Koh Chang is a backpacker’s paradise, a quiet island below the Thailand-Cambodia border, where the blue sky blends with the ocean at horizon, and the sweet, mellow mood of its people lull you to bliss. Six hours on the bus from Bangkok and a quick ferry ride take you to a pleasant nook for all the hippie vagabonds in Southeast Asia to rest their weary eyes, a definite change of pace from its more rowdy cousins down South.
We arrive late afternoon and are immediately ushered into the back of a pick-up truck fashioned into an island taxi. Seeing the hilly roads roll beneath you with the sun blowing sweet kisses on your bare skin — this is the moment when you realize you’ve entered the land of oh-so-sweet delight.
The island is a hippie central— dreadlocks like bird nests, skins like brown leather, grand tattoos adorning shoulders and backs on people who wander more than walk with any sense of purpose. We are all here to relax, to stop time and let go of responsibilities, of intentions and aspirations, and simply float through the days that seem to merge into one, big glob of easygoing pleasure.
Days are spent lounging in one of the many bars and restaurants with large padded cushions instead of chairs, or on the beach with your toes buried in white sand, or on a hammock by the shore as it swings quietly with the island breeze. A cold beer in hand, watching the sun melt into the waters at dusk — it’s that old, screensaver fantasy that makes you appreciate a cliche for the first time in your life.
Nightlife does not offer many opportunities for misadventures often desired by and even expected from those traveling through Thailand. The shops close early for the night with its people returning to their lairs, and the only light seen for miles is the halogen sign of the lone convenient store, shining like a hollow beacon for the restless.
We take a chance, wander through the darkness and end up at a hub of bars by Lonely Beach, the only place on the island where drunken mischief rules over the usual quietude of island life. I hear the faint sound of guitar strums tumbling onto the street and follow it down towards a crowded bar, where happy people are drinking and watching a small-time band play reggae tunes. Everyone’s attention is directed towards the man with a scraggly beard on stage, fervently sweeping the guitar strings, shaking his limbs, howling into the microphone a melody only free spirits could hear. There’s an unmistakable energy in the room as the crowd dance bare feet, stomping on the ground to the tropical beat, the floor charged with a spirit palpable in the heavy night air.
And then I notice the picture — it’s a blowup of a woman’s headshot, standing proudly in the middle of the passionate mass. It takes me a moment to see through the smiles to realize we’re at a wake.
Behind every cheer is a bittersweet sentiment of a lost friend, gone too soon, yet not without a final celebration of a life lived — and that’s exactly what this is, not a mourning but a festive commemoration of a loved one’s last days on earth. I think for a moment whether this mini-concert is in any way appropriate for its context, but how else could an island as carefree as this, as joyful and beaming with life as this, say farewell to its beloved?
You learn to just go with it — you can’t help but to go with it, to bop to the rhythm and vibe along. And with one last hurrah, we all raise our bottles and glasses, family and strangers alike, and say salute with a song for the cheery and another round for the grieving.
After spending meal after meal eating and drinking at the same bar of our bungalow resort, we finally befriend one of the workers. He’s only 20 years old, and came from Cambodia with his brother who’s the head chef at a different restaurant on Koh Chang. He’s easy to talk to, or maybe it’s just that he’s one of the few Thai people we’ve met who can speak decent English. It’s always comforting to hear a familiar tongue in a foreign land, and so we keep making conversation with him until he invites us out for drinks after he gets off from work.
It’s a pity I never got his name, but he told us his greatest ambition in life: he wishes to open up a similar kind of bar in Phnom Penh with him as the manager and his brother as the chef. He raves on about his brother’s cooking skills, how he can simply look at a picture of a dish, glance at its recipe, and magically conjure up the most mouth-watering delicacy known to man. I hope I can taste for myself his legendary dishes someday.
We make our way over to the bar area once more to mingle with the sloppy horde of island-goers. More friends are made with other workers from elsewhere, all of whom begin to show off their surprisingly incredible dance moves, breaking it down much to everyone’s delight. They all look happy, content, but it feels more like a hollow kind of joy.
At a certain point, everything on the island begins to look the same: walk down the street and you’ll spot a bar, a tourist info booth with a smiling salesman, laundry service and rent-a-motorcycle signs, racks of swimsuits and bro tanks and sarongs and whatever other island apparel you would need for a lifetime on the island. Rinse and repeat until the neighborhood feels like a copy of a copy, a never-ending chain of tourist shacks that shackle the island in a perpetual state of mindless vacation.
I watch our new friends, the friendly faces passing around a damp cigarette, smiling and joking and dancing and drinking, the happy people who’ve seen all kinds of backpackers come and go where they remain. And I wonder if they ever get sick of it all — lounging by day, drinking into the night, making friends with strangers who’ll leave and forget, all for the fleeting joy that feels even emptier when the sun rises again.
But as I’ve learned to do here, I order another drink to forget my sober thoughts. Drink up and be merry, they say. So I just drink up and smile.
Read More from the Series:
Part I: Hong Kong — Treeball Wong, 7-Eleven Beers, and Other Shenanigans
