July 5 , 2026

The final stage of my trip begins, the last portion of another major journey through east Asia, one that began with six weeks in Thailand’s northeastern Isan region, continued with a month in northern Laos, then segued to a month in Yunnan. The last week on Koh Chang will be somewhat of a postscript.

The morning proceeds as planned in my drab Kunming apartment; I wake up, clean up, pack, eat the packaged noodle soup that thankfully is not too spicy, and surprisingly, manage to pack my bags and stuff as much weight as possible in my daypack, my concern being that the backpack is already over the weight limit.

Everything proceeds according to plan — until I try ordering a cab on Didi. Due either to the amount of the fare or the destination, the app wants me to prepay for the ride, and due to the amount, my bank requires submitting a code to confirm the Visa purchase.
Except that when I switch from the Visa code submission screen to the Messages function to pick up the transmission with the code, when I switch back to WeChat, the Visa code entry screen no longer displays, and instead the invoking WeChat screen. When I try to access the earlier code submission screen, I see that the ride request has been removed. I repeat the attempt several times but realize that I will have to find an alternative.

I send a message to the apartment warden but she doesn’t respond. I go downstairs and ask the porter using the translation app, but he throws his arms up helplessly, then brings my plight to the attention of a delivery man, who is simply confused as to why he is being asked to help me. Meanwhile, valuable time is passing. I will need to escalate — but how?

Taxis wouldn’t normally pass by the apartment building I am staying in, given that it is set in a small alleyway. I can’t call a taxi, as I don’t speak Chinese. I could try asking a local to help me, but how? I begin waving my phone at people walking towards the gate, saying “taxi, taxi”. Most ignore me but one smaller, alert-looking man takes me by the arm and points me toward Jinbi road. We walk together at a brisk pace, and upon arriving at the intersection, we see taxis about to pass us. He waves determinedly at one, which pulls up to us. He explains where I want to go — this in and of itself could lead to a major problem if there happens to be some sort of confusion thanks to my excessive gesticulation. But then how much will it cost? The Didi car was only ¥56 and I only have ¥85 cash left. But the driver wants ¥100 for the fare, which is understandable, as taxis always charge more than the ride-hailing apps. But I don’t have the cash, and I need to get to the airport. The man who brought me to Jinbi road pays for the outstanding 20 yuan by WeChat, and I am off. The experience of his assistance and generosity alone encapsulates the experiences of visiting China.

Now I am worried about being stuck in traffic. Even though it is a Sunday morning, we proceed slowly, but not because of the traffic, but the succession of red lights. I am hoping that the traffic situation becomes less onerous as we migrate away from the core area. When we reach the freeway, we are off — but as other cars race by us, the driver continues at a leisurely, slower pace. Seriously?

I was dreading the ridiculous degree of security checks at the airport that they have instituted in train stations, but ironically, the security checks going into the departures building are surprisingly nonchalant. The airport is thankfully not huge, and the China Eastern gates just ahead of me. But which counter do I check in at? I find a general information desk but the young woman can’t seem to help me. Next to her is a China Eastern information counter, the young female rep pointing me to the J passage — except that there are numerous checking counters with separate lines in the J aisle, and there is no obvious indicator as to the lineup I should be joining, nor is there any support staff on the floor. Despite calling to the woman to point me to the exact lineup I should be waiting in, she refuses to budge, citing some excuse. This is another good example why the outlying regions of China simply won’t get foreign visitors — the infrastructure and attitude among those who should be tasked with assisting tourists is terrible.

As I look around me, uncertain as to how to proceed, an older Eastern European couple passes by me. Yes, this is all China Airlines, but the lines are organized by destination — if I had paid more attention to the signs, I would have observed that myself. They are off to Dhaka — but can’t seem to find the appropriate lineup. I look around, and I don’t see a lineup for Bangkok, either. I approach one counter agent, who informs me that I need to proceed to counter H11. And there it is, with only a few people in line in front of me, which normally would be a bad sign, even though I am sure I allowed for enough time to check in.

But no, there is no catch, I have enough time, the check in proceeds without any hitch, presumably most people having checked in online. And no, you can’t check in using an English-language website, you have to use the Chinese language airline app — and of course you are not provided any explanation of this when attempting to check in online. Shockingly, my backpack comes in under 18 kg, which is very encouraging!

On to the immigration counter with the Swedish-Chinese couple from the check in line in addition to a few others. From here on in the experience is very benign, the immigration processing is slowed only slightly due to an agent being trained. The security screening is standard, hardly befitting what you would expect of China. There seem to be few people flying internationally at the moment and the departures hall is relatively empty, which is hardly a bad thing. The architecture of the building is grandiose, but the interior is relatively predictable, with its spacious, brightly-lit corridors and lack of aesthetic specificities; the design is reasonably contemporary but at the same time anodyne.

I experience one last ode to Yunnan in the coffee shop dedicated to its calibre coffee with an excellent espresso, then am off to the gate to rejoin the Swede and his wife.

