Myself, my girlfriend and our dog have been living on Koh Chang since August 2003. We both quit jobs in Bangkok after deciding that there had to be more to life than working as a corporate slave.

Koh Chang was the place we decided to head to for no other reason than I had never been here before - despite living in Thailand for over 6 years and although my g/f had been here almost 10 years ago she hadn't returned to see how thing had changed. 

When I first came to Bangkok in 1997 I remember people in the guest house talking about Koh Chang, Lonely Beach in particular, as some kind of little known backpacker's haven.  And it was back then.  Of course, that all changed irreversibly in 2002 when P.M. Thaksin declared that he had plans to develop Koh Chang into an eco-friendly Phuket for the well heeled 'elite' tourists and not low spending backpackers. 

This site is my take on how I see the island.  It's not intended to be full of gushing, travel brochure platitudes which seem to portray the place as some kind of undiscovered paradise.  It's a bit of realism from the perspective of a couple and their dog who live and work here.  Most of the sarcastic stuff comes from me, most of the little insights that have been garnered from locals are courtesy of the missus.  The dog doesn't contribute much.

A rhetorical question . . . . "Isn't the name for the site 'I am Koh Chang' a bit pretentious???" Possibly, or it could just be that 'I' and 'M' are the initials of our first names, so 'Ian And Mam Koh Chang' becomes 'IaMKohChang'.

As the old Thai saying goes "Don't think too much or your head will fall off causing you to spill your 'pad thai' on the floor which is sure to lead to a well deserved bollocking from your Mum for wasting good food and a lecture on why you shouldn't question the status quo."