Ko Phangan

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We all arrived in Ko Phangan after a nightmare journey from Raily! We took a long tail boat from Raily to Krabi and waited an hour for a coach to take us to the bus station, waited another two hours at the bus station for a supposed "VIP" bus we then travelled three hours in a non- aircon bus to the ferry port at ko phangan, then took an hour and a half on very rough ferry ride get there. Eventually when we arrived we were all knackered only to take a very bumpy tuk tuk ride to the other side of the island where we were staying! (but what do you expect when you pay five pounds to travel over the other side of the country!!)

Ko phangan is an island off the southern gulf of Thailand and is world famous for its full moon parties. It has several lovely beaches but we chose to stay in the north east of the island, as these were meant to be the nicest and far enough away from the craziness of Haad Rin (the party zone) to come and go as we please.

We were however about a forty five minuet ride away, on unpaved steep roads. As we found out the following day riding our motorbikes get to Haad Rin at which point we discovered why the lonely planet advise against hiring motorbikes on the island, never less we all made it and actually quite enjoyed the ride!

The island does (like most of Thailand) have lovely beaches even if the roads are terrible! and also a good party seen, every night at Haad Rin beach, even when there are no full moon parties!

Two days after we arrived was the full moon party we were all very excited, not only for the party but to meet up with friends we had meet during our travels who were also going to the party. It didn't disappoint we all had a fantastic night dancing on the beach and drinking buckets, we managed to meet up with all our friends (even though there were thousands on the beach). After a long nigh of partying we got back to our hotel ten am to discover our room had been broken into our passports among other things stolen! on reporting it to the hotel staff they really didn't care just pointed in the direction of the police station we had a similar response from the police who could only say "don't you have insurance". By the time we got back to the hotel we realised that we needed to go all the way back to Bangkok to get our passports replaced we also realised that being the kings birthday, if we didn't apply for them the following day it wouldn't get processed for another four days! Therefore we arranged to leave the island and fly back to Bangkok that evening, with no sleep! We were also devastated that we were unable to say a proper goodbye to our friends that we had travelled with for the last few weeks! It was a terrible come down from such a fantastic night!

So reluctantly we flew back to Bangkok, the embassy were able to arrange new passport to be ready in ten days time, making it impossible for us to go to Malaysia in a few days time. After a very stressful twenty four hours we then got on a night coach back down to the southern coast so we could continue our travels in Ko Tao.

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