Koh Phangan

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After writing a mamouth update for Koh Phangan, we had a powercut, and I lost all my work, so it's been over a week now and I'm just about prepared to write it again. It's actually my birthday today, and I'm in Hoi An, about half way up the coast of Vietnam, a quietish place that has a really beautiful old town on the river. Walking around the town, aside from the mopeds and motorbikes, it feels like you've travelled back a few decades as there has been a government initiative to keep the town the way it is, which is great. Anyway, I'll probably end up writing an update for Hoi An when I get home, so back to Koh Phangan.

I think that the last time I wrote in the blog, I was boarding a flight from Noneventiene to Bnagkok on Laos (crash and burn) Airlines. It was the first commercial prop plane I had been in and we were all pretty nervous as according to the Lonely Planet, the airline doesn't publish its safety records, I wonder why. But acually the flight was fine, and we even got a meal, which was even better for me, as I was starving. The airport lady put salad and mayo in my sandwich, so there was no way I was eating that.

Arriving in Bangkok, we taxied it to the Khao San Road and from there Got an overnight bus and then a boat to Koh Phangnan, a 12 hour journey in total. There were hundreds and hundreds of people waiting to pick up their tickets at the bus station, but luckily for us, our travel agent knew one of the dudes, and she nipped in and saved us about 2 hours queuing time.

Larry and I had to endure plastic stools, again, for the first part of the boat ride, which was not fun, and we arrived in Koh Phangan and busted it to our prebooked accommodation, on sunset beach, close enough to walk to the full moon beach, but far enough away to get away from it all when we wanted.

The days leading up to the full moon were spent on the beach at night, and then on the beach by day, recovering. We also went to a pool party one night where we ended up in the pool in the early hours of the morning in our clothes. A lot of people had said that the nights leading up to the full moon were better than the actual event, so we were fearing a bit of an anti-climax.

What a load of rubbish! As I'm sure anyone who was there on the 31/07/07 will tell you, the full moon party was amazing. There were so many people there, you literally couldn't see the beach, and they opened up a whole other section of the beach for the party too. I briefly met my mate from home, Paul, but after about an hour, I had lost all my mates, and didn't find them again until about 4am. It didn't matter though because everyone, and I mean everyone was so friendly, everyone out to have a good time. I was adopted by a group of girls from Birmingham at first, and after breathing some fire at one of the fire shows with a Dutch lad, found a group of crazy Irish people. Will bumped into me a few hours later, like finding an needle in a haystack (who hides needles in haystacks anyway?). About 10 minutes later we bumped into the others too.

About 7ish, I found Paul and his girlfriend, and all of us starting to feel pretty burned out, so chilled on some chairs. Will fell asleep on the beach, and whilst I toyed with the idea of leaving him there, woke him up and we headed home for some much needed sleep. The full moon was the best night I've had on my trip by far, and would recommend it to anyone, apart from my mum, shed hate it.

After a day of recovery, we decided to head to Koh samui for the remainder of the other lads' time in Thailand.

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