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Published: June 14th 2007
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Fire Limbo
I did this too - and can vouch for the heat. Lightning crackles overhead, music blares all around you as you sit on the warm beach at night, watching various fire-related spectacles while conversing with fellow travellers from all over the world. Sounds nice right? That's just a typical evening on Haad Rin beach in Ko Pha Ngan.
This place is great. Ibiza, move over because there's a new contender for ultimate party island. Coming from Phuket, Ko Pha Ngan was a breath of fresh air. This place was relaxed and much less commercial with just as much (if not more) natural beauty, prices were closer to where they should be, and the background noise of working girls, tuk tuk drivers, and cut-rate tailors trying to pull you into their respective establishments was turned down to a minimum.
Getting here was another interesting journey. We were crammed in a minibus for a few hours which had oversold its capacity - everyone's luggage was riding on the roof with a well-tied rope to hold it in place. The driver stopped at a random roadside stand and bought a Buddhist flower necklace which he put around the rear view mirror and started to pray on, then asked for donations from
Haad Rin Beach
Calmness rules the daytime. the passengers for it. He would periodically take a water spray can and spritz the necklace during the trip - which didn't really inspire much faith in his driving abilities. He dropped us off at Surat Thani for 2 hours or so while a "friendly" travel agency tried to sell us any additional rides or book guesthouses for us anywhere in Thailand . Then, after another hour on a bus to the port, a 2 hour wait at the port, and a 3 hour ferry ride to Ko Pha Ngan, we were finally there.
This was probably my favorite stop on the trip so far. During the day, Ko Pha Ngan has a lot of beach-related activity to offer. Great beaches all over the island with crystal clear water and white sand, trails and mountains to hike if you so feel like it, reputable massage parlors and spas whose services are quite cheap, fun and friendly backpackers from around the world, etc. We took a boat tour around the island one day, seeing several beaches, some waterfalls, snorkelling, and meeting some great people from France, Ireland, the U.S., and Portugal. Again, we were some of the only Americans on
Bucket Vendors
They yell at you to come, and get their kids to grab your arms and pull you to the booths. the island. All in all, with the chilled out vibe, it can be really hard to get the motivation to leave the beach and do anything more during the day than relax and just lie around.
The nights are an entirely different matter. All of Haad Rin beach is lined with bars. There are even bars going up a cliff which is on one side of the beach (those advertise for "special shakes" after the sun goes down). Each bar sets up chairs and tables on the beach at its front, leading down to the ocean, and each has its own DJ so you can sit at the bar which is playing the music that you fancy at the moment. Most of the bars and several vendors on and around the beach sell these absolutely lethal buckets whose contents are: a 500 ml flask of the liquor of your choice, a can of the soda of your choice, and a can of Red Bull. Although they put in several straws, people seem to each get there own, which is a likely cause for many fire-related injuries that people sport in the daytime.
Most of the bars have fire-entertainers
Riding on a Longtail boat
These things actually don't move all that fast. on the beachfront until midnight or so, who pour gasoline on balls attached to strings or these long sticks and start twirling away at blinding speeds. Combined with the constant lightning which electrifies the sky, it's a spectacle that night after night, still entertains. Getting closer to midnight, many of the bars organize fire-related games like doing the limbo under a fiery pole, leaping through flaming hula hoops, or jumping over a long blazing jump rope. These probably average an injury every 5 minutes, but after the many buckets most people have downed, I doubt they notice until the next morning. The fire games usually end with people dancing all over the beach and in the bars until the sun comes out - and that happens every night. We were there for the low season, on an off-week, and the place was still buzzing, so I can't even imagine what it's like in peak season.
Ko Pha Ngan is best known for the Full Moon Party which has gained notoriety in the past 20 years where thousands of people come for a night and according to all the bar workers, make a typical night's debauchery look like a children's
Lethal Bucket
Vicious, absolutely vicious. playground. Unfortunately, due to the timing of our trip, we weren't able to catch a Full Moon party, but not to worry because there are also Quarter Moon, Half Moon, Shiva Moon, and Black Moon parties - basically meaning that there is a major party every 5-7 days.
We were there in time for the Black Moon Party and along with the "United Nations" of a crew we had amassed on our boat ride, got painted up with fluorecent designs and danced on Bantai beach until the sun came out. Unfortunately, the rain decided to join the party several times that night and seemed to want to make friends with the rising sun, so we headed back to Haad Rin. Interestingly, even at 6:30 AM, Haad Rin was operating nearly all of its stores and restaurants as if it were the afternoon. I talked to some of the waiters who told me they'd been on shift since about 9PM the previous night - and I used to complain about all-night go-live shifts.... They seemed to do this sort of thing every day.
There is a large population of expats who work on Ko Pha Ngan. A lot of
Dawn at Haad Rin
After an invigorating Black Moon Party. Brits and Scandinavians come on vacation and never go home, opening up a bar or a restaurant and taking on the Thai custom of working every day for 12 hours a day. They're pretty chill people, but I often wondered if they could even tell that time was passing: Although Ko Pha Ngan is very nice and a lot of fun, it never really changes, and by the time we left, we were even getting a bit jaded of doing the same thing every day, not matter how nice and relaxing it was.
After 4 or 5 nights (can't even remember how many it was) of constant partying until the wee hours of the morning, we were a bit shot and in need of a vacation from the vacation.
Here are some videos from Ko Pha Ngan, hosted on Youtube:
elizabeth
non-member comment
wow!
Hey! I:ts so nice to see pictures from that fun boat trip and that crazy black moon night. I:m back in Japan now. I miss it already! Thanks for sending me your site. Good luck with the rest of your travels!