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Published: March 28th 2013
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Ko Phangan is famous for its full moon parties so we wanted to try this out for Xmas and NYE and it was one of the first things we booked – we booked it almost a year previous. We had to block book a ten day period as it was over Xmas so wed been looking forward to staying in the same place for more then a few days.
We travelled from Phuket to Krabi by boat and bus and stayed there for a night – we spent the day at one of the beach’s – same old same old! Trying to get to the beach was a bit of an effort – the taxi drivers seem to nod and agree with wherever you ask to be brought - then drop you off where they want to drop you off – we asked for beach – he brought us to Tescos to do our weekly shopping! Phil had to old me back because I was going to give him a Ballymurphy handshake!! Anyway after two hours we ended up back were we started and no Tesco shopping. We eventually made it to the beach. To make matters worse
by the time we got there it started to rain!! Lol
Next day we got a bus and boat to Ko Phangan. By the time we arrived it was dark but we managed to get a taxi driver to bring us to our hotel. Turns out it’s the same story with the taxi drivers here and we ended up walking further then the taxi brought us.
We were staying in the Lighthouse Bungalows which were timber huts on a cliff with beautiful views over the sea. The only way to get to the bungalow was along a boardwalk that went along the cliffs and Leelah beach. The beach was gorgeous – white sands, blue water and palm trees with hammocks hanging from them. It was like heaven!
Basically the daily routine here is sunbathe all day and party all night . There were three full moon parties for Xmas, the actual full moon (on the 28
th) and NYE, plus all the partying in between you can handle. Since we wanted to make it off the island alive we decided to take a break and do our PADI course (Scuba diving) so
we booked in with the Lotus driving school which was about £250 each and was an absolute nightmare from start to end! The first morning they picked us up in a open top UTE with 10 people crammed in the back with no seats (everyone had to sit on the floor – cosey) on the hilliest windiest roads – it was like a white knuckle ride – its amazing no one fell out! After an hour we finally arrived everyone black and blue being bumped around – not the best start! They pretty much put us in a room with DVDs to watch and workbooks and we didn’t see the instructor again till lunch when he came back to tell us wed have our exam after lunch. The rest of the course only got worse – the 2
nd day we spent 10 hours in the pool. By this stage i'd had of enough being mentally and physically punished and after some blubbering I decided it was best to give up. On the third and final day Phil had to go out on an overcrowded boat to complete his open water dives. It definetly wasn’t as it showed in the brochure
– there were so many people in the water he lost count the amount of times he got hit up the face with elbows and flippers. To add insult to injury a monsoon hit when we were an hour offshore – nearly everyone on the boat was being sick including the captain! Then to add even more insult to more injury after we eventually got back to land (all a bit green) and dried off again we had to make our way back to the hotel in the back of an uncovered seatless UTE in freezing torrential rain with lighting striking all around us. What a flipping nightmare!
Congratulations to Phil – he couldn’t be broken by the Lotus diving school and completed his PADI license. The instructors on the course were great – we had a lot of respect for them. We just feel the school tried to cut costs by squeezing too much into the three days – we were picked up at 5.30am each day and didn’t get home untill around 8.30pm.
10 days was a long time to spend on Ko Phangan party island. Theres only so many full moon
party vodka buckets you can drink.
Lots of love to all friends and family back home!
-Phil & Alana
P.S After wed left Ko Phangan we realised we'd been robbed. We lost about £100 cash and our credit cards (and managed to put £500 one - luckily we were able to get this back).
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