Christmas and New years on Koh Pha-Ngan

---

Hello there. So since the last time I blogged we had the trip from Bangkok to Koh Pha-Ngan and have been here 10 nights now. The problem with writing a blog about this place is that I'm not sure that there's a lot to write about as we havnt done all that much other than party...a lot! But I shall try anyway and put some pics on.

The journey from Bangkok to Koh Pha-Ngan was pretty crap. The sleeper bus this time only had recling chairs so getting to sleep was pretty hard. And just as I was nodding off the bus had a stop for food at midnight, why freakin midnight?!?! Then there was a mistake and the boat we were sopose to be going on was overbooked to we had to go to a different pier, they dropped us off there at 3am and left saying the boat was at 5am, awesome! Once we got on the boat though, the journey started getting better. Some of the sea and islands we were passing were beautiful. We stopped to drop some people off at Ko Tao, that place looked incredible and apparently really good for diving. An hour later we got to Koh Pha-Ngan and setted off to find our bungalow we had booked in the summer. After a while of dodgy taxi drivers (and when I say taxi, that means a pick up truck with to benches in the back) and wrong info of where to go, we finally found our place. The bungalow was great, the view from the balcony was incredible and you could even see Koh Samui in the distance. It was up from the sea a bit on the side of a cliff and just around the corner from the party beach of Haad rin nok. It turned out that we had a really good location because we were only a short walk away from the main town and the all night parties but we were also far enough around the corner that we couldn't hear all the music all night.

The area we stayed, Haad Rin, is really built up and westernised but we totally expected that and didn't mind it really. It has it's pros and cons. What we came here for was the partying and that didn't dissapoint at all! Plus there are really remote areas on the island aswell, you just have a taxi or taxi boat to them.

We went out the first night we got here and went straight to the beach for some buckets and watch some fire throwing, it was a good night. On Christmas day we got a Christmas dinner at this Irish bar, they claimed it was turkey but it was so chicken! But it was quite good anyway and helped us get in to the spirit of it all! Christmas was so different here, the day was spent on the beach, the night started off at a freakin' awesome pool party and then ended up at a xmas full moon party on the beach, amazing! The pool parties were great here, so many people in the pool, on the dance floor and on the beach, loved them.
We spent New years even on the beach at the world famous new years full moon party, I was actually kind of nervous because the build up was so much, I mean we based all our dates of travelling around getting here for new years. I didn't dissapoint though, the new years full moon partyt was amazing! There was sopose to be about 30,000 people on the beach at various different bars and fire shows. The great thing about the beach though is that it's so close to a 7/11 store where you can buy a bucket and the whiskey, coke and redbull for a fraction of the price on the beach, we've really learned how to save! The whole night was amazing! We met these two essex grils aswell and oh my god there the exact stereotype of essex girls, it was brilliant. If you watch family guy, do you know brian's girlfriend? They were like her, it was great! Some of the stuff they were comng out with was classic e.g 'We got on stage the other night because we wanted to dance but we were being groped so we got off the stage but we really wanted to dance so we got up again. But then we got groped more so we got off but we decided we were just going to dance so we got up again'. What do you say to that? Another thing they do on the beach is they have this massive skipping rope which is on fire and different people run up and drunkenly try to skip over it. There are some really big bails which are hilarious, I have really good video of one so check it out on facebook if I can't get it on here, seriously brilliant entertainment. One night we weren't even going out we just went down there and watched people do it! So all the nights out here were great and again met loads of people which is always fun.

There is a mountian on here which is the highest on the island so we wanted to scale it. So we got in a taxi (remember how I said they were all dodgy?) and asked the guy to take us to where the path starts to go up the mountian. The guy dropped us off in the middle of no where and pointed to a kind of path and said it led up the mountian, there was nothing we could do so we just went for it. After about 10 mintues the path was nothing so we just decided to keep on going, the jungle was getting really thick though and the sound of the animals were starting to freak me out as we got more and more lost. Jay was sure we could walk and climb straight up the mountain, I told him that was rather silly (not is so many words) but I humoured him for a bit till we finally got to a bit where the jungle was way to thick and it got really steep. We admitted defeat and started walking down, it took ages as we didn't know where the hell we were and we cursed the bastard taxi driver who we think dropped us off in the wrong place! It was a really good experience though, getting lost in a tropical jungle and making it out ha!

Other than that we were either at the beach, watching a movie, watching some family guy or playing the new pro evolution. The only bad thing about being here was the that the weather hasn't been great. We really wanted to go to this remote beach that you coulnd only get to by boat but because the weather was never great when we wanted to go, we never made it there. Not the end of the world though as we still have another 2 weeks on Thai islands.

So that's about it then, Koh Pha-Ngan has been great but we leave tonight to travel to Burma so we can come straight back to Thailand and get another 15 days here before we go to Malaysia. The trip should be really long and testing got we have to do it so there you go. Hope everyone had a great xmas and new years. Speak soon x

---