Full Moon Rainbow


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August 19th 2008
Published: December 1st 2008
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Bangkok must've known we were arriving because they put on the most beautiful display of lights; the streets were strewn with twinkling white lights; just for us. (or maybe it had something to do with the Queen's birthday, I don't know for sure!) This was to be my last time in Bangkok and we got up to about as much as I have on my other times here i.e. nothing! We had enough time to book our bus and boat to Koh Pha Nang, buy some dresses and that was about the extent. Some people have told me how much they hate Bangkok, but I never had a problem with it; I took somewhere like khao san road for what it was, never stayed here for more than a couple of nights and was lucky enough to always have good people with me. I would've liked to see more of the city and the things it has to offer but think I will have to save that for my next trip as this time we had a party to attend ! 😉

Second Time Round


I wasn't really 'meant' to go to the full moon party 2months ago, Sam and I had always intended to come here together. Of course I don't regret coming here in June because I had such a wicked time but it is slightly strange for anyone to come back here so soon! We met some really awesome people on the 'taxi' from the boat into town and we were all umming and ahhing about where to stay and I knew about a place from the last time which was kinda a party place and pretty expensive but we thought it might be fun. Luckily due to meeting another girl and 3 boys it actually ended up being a lot cheaper than i thought coz we were able to share 2 rooms betwen us. They turned out to be alot of fun and the fullmoon frivolities are, I presume, pretty much always the same. Sam wasn't feeling too well for the first couple of nights and I was feeling really shitty due to a newly developed case of severe heart burn, to the point where I was downing pepto bismol by the bottle just to be able to keep drinking! But we still managed to have the best pizza, which I've been craving ever since Matty had one last time I was here and spent plenty of time chilling with a couple of buckets on the beach while being entertained with fire poi. Along with my heartburn I also developed a new obsession with photographing the fire poi shows (well trying to!) it is very difficult to get the right setting, especially without a tripod and with a camera that is pretty crappy to low light. But it was fun anyway and so I spent a lot of time scurying in the sand trying to get a shot and not get in peoples view! We basically spent a lot of time sleeping drinking and me and Lindsay took some lovely walks on our hotel's beach due to it facing the sunset rather than the sunrise of Hadrins main beach. One major regret - I still haven't been on Hadrin's beach for sunrise, last time there was various all nighters when we would suddenly realise it was daylight but were back on our balcony by then. Most notably the morning that Tom and I went for more beers at the 7eleven and felt very guilty for having two beers under each arm while waiting in line behind children in school uniform! 😉 And this time due to my chest being on fire I lamed out before sunrise everyday! Have to get more hardcore.

I did however develop a new sense of appreciation for dance music, I believe I have before described it as the tuneless whistling of Lucifer himself; but one evening Linds and I went for a 2 hour dance sesh and it was actually kinda fun she got really excited about the 'builds' and made damn sure I caught every one. It will never appear on my Ipod but it has it's time and place! 😉 The night of the full moon we painted ourselves up and got on the buckets, we had a really good evening but quite frankly I still wasn't well and then some guy complained about my fat arse being in his way (when will guys learn to keep those opinions to themselves!) so was surpisingly no longer really in the mood 😉 My highlight was however one moment when I looked up at the moon and saw that it was ringed by a rainbow. it was so beautiful and I made all the others stop and have a look, a moment later it was gone and the moon was back to its normal self but I still thought it was kinda cool.