The Swede is an easy going, burly dive instructor from Göteborg. He has been living in Ko Samui for years, but return to Sweden he won’t — he doesn’t like what has happened to his country. He used to live in Phuket but now doesn’t like it due to the ongoing party mayhem. While some of the islands off of Phuket are heavily overdeveloped, some are still reasonably authentic and worth visiting. He says that Koh Samui is chilled out and family friendly, although I have a very different recollection of my experience visiting in the 1990s — given what he is telling me and what I have heard from others, the place has probably been rebranded. As his wife is Chinese, they come to China regularly, which used to be a major hassle involving traveling to Bangkok to apply, then waiting for the visa, but China’s recent visa-free policy is a blessing.

The Boeing 737-800 flight is relatively smooth with occasional turbulence, but the plane is new, spotless, the passengers very well-behaved, other than the older couple seated in front of me that inexplicably changes seats continuously. The hour and fifty minutes to Bangkok fly by; there is nothing like going on such a short flight, the flight also a reminder of why I live in one of the most inconvenient places to travel from in the western world, given the incredibly long trajectories to virtually anywhere interesting you’d want to fly to.

Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport’s immensity is revealed when traipsing the long corridor to immigration, the walking seemingly going on forever, the lineup to the immigration counters stunning — except that I first need to fill out the electronic TDAC form. Which wouldn’t be so onerous, except that I need to check my laptop for details of my departing flight. Then I realize that the return Zipair flight doesn’t have a code that you normally associate with the flight. In the time I spend trying to find the flight code, the lineup to the immigration counters balloons to a much larger size. I am tired and simply stunned at the tsunami of people waiting in line. This is a definite reason to never come here again — and to a city like Bangkok, probably the last urban centre I would want to visit in east Asia.

Finally through immigration, now the circus of picking up my baggage: understandably, the baggage from the incoming flight would long since have been removed from the carrousel. What do other visitors do? It can’t be the case that other people reach the carrousels before the baggage is removed, given the insane lineups at the immigration counter. Of course, there are no agents on the ground, and there is no obvious place to look for my pack. Walking past the carrousels, I don’t see any evidence of the flight from Kunming, nor is there any central panel displaying all the flights with the associated baggage carrousels. For a massively touristed city such as Bangkok, the poor quality of assistance is stunning. I ask some random man in a uniform for help; he peers momentarily at his phone before pointing me to a carrousel at the far end. Except that there is no evidence of my bag in the area he pointed me towards. I ask bored staff (some literally sleeping) at the adjoining baggage counters for other airlines, and they point me to a carrousel at the far end of the concourse. I traipse to the other side, again to find nothing. But there is a lost and found office, where I am passed from ambivalent agent to another, when one finally tells me that she is holding the baggage from the China Eastern flight, and voila, there it is. I was just beginning to imagine how my last week in Thailand would unfold without my personal possessions …

Now back up to the fourth floor of the building to the Bangkok Airways check-in counter, then to an ATM, where I am surprisingly only charged 250 (as opposed to 350) baht for a cash withdrawal, although the baht has increased in value some 10% over the time I was here a few short months ago. Through security, then on another trek to the gate, which, as always, is at the very end of a long concourse. But from the moment of the domestic check-in for the flight to Trat, the experience is far easier and less stressful, particularly since there don’t seem to be overwhelming numbers of passengers, foreign or local, flying to local destinations. Were all those masses of people in the immigration lineup planning on staying in Bangkok? Ugh …

A Muslim woman lolls absent-mindedly in the seat next to me as her three young children cavort around. She tells me they are off to Phuket, and yes, they go there regularly. They love Thailand! This will be a telling introduction to the surprising number of Arabs that are choosing to come to Thai beach destinations — obviously they can afford to come here, they obviously have the best airlines in the world to bring them here, and they definitely will experience a world dramatically different from the one they come from.

The waiting room for the flight to Trat represents a dramatic departure from my earlier experience, no more than a handful of people waiting for flights to inland domestic locations, although presumably at least some of the passengers are planning on continuing to Koh Chang. I have no idea as to the options that will be available at the airport for onward travel, so am keeping my fingers crossed — as challenging as the day has been thus far, major challenges may still be lying ahead.

The ATR prop jet we are to fly to Trat on is a far cry from the commercial jets that fly between major cities, with two narrow seats on either side of the aisle, and perhaps no more than 20 rows, most of the seats empty. Next to me is one of the more unusual sets of passengers, a Dutch man in his late 60s with his Kazakh paramour who couldn’t be older than 25. He is ebullient and enthusiastic, having lived in the far reaches of the world for decades, now on vacation, but soon to be moving back to Romania to teach English after a long hiatus in Central Asia. She is a far cry from the desperate Russian starlet one would imagine to be chasing after an older man’s money, rather, intelligent, thoughtful, and articulate, which begs the question as to why she would be with a man more than twice as old as she is — and based on his lifestyle and profession, there could hardly be much of a financial incentive. She is very sweet and radiant, and when I do chat with her, authentic in her engagement, but he is visibly perturbed by my chatter, largely because the fragility of his ravenous affair with this young woman can’t possibly elude him.

