Koh Phangan - 07/05-12/05

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It was a reasonably quick ferry from koh Tao to Koh Phangan and after being bundled into a taxi with 10 other travellers, we arrived at our new home for the week 'Sun Sea Resort'. Had one of those awkward moments in the taxi where it pulled up almost in the middle of nowhere and everyone looks about hoping this isn't the place they are getting off.. they had no need to worry, it was our stop!

We were greeted by a friendly man with red teeth from chewing too much tobacco. He showed us to our room which was small and basic but just the job, or so we thought until the fuse box began smoking, blew up and when we tested the bathroom it was basically not plumbed in and the sink was just for show! It sounds like we didn't like this place, but actually we loved it and everyone was super friendly.

We were starving by this point and whilst the man went to buy us a new fuse box at the market we embarked on our 1hr journey to Haad Rin, 1hrs walk feels so much more in the midday sun and by the time we got there we fell into the first restaurant selling cheap food and scoffed it down basically in silence.

We were surprised how quiet the town was and couldn't imagine how it would host a 40,000 strong Full Moon Party in 4 days time. We found Haad Rin beach with beautiful white sand and chilled there for a few hours before heading back to our newly fused room.

The next day we got a moped and headed to Phangan waterfall. The trek was was through jungle and when we arrived at the waterfall it was more of a dribble but jack still managed to have a herbal essences moment with a head dunk. We figured we were already drenched in sweat we went to a further climb to a viewpoint which was awesome and had panoramic views of the island.

On the way back we made a beeline to 'Amsterdam bar' to check it out as we thought it would be a good place to spend Jacks birthday the following day. When we arrived the staff looked more like the mafia who directed us to the place where the view was yet again - awesome. Luckily for us we hit on a day where there were 2 live djs. After several hours of relaxing 😉 the place had filled right up and jack had just about recovered enough for us to move on out.

We popped into Makro to buy some munchies and got some cakes for jacks bday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK!!!! Lucky lad had no card but did get 24 prepackaged cupcakes, what more could you want on your 24th?! We spent hours snorkelling on Koh Ma beach, not as clear as Al Leuk in Koh Tao but the fish were in their hundreds and there were lilac and lavender coral. Afterwards we headed to our local joint (Amsterdam Bar) where we watched a beