Koh Chang Thailand Guide

Koh Chang Elephants: Elephant Island, Its Camps, and the Welfare Questions Worth Asking Koh Chang means Elephant Island, and almost every visitor arrives expecting elephants the way they expect beaches. The name is on the ferry ticket, in the hotel logos, on the carved statues outside the cafes. So it surprises people to learn the honest starting point for any guide to elephants on this island: there are no wild elephants on Koh Chang, and there never have been in any recorded history. The elephants you see here — at a handful of camps in the island's valleys — were brought from the mainland, each one an individual animal with a working past, living a life that depends entirely on the choices visitors make. This guide treats those elephants, and you, with respect. It explains where the name really comes from, how elephants came to be on an island they are not native to, what the island's camps actually offer today, and the welfare questions worth asking before you pay for a...

Koh Chang's West Coast Beaches: White Sand, Klong Prao, Kai Bae and Lonely Beach If the east coast of Koh Chang is where the island lives, the west coast is where it swims. Almost every sandy beach that visitors come for is strung along this one sunset-facing shore, in a neat north-to-south line: White Sand first, then Klong Prao, then Kai Bae, then Lonely Beach and little Bailan, with the road growing steeper and wilder as you go. They are close together on the map — you can drive the whole chain in well under an hour — and yet they feel like four different holidays. One is busy and convenient, one is long and laid-back, one is compact and social without being loud, and one still carries the old backpacker spirit that first put this island on the map. Choosing between them is the single most useful decision you will make about a Koh Chang trip, and it is what this guide is for. We will go beach by beach, honestly: what the sand and the swimming are actually like, how the tide chan...