the next chapter: Australia: Sri Racha and Ko Si Chang

Spent all day Saturday exploring Sri Racha - my city. I started out by walking over to the pier, which turns into Koh Loy Park - a beautiful little circle full of temples, food stalls and turtles! The pier is only about a 10 minute walk from my apartment! I first ate lunch at one of the food stalls, in which the menu was all in Thai... but, luckily there were some pictures, albeit a bit fuzzy. I ended up with a delicious, spicy seafood salad. Then I walked around the entire park, which is not very big, but has lots of different components to it. There is a large pool full of sea turtles, some of which were very, very large. As is common in Thailand, you can buy food to feed them, which many of the Thai families were doing with their children. There were some various shrines and temples, in which many Thais were visiting.

I then went to get the boat to head to Koh Si Chang, which leaves from the same pier, but it was 4:00 pm by then, which meant that I would have only had an hour on the island, unless I wanted to stay overnight. I had spent a much longer amount of time in Koh Loy Park then I had expected. So, I decided I would do Ko Si Chang the next day, and went off to explore the rest of Sri Racha...

I then walked around the waterfront, a beautiful park area full of groomed grass, palm trees, and playgrounds. I then walked up to the first avenue, and continued walking south, until I noticed a sign that read "Garden Seaview"... so I headed west towards the gulf, and ended up on another pier of sorts. Here, there was a lovely, but expensive restaurant, which I kind of got sucked into and had an early dinner there. It was too pretty to pass up. I then continued walking down the avenue, passing shops, homes, apartment buildings, markets, and many, many food stalls/ restaurants.

I came across this odd looking park, so I went in to explore some more. First thing I saw was a random, empty cage. There were stairs that led up a large hill/ mountain. I hiked up, and began to notice that the stairs were overgrown and it definitely did not seem like this was a commonly used path -- all the more adventurous! At the top, I came upon this very random (a common theme in Thailand) white tower and overgrown bathrooms and sinks. I figured the tower was some lookout point, so I went to go climb it, but then noticed that the bottom two flights of stairs were missing! As I walked down the other side of the hill, it occurred to me that the steps were probably intentionally removed. What kind of place is this? At the bottom of the hill, I came across a row of very colorful garbage bins, which were blocking the road - also probably intentional - to discourage people from going up... which I had already done. I then walked around and back down another side, and came across this odd pool of sorts. It was dirty, mucky water, but clearly used to be something, because it had this broken down, brick tower next to it and there was a walkway around the pool. Well, after shooting a bunch of photos, I moved on and came across the Sri Racha municipality government building - "Department of Public Health..." I walked out of the park and followed the road until I reached the main avenue (the route that can take one from Bangkok all the way into Cambodia, passing through Sri Racha, Pattaya and Rayong).

At this point, I just started to head back... but as I walked north on the main avenue - Sukhumvit Road - I realized how far I had gone! I can't really estimate how many miles I must've walked, but it took me about two hours, or more, of straight walking to get back to Robinson's Department Store, which is about 5 minutes from my apartment! It surely was an adventure, and I do believe I walked to just about the edge of Sri Racha!

Where I ate Lunch on Koh Loy Park

Tuk Tuk Taxis

Bad Monk: I caught him smoking...

Sunday -- Jacqueline and I had both planned to go to Koh Si Chang this day, so we met up in the morning and rode her motorbike, which she rented for the 4 month semester, to the pier. We got on a boat and headed off towards the fishing island of Ko Si Chang, which is about a 45 minute boat ride from Koh Loy Park. Along the way, we noticed how many enormous barges there were all over the port! I suppose we hadn't realized how big of a port this was until we were in the middle of it all! We then pulled up to a Korean barge (from Je Ju)... and Jacqueline and I both looked at each other, admittedly with nervous looks of "Ummm, what are we doing? Why are we pulling up to some huge barge in the middle of the gulf?" Of course, there were no answers to be found - T-I-T! But, as we pulled away, we noticed that three women were walking on the plank stairway up the barge... so we had dropped them off. Okay...

When we reached Ko Si Chang, Jacqueline and I made our way through the buzz of motorbike and sawngtao taxis waiting to take the Thai tourists around the island. But unlike most of the Thai (and Korean and Japanese) tourists, we actually wanted to walk and explore, so we headed off into some temple in the mountain. We hiked and hiked and hiked until we reached the top. What we actually came across was less impressive then the walk itself - another common theme in Thailand. What made it so interesting was that we were the only ones on the seemingly neverending flight of stairs up into the mountain. We were all alone in the jungle-like mountain hills of this fishing island.

