We had our final breakfast at our resort in Koh Chang. This resort wasn’t fancy but we loved it. It had a great beach, good food, clean room, pretty pool. Couldn’t have asked for more.

After breakfast Nick took a taxi to town while Millie and I played and packed. His mission was to get some cash from an ATM and to refill our sunscreen supply. We go through about a bottle every two days. It is expensive to be this pale.

He returned with those two things and a big bucket full of sand toys. Millie nagged us to finish packing and to bring her to the beach so she could play with her new stuff. She built an elaborate castle for an hour until our taxi picked us up at Noon.

When our taxi (benches in the back of a pickup truck) arrived it took us about 20 minutes South to the pier. This was part of a scenic little village all on stilts over the water.

We got on a speedboat with about 8 other tourists. Most of them were heading to the nearby island of Koh Mak to attend the big music festival that is happening tonight. It goes all night and two of the guys on our boat hadn’t booked any accommodations. Their plan was to just stay up partying all night and then take the boat back tomorrow. I can’t imagine anything worse.

The 30 minute boat ride was bumpy and Millie fell asleep on me. We arrived at Koh Mak and then took another short taxi to our hotel. Our new place is a splurge (for us) but was one of the only places on the island that was available when we booked. We checked in and ordered lunch in their restaurant over looking the most beautiful beach.

Unfortunately the beauty was tamped down when we started seeing “warning: jellyfish” signs everywhere. It is hard to know how seriously to take these, but we googled and apparently we are in peak jellyfish season on this island. What’s more is that they have the really really nasty ones, box jellies. Statistically we would probably be fine, but we aren’t going to risk it.

Once we got over the disappointment that we can’t swim, we learned that they also have nasty biting insects called “sand flies” in the sand. The prevention is to coat ourselves in coconut oil and bug spray and to hope for the best. We may do this but more likely we’ll just enjoy looking at the beach vs. playing on it for the next couple of days.

We will have to survive with this perfect pool overlooking the big, empty, jellyfish and sandfly infested beach. Pray for us.

Millie and I swam a bit and then Nick came down to meet us. We changed into dry clothes, covered our feet in coconut oil, and walked down the beach as the sun was setting. We had the whole place to ourselves.

We arrived at the Blue Pearl bar, which is at the end of a pier in the middle of the ocean.

It was mostly full of festival goers. I could tell by their matching wristbands. As it got darker, watching how the gradient in the sky changed color.

When it was almost all the way dark, we walked back along the precarious planks and then back along the dark beach to our hotel.

We stopped for a while after noticing birds flying in and out of a tree above us. They were about the size of crows, but flying erratically. Then we realized they were bats! Huge, very black bats. We are used to small bats at home, but these ones were huge.

As we were looking up at them we saw a slow moving thing in the sky. Nick pulled out his sky app that tells him what all stars and objects are and we learned that it was an old rocket body from 1960 that is just up there, still orbiting, Millie was so bored of us standing still and looking up that she yelled “big bats and rockets are not interesting!!” I beg to differ, tiny friend.

We had dinner at the hotel, where Millie befriended a baby, as she does. We got Millie to bed by 9, which means we’ll be asleep shortly after. I hear distant fireworks but will definitely not make it to midnight. Happy New Year and good night!