SEASON!

The problem with Koh Chang is that it is changing and changing rapidly for the worse. Hotels are constantly building and encroaching on the environment. Prices are rising and beach access is getting more and more taken over by private resorts. The days of a hut on the beach for 200 baht are in fact, virtually gone. The scuba divers are going further and further a field in search of clear water and fish, and don’t be kidded that so long as the hotel claims to be by the sea that it has a beach! (v. Ramayana!!)

Untrammelled development is occurring all over the islands of Thailand and visitors to the country should be aware of the unsympathetic, unregulated development that is taking place here. It is happening everywhere; Samui has suffered in particular at the hands of unscrupulous “developers” and the same thing is happening on Koh Chang.

However, I think that Koh Chang is unique in regards to this as it is not only the second largest island in Thailand. (Phuket is the largest but connected to the mainland by road) but the most recently developed. Even as you lie on the beach, an opportunity is being missed here to avoid all the mistakes made on the other “paradise” islands.

Anyone will tell you that their favourite island has changed beyond recognition, but Koh Chang still in my opinion has a chance of changing its ways especially if people are made aware of the situation before they go. Business interests on the island will react to market forces, there is little hope for swift and effective government intervention, as this is almost without precedent in Thailand. During a 2 week stay it is unlikely that the average visitor will become aware of the larger issues surrounding the conservation and development of the island, so I would hope that some at least will think before they go, and ask questions like...

• Where does the sewerage go?

• Where are the mangroves?

• What happened to the local agricultural industries?

• What do the fishermen do now?

• Where are all the fish?

• Where does the water come from and where does it go?

• What is the sea water quality on my beach?

• How is the coral?

• Who is looking after the marine and forest nature reserves?

• Why is there no satisfactory public access?

• Who owns the land?

It is quite possible that in the future Thailand could run out of islands to develop and lose one of its main attractions as a tourist destination. All this will be achieved with your money…you are paying for the development on these islands; it is your money that makes these short term goals achievable.

PPS - If you want up to date local info on KC, try this site: IamKohChang.com

a good site for info on Koh Chang and sounds like an interesting place to stay too!

PPS – I cannot recommend the Ramayana and Boutique resorts!

[think_too_mut]

Wilko, nice and long writeup. Sadly, it is true and I would agree with most of it.

One thing I could not find in there is - the farmers and people who own the land waltzed into this, spearheading the uncontrolled development by turning their patches (or selling them to the developers) into the mess.

3 years ago BKK post featured and article (or most of it's Travel section) about sudden boom that once poor farmers are enjoying now. Building bungalows or whatever they could.

That's why some hotels are not on the beach...they are wherever they could buy/rent the land.

[samtam]

Wilko's reply is comprehensive and I would agree with all the bits I recognised. We stayed recently - 3 weeks ago - in Koh Chang at the Amari. Very nice hotel, if perhaps a bit pricey, but I can't fault it. The beach on which it is sited (Klong Prao) is deteriorating rapidly, (but the bit in front of Amari has had additional sand deposited, so it is very pretty). The rest of Klong Prao is not, and the tide is high during the day, so you cannot walk along it, except in the evening or at night. It was my first visit to KC, and I had hoped that I would find a good alternative to Phuket and other resorts. Sadly, I would not go back, because of the overbuilding, general trashing of the place. There is a lot of land clearance, and then it seems to be left in a complete mess.

[wilko]

OK two things...the farmers/landowners and Klong Prao beach.

The land on Koh Chang was opened up for development a few years back, and the main mover was, I believe Mr Thaksin. The result was that most of the available land was actually snapped up by big companies/money and there was allegedly a lot of cronyism involved. Most farmers did not own the land by the sea, as it could not be farmed; a lot was owned by women. Did they get a fair price? I could make a guess. Some farmers may have made a killing but the main money went to those in the know about the deregulation.

If you travel round the island you will see a lot of abandoned attempts at resorts where the farmers have tried unsuccessfully to cask in on the boom but the land is in the wrong place.

One of the reasons for it being so expensive is that a lot of hotels have to lease land off the owners at exorbitant rates but the owners are no longer the farmers. I think Ayapura has Thaksin connections, and the surrounding sea is about 6 inches deep with broken coral so not for swimmers

The Amari is actually on the raggedy end of Klong Prao beach. There is a variation in tide levels throughout the year so the beach is probably not always covered.

[RAZZELL]

And still after all this development you'll be be bored after 4 days!!!

Razz