After coming back down the backside, we ended up in a more local part of the island. I took some pretty great photos of the neighborhoods, which quickly turned into nicely paved roads and sidewalks, as we clearly entered the touristy part of the island. We got some lunch, cooled off, rested our legs, and then headed off to explore the cliffs on the edge of the island. For this part of our adventure, you must just look at the photographs I took. We ventured way past the end of the normal walking trail, headed into some brush and excluded ourselves in the midst of island jungle and the gulf! It was absolutely wonderful and perfect, and a bit scary with the violent sounds of the waves crashing up against the rocks.

After heading back, we walked through more parts and neighborhoods of local Ko Si Chang, until we found another mountain trail heading up to the yellow Buddha statue that we had seen from afar when we first arrived on the island. Of course, we decided to check it out -- where would these stairs lead us? Once again, we were the only explorers...

At the top, there was a sign that read "cave" with an arrow pointing downwards. We headed in to this unknown "cave", and founds ourselves utterly frightened! We had to pass this creepy, padlocked gate of sorts, which had torn mesh windows. As I passed it, I could not help but imagine a hand coming out and grabbing me! We hesitated the whole way down into the dark, rocky abyss, and I definitely shrieked like a little girl when bats flew out from under a cave hang. We finally made it to the bottom, and there was a little shrine/ buddha statue sitting next to some creepy, dirty pool of water. Again, I think we both imagined something coming out of the dark pool of water and grabbing us, and pulling us in! Haahahaa, well we survived. And just around the corner, at the bottom of the cave, just as we came out, was a little house where a monk was laying out some monk robes to dry. I believe he may have been the caretaker of this shrine.

We headed back down and found ourselves back on the road, walking through more parts of local, island fishing life. At this point, we wanted to head to the beach... at which we heard we could go swimming. We got to a part of central town, and began asking motorbike taxis how far the beach was and how much a ride would be... they quoted us way too high! So, we walked off to go find it on our own. Although, at this time the clock was ticking, since the last boat left at 5:00 pm, and it was already 4:00 pm. As we were walking, with a destination in mind but with no knowledge of how to get there, we came across one of the motorbike taxi guys, whom had just quoted us about 200 baht each.

He was helping two western men load a motorbike onto the back of a pick-up truck with a crane. As they were blocking our pathway, and since we noticed the motorbike taxi man (Nueng), we paused. The western man, who we found out was from Holland, then informed us that the beach was definitely not walking distance, and was up a large hill. He offered us a free ride, once his motorbike was loaded... so we accepted and all 3 of us got on one of his working motorbikes (Thai-style). We later found out that the man was here visiting his father, who has lived on Ko Si Chang for the last 20 years. They were loading the bike onto the truck, to get to the 5:00 ferry boat, and then load it onto another truck to bring it down to Pattaya for some special parts.

He was right.. the walk was far and all uphill. Not only would we have not made the boat on time, had we tried to walk, but our legs would probably have given in at some point. We were very grateful for the free ride. We got to the beach, and with not too many expectations, the beach was nothing to write home about - or even take pictures of. It was dirty, rocky and full of beach chairs laid out next to a couple of restaurants. There were a few Thai families swimming in their clothes (as they do here), but other than that, there was no point in staying, or really returning for that matter. We sat down and had some water, and then headed back to catch the last boat. We got another free ride on a sawngtao tour taxi, because he was headed in that direction anyway -- a nice, pleasant surprise... especially since the beach was not worthy of spending any transportation money.

On the boat back, we got to sit up top, with the nice, late afternoon breeze blowing the sweat and salt off our legs and faces. Sitting with us was the man from Holland and Nueng, the Thai motorbike taxi guy.

Overall, it was a fatastic, adventurous day full of awesome explorations through jungle mountains, temples, caves, and cliffs!!

Oh, and I later asked some of the tenants in my apartment building what that creepy park I went to the first day was... and they implied that it used to be a zoo - or "a place that kept lots of animals"! Clearly, from what I saw (and from what you can decipher from the photo album), it was very, very old. The random pool of water at the bottom used to have hippos!! Weird...

View from boat to Koh Si Chang