Full Moon Madness

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We arrived on Ko Pha-Ngan the following morning after too many sleep deprived nights, found a place to stay and slept for 4 hours. We had a shower, ate, went to the 'pirate bar' and then slept again.

We spent 5 days, 4 nights on the island but there's only 2 nights worth a mention. The main one is of course the full moon party. The other night was one spent at a bar listening to a band (guitar and toms).

The night listening to the band was more of a 'right place at right time' moment. We went for a meal at a restaurant called the 'village Green', owned by a British guy called Ben Green. He's been living on the island for 6 years with his Thai wife and offers two very useful services. The first is the obvious food:

The restaurant offers a good range of continental and Thai food and makes the offer of trying to get anything - not on the menu - within 24 hours. The food is good although the Thai waitress was a bit 'mooey'.

The other 'service' he offers is local knowledge. For any given situation - especially things like the full moon - he can tell you the do's, don’ts, where's and where not's. He is, or was a member of the tourist police - a group of 'ferrang' (foreigners) who get to the tourists and stop them doing what they might get locked up for before it's too late.

Anyway - we bumped into Ben at the restaurant (not a huge surprise) and he told us about this band. He also offered to take us AND bring us back. We didn't take him up on the return journey (we walked back along the beach) but a good night.

The main event - the FULL MOON party. We went with the attitude that it would be interesting to see this ritual. Both of us being older than the usual party goers, we had the idea that we would stay 3 or 4 hours, get drunk, tired and come home - but a strange thing happened! Well, a few strange things - the first being the 'bucket'.

We'd heard of this bucket phenomenon - where you get a mix of whiskey, coke and red bull all in a little bucket and drink with straws. In effect it was a third of a bottle of whiskey, a can of coke, and medical strength red bull (which is illegal in the whole of Europe). We underestimated the energy giving properties of this mixture (but had been warned about the red bull by Ben, he translated the Thai bottle - no more than two in 24 hours) and found the spring chickens hidden deep inside us both. The other factor was the special shakes offered by the 'fairy castle' at the end of the beach. Nuf said.

We went to the party at about 11pm and left at about 7.30 am - after the sun came up. There's no point describing it as it's a bit of a blur but luckily we have lots of pics here to tell the story instead. We went with the idea that we wouldn't enjoy it, but did - a lot, and probably would go again.

After a day to recover we left the island and got a taxi - boat - bus - bus to Bangkok, where the famed Khao San experience lay ahead - along with more unexpected decisions.

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