This weekend, we planned for a trip to Koh Si Chang. Actually, our plan was to go to Hua Hin, another island, but it was too big to cover in one day. So we decided for Koh Si Chang. I may have mentioned in my Koh Chang post too, Koh means Island, Chang means Elephant. They are famous for their shape as an elephant. Si means small and as the name suggests, it really is very small – around 17 km in length. Seems easy to cover in one day on foot, right? We thought so too.

Also, this time, I’ll cover the places we visited on the island one by one. So it will be a 4-5 part series probably.

Now, let’s start. We had plans to reach SriRacha to catch the ferry to Koh Si Chang in the night, but unfortunately, due to traffic, we couldn’t reach on time and the last ferry left. We had to stay in SriRacha and we’re glad we had to.

We took van from Victory Monument (also called Anu Savari) in Bangkok for Sri Racha. It is the place from where you get the ferry for not only Koh Si Chang but for very famous Pattaya also. The van took 120 Baht per person and about one and a half hour (without traffic) to reach the destination. They dropped us at Robinson and from there only you can get Tuk Tuk to take you to the pier. It was still 10 minutes to 8 (8 PM is the time for the last ferry to the island) but Tuk Tuk drivers refused to take us saying that it was too late. We later came to know the reason.

Anyways, upset, we entered Robinson to roam around but we were too disappointed and nothing was cheering us up. It had ruined our whole plan. Only one thing was in our mind, “How will we cover the whole island in half a day?” We were hungry too. This mall had our favourite veg pizza place – The Pizza Company. But by the time we finished the mall, every shop got closed too including the pizza shop (Bad day, I know). Again I decided, I would go for veg cup noodles (che mama) from Seven Eleven, but I don’t now why, my friends wanted to eat in a restaurant. The biggest tragedy was – more or less, all the restaurants were Japanese and I wasn’t expecting Veg food anywhere.

We hadn’t booked any hotel too neither at Koh Si Chang nor at Sri Racha (we were in adventurous mode). Devoid of any info, we were still looking for a place to have dinner and rest for sometime. We asked at many places and nowhere, there was veg available. This particular shop (Oops! I didn’t notice it’s name. How bad I am!) agreed to cook us veg food specially and the lady found us a hotel too. I saw on Google Earth and I found out the name – Bangkok Grill.

After filling ourselves, we started to look for accommodation. Now the hotels can be real expensive for students like me. They generally start from 1000 Baht. The first hotel we were suggested was SriChai hotel. We didn’t find that one but did come across SamChai hotel. She was offering us an AC room in 900 Baht and we were getting two rooms in 1500 Baht. Not a bad deal I guess. But we kept looking and this SriChai hotel was already full. Ultimately, we came back to Samchai and got the room in 1400 Baht! Satisfied!

It was already 10:30 in the night and we were tired. But the explorer inside wasn’t ready to keep quiet. So we went out and this huge Loi Krathong fair was going on. Loi Krathong is Thailand’s light festival. Many many lanterns in the sky, and candles afloat the water. Read more about Loi Krathong here. There were many shops ranging from clothes to accessories to eatables to shooting games to even pets and there were small rides also. And there was a concert going on too but since my two friends weren’t interested in listening to the songs they didn’t understand, they didn’t bother to take even a look. Dude! That was such cool music. Do you always understand rock songs when you listen them for the first time?

We clicked a lot of pics, played games, took rides and had lots of fun. When the people started closing the stalls, we had to leave too 😦

But it was super-fun. On the bridge over sea, calm waves, festive atmosphere, loud music. What else to enjoy the evening? (Ok, drinks may be? But unfortunately, I don’t drink so that’s it for me.) And thus ended an unforgettable night. Here are some pics from the festival. Enjoy!

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Oh, and next time, I’ll tell about irritating Tuk Tuk drivers and motor bike renters and the really beautiful Chinese Temple.