Get your full moon on.

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Hello from Thailand!
So, we left Teman Negara at 3pm on the Sunday. We took a public bus to Jerantut (about 2 hours). At about 6pm, we took an overnightbus to Kuala Lipis - near the Thai-Malay boarder. The bloody bus drove all the way down to Kuala Lumpur (a long way south) before heading north up the west coast. We arrived around 6am on Monday & took a taxi to the train station. Alas, we were informed the trains in Thailand were not running, so we could only go as far as the boarder. We got off and walked across the boarder. It was very confusing...we had no clue where we were once we had cleared Malaysian emmigration and Thailand immigration was nowhere to be seen...so we took a taxi through into Thailand (no problems, one month visa granted. Could do with a bit longer) and were dropped at a bus stop. We then took a public bus to the transport hub of Hat Yai. The bus (with gaping open doors) played Thai dance/trance karakoe tunes at full blast the whole way (about 2 hours). Imagine the horror.
We arrived in Hat Yai and boarded a bus to Surat Thani, the jumping off point for the Thai islands. This bus played non-stop drippy Thai tunes the whole way. I'm not sure which was worse. By this time I was so tired I actually couldnt stop falling asleep, however every time this happened I would bang my head against the window. It was not fun.
Arriving in Surat Thani on saturday evening, we went to a lovely night market and boarded a night boat to Ko Phangan for the impending imfamous Full Moon Party. It was pretty cool - mattresses lining both sides of the top deck, with open windows a couple of feet up. We slept the whole way.
Tuesday morning we arrived on Ko Phangan, got a rip-off taxi to Hat Rin (party beach) and waited for the reccommended resort (good reccomendation Cat) to open. Thus, our mammoth journey was over. Phew!

We checked into a sea view room. We felt we deserved the luxury. The party was just under a week off, but we were too knackered to go anywhere else and stayed put in Hat Rin. It was quiet where we were and the sea view was lovely. The room was big and clean, aside from the sugar ants, whom we befriended and individually named. Hat Rin is fairly crap and we were sick of it before our stay was over. It's kinda like Ibiza, although not as filthy and horrendous. And no night clubs as such. And no concrete high-rises. So nothing like Ibiza then. But lots of Westerners walking round town in just their swimmers thinking they're ace. And tonnes of people sunbaking on the beach. Not really our scene. Having said all that, the beach itself was composed of the most wonderfully powder soft white (proper white) sand. I had expected it to be a bit skeggy, to be honest.
We only went out one night, aside from the Full Moon, when I came undone at the hands of unexpectedly strong cocktails and a shared bucket that, in retrospect, I probably drank mostly to myself. (for those not in the know, they like to serve drinks in little sandcastle buckets here in Thailand. They contain one of those little botthes of spirits, a can of drink & a bizzarely medicine-bottle like container of red bull).
The full moon was fun. The beach was packed with revellers (mostly the drunk variety) and bars spilled out onto the sand. There were also lines of stalls selling buckets! It was a good atmosphere, better than any night club and we had a nice time wandering up and down watching the goings on, although I feel I didn't fully appreciate it in my sober state.

The day before the full moon we did the stupid Westerner thing and hired a moped! It was absolutely terrifying, especially at the beginning because there are really big hills out of Hat Rin. The roads are fairly quiet so it's not too bad once you get used to it. Pretty fun actually. And we were very careful, we had helmets and everything, unlike anyone else on the island. You see whole families of mum, dad and 2 kids all loaded onto a moped with no helmets going at great speed. Mental.
We headed to the north-western side of the island where we had heard there were great snorkelling beaches. We saw signs for the beaches but, naturally, we never actually found them...we just drove up and down all afternoon looking for a way down and not finding one. We stopped at one beach and had a quick snorkel but could see absolutely nothing, the water was very very cloudy. Pretty dissapointing.

The next day we took a walk described as 'popular and easy' to another bay. Naturally, we never found the beach. We scrambled and trudged for hours, getting hot and intensely mozzie bitten. The path just stopped. We were forced to head back.

After the full moon we got right out of there and headed to Koh Tao to do a diving course, which is probably the best thing we've done since arriving in Asia, but I'll leave that for next time.

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Comments

[Pam]

bucket
Whats int bucket??!

[Mum and Dad]

Multi purpose bucket
Nice photos but why is Mike drinking out of a bucket you have just used to wash your clothes?