Gorping at all the little fishes


The morning after the full moon I made damn sure everyone was up and out by 11am! Sam and I were continuing to Koh Tao with Dan and Aidan so we had to be ready for the boat to take us over there I knew it was going to be a crazy squish was every full mooner decended on the island so thought it was best to get there asap. And bloody lucky we did! We had a hard enough time trying to find accommodation as it was because we weren't diving and the boats that came in for the next 2 days were so laden with people that it left scores of people with backpacks traipsing up and down the beach, poor sods! We found a couple of little sweatbox rooms, but the isalnd was so much nicer than Pha Nang. Just more chilled and smaller even though we were on the main Sairee Beach. Here we didn't really get up to anything too stressful apart from 2 activities namely snorkeling and tattooing. (Sorry Mami and Dad!) We wanted to see a bit more than just the main beach (which is covered in long boats anyway) but we didn't have time to do the rest of the island because we planned on somewhere bigger and better later but we did take one little trip across to Koh Nang Yuan. Just off Sairee Beach and famous for its 3 island points connected by coral beaches, it's a beautiful place to go snorkelling with out having to be on a tour. The beach was pretty quiet and there was one lagoon formed by the sides of 2 of the islands which once you were under the water it didn't matter about the other people that were around. The coral was beautiful and the fishes were really vibrant and diverse, a few come up and say Hi! by giving you a little nibble on your feet! The water was so much clearer than in Vietnam and we spent about an hour and a half just swimming around under the waters surface (and burning the backs of our knees!) Always been a bit of a waterbaby at heart and loved the chance to get a bit closer!

The second 'activity' is one I debated talking about, but even though I commanded my sister not to tell my parents as it is in a place they would never really see, from what I have been told she has already kind of let the cat out of the bag! I have basically completely fallen in love with south east asia as a region and even when I'm having a shitty day or complaining about something or other I'm still having a good time and still loving the feel of the place. Its crazy and nothing works, but then it does, and the people are so lovely and the places so beautiful that I really loved the idea of getting a bamboo tattoo while I was out here. The bamboo tattoos are a traditional method of tattooing and much quicker to heal than the 'gun' tattoos; I had been thinking about it for a long time and I found a crazy tattoo guy that looked thai/malay and kinda seemed stoned half the time but I got talking to him and actually liked him. I went back to him about 4 different times to talk about what I wanted and ended up getting him to design a special one for me. I told him where I wanted it and the kind of elements I wanted it to include and - Ta Da! There is was, although I changed the flower he'd placed in the centre to a lotus (just to feed my slight obsession with the flower!) and it was perfect. Luckily stoned guy was not the actual wielder of the bamboo and ink but he calle din his friend and so in a glass booth on the side of a cobble street that fronted the beach I got my little tattoo; all I could see were sand, sea palm trees and the sun setting. ... while it stung like hell! 😉

What a bloody Palava!


O.k. I really wanted to try scuba diving and I so desperately wanted to do it away from the full moon hoardes. Sam and I decided to be clever and swap one beautiful island for one supposedly even more beautiful, we took the boat off Koh Tao to head for the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia! We took the boat up to Chumpon and were meant to
Sunset ViewSunset ViewSunset View

Koh Pha Ngan
be getting the train down from there to the border, but after waiting for hours in the train station with no apperance from the train, we found some Irish girls who were meant to be on the same one. Apparently there had been a huge derailment of either our train as it came from Bangkok or the one before it so there was no way of knowing when the line would be up and running. Couple that with the stories of robberies, highjackings and apparently even kidnappings on this border crossing due to civil unrest in the south east province of Thailand and we were a little worried. I'm sure that it would've been perfectly safe for us to cross here and I'm sure that the stories are exaggerated but even so we had no real option but to cash in our ticket (other than staying the night in the train station!) and stay the night in a hotel in Chumpon before deciding the new plan of action in the morning. I was, needless to say, gutted that now it seemed the Perhentians were off the agenda because we would have to cross on the west side of Thailand instead. The next day was pretty traumatic to be honest, I was upset we wouldn't get more island time and I wouldn't have my PADI certificate before going to the Great Barrier Reef and then on every turn it seemed as though we couldn't get where we wanted to be. It was a bus down to Hat Yai and from there a group of very unhelpful people and a bus to the border. The bus of course took longer than it should so we arrived at the border crossing with about a minute to spare as they wer closing up. All they said to us was Run Run! the Malaysia border was closing as well and it was quite a way across nomans land to the side. The idea of getting stuck in no mans land between borders when its raining was not the way I wanted to end this day!

Sorry for the random sizing, upside downness etc of some of the photos - had a couple of problems and not quite sue how to fix it, but if you click on the photo it will open a new window with a bigger copy of the photo and here you should be able to see it properly!



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Trick of the lightTrick of the light
Trick of the light

Try explaining this photo to yourself when you're a couple of buckets worse for wear!


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