They are also wanting to head to Koh Chang, and when our baggage is transported to the open-sided terminal from the sole runway, they are quickly off to the songthaew designated to transport passengers to the ferry terminal. The fact that they deliberately don’t wait for me to walk to the vehicle despite the fact that I am obviously going to the same place is telling. The availability of a seamless connection to Koh Chang island is precisely what I had been concerned about prior to arriving, and now it turns out that the trip to the island is definitely available. The airport itself is a curiosity, a small terminal and lone runway set against the verdant Thai countryside. But as we rush along in the songthaew towards the coast, we are about to see that this rural setting is quite different from the rest of Thailand, namely, immediately next to the coast, and presumably, the impeccably manicured Thai countryside will change dramatically in appearance when you cross the border into Cambodia.

The car ferry is waiting for the three of us when we arrive, but we need to rush to get onto the boat before it leaves. No more than a few dozen vehicles are parked on the main deck, and an equivalent number of people seated on the open upper deck, a smattering of foreign tourists, mostly young Caucasian couples or the usual older white men with younger Thai partners, locals, and surprisingly, quite a few people from the Middle East, judging the number of women with head covers. The boat pulls away from the countryside jetty and glides gradually toward the island whose coastline is marked by steep, green hills, the dense, green forest covering the slopes increasingly coming into focus as we come closer, the contours a play of light and dark as the late afternoon rays of sunlight filter through the dense carpet of clouds hovering overhead.

A songthaew is already waiting for the stray passengers to travel along the more populous and developed western side of the island, where I intend on staying. While I hadn’t booked any accommodation, having been uncertain as to how far I would be able to travel today, it looks like I will be making it to the White Sands community lying on the northwest side of the island. The double-lane road is paved, as is de rigueur in Thailand, but rises dramatically along the steep mountainside, weaving upward through the dense jungle, then descending from a summit down to the White Sands community, a string of smaller to mid-sized beach hotels, cafes, bars, local restaurants catering to the farang tourists, who seem to be the mainstay here. While the town seems to be exclusively geared to tourism, it is small, consisting mostly of businesses that cling to the side of the road, on one side the steep green hillsides and on the other the water. I can see tourists, although relatively few, and of those, many of the older Caucasian men that are evidently part of the demographic that radiates from Pattaya not far to the west.

A good accommodation option that I had found for White Sands was the Banpu Koh Chang Hotel, and it took no more than showing the hotel name to the songthaew driver at the ferry terminal to ensure that I was dropped off in the right place. Done! I relax in the expansive thatch-covered lounge of the beachfront hotel, ready to book the room online when I find the prices to be significantly higher than I had initially seen. This is the problem with using the web-based booking tools — the prices change continuously subject to various factors, and to be able to nail deals can become complicated. Never mind that the entire process becomes a seductive sinkhole, which I easily descend into as I slouch into the couch after a long day of travel. Looking at the variety of the small resorts that line the beach of the town, my brain rewires into hotel search mode, reviewing the details listed for each of the room options, stepping through the individual pictures to get a sense of how large the rooms are, the property pictures to see what connection the resort has to the beach, how intimate or institutional it is, how modern or how rustic, and so on. Finally, after far more time has elapsed and I have cycled back and forth through the same seemingly optimal hotel choices — I really couldn’t countenance not landing the best option! — I decide on a water-facing room at the Koh Chang Grand View Resort. From reviewing the photos of the various room options at the resort, I am not even clear what the specific respective selling points are of each, but in general, the lodging seems quite good, and the prices higher than I would normally like to pay, but then the place also includes breakfast.

Located toward the southern end of town, the Koh Chang Grand View Resort is set on a landscaped plot of land, my room one of the more expensive options in the complex, thanks to technically facing the water. It is housed in a fourplex facing the water, each of the two floors of the structure containing two rooms with small private terrace and surrounded with windows, which now doesn’t make that much difference, considering the rainy weather. The room is medium-sized, far from ample, with a king-sized bed with decent mattress, although given my sensitive back, who knows if it will be good enough to offer a decent night’s sleep. The room contains a small fridge, large T.V. screen, writing desk and stylish matching chair, a large cabinet for packing away clothing, and a moderately-sized but plain bathroom, something that would be available for half the price in an inland town. But this room faces a beach on one of the country’s lovelier islands — although I can’t imagine what they would be charging in high season. The distance from the beach is actually a good thing, considering how loud the waves can be, which is a nuisance at night. There is apparently a pool and exercise room in the complex as well, which is a selling point.

As exhausted as I may be, it feels like a tremendous shock to be able to use social media and be partaking of the real world again, in stark contrast to China, where contact with the outside world is gate by the Great Firewall. But I need to do something constructive with the limited energy I have left, in particular, go out to eat before the eateries definitively shutter for the evening. I am actually quite surprised that well past 9:30 pm so many of the eating establishments are still open. Much of the food offered here is the classic Thai food that is offered where farang congregate in Thailand, and definitely not the kind of regrettable gastronomic crud you are faced with in the Isan. What’s more, every other establishments offers pizza, hamburgers, and so on, which I would normally decry, but now, after a month in smaller town China, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into an oven-fired pizza that is actually quite passable by any standards …