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Published: January 16th 2008
The first four days of 2008 brought uncharacteristically bad weather to Thailand for this time of year: think black clouds rolled in and high winds swept across the empty beach. Heavy rain caused the streets to flood with water. This was one factor that led us to stay in Hat Rin beach, rather than make our way to a remote beach in the north of Ko Phangan island. At least here we had access to internet and the latest bootleg movies, not to mention a plethora of restaurants.
By January 5th, the storm passed over and the skies returned to blue. Finally, the ocean was calm and inviting-looking, the perfect time to move north to a quiet beach. Perfect, apart from the fact that there was now another issue to deal with: my infected mosquito bite. Somehow, one of my many bites got infected and turned into a huge lump of red and yellow on my leg. It was quite nasty! Every day, I had to check in with a nurse at the local pharmacy for monitoring. By the time it finally showed signs of getting better, we had only a few days left on Ko Phangan before we had
to head to Malaysia to renew our visas on a "border run". All of this meant our intended 7 day stay in Hat Rin turned into more like three weeks!
Still, between full moon parties, Hat Rin in still quite a mellow but fun place. The beach during the day has one of the softest stretches of white sand I have ever seen, and the water is crystal clear. At night, the beach bars set up tables and chairs and compete for customers by inventing increasingly-crazier games with fire. They had the jump rope of fire, the limbo of fire, and the hurdles of fire, to name a few. One night I finally decided to pluck up the courage and did the jump rope of fire, but unfortunately didn't have the camera that night, so you will have to take my word for it! In between games, fire twirlers are employed to entertain the crowds with their fantastic displays. The most crazy one was the guy who juggles with fire while on stilts which were, you guessed it, on fire!
Tomorrow we are heading off for two days of travel to get our visa renewed in Malaysia, before
heading to....well, not sure yet. We are working on that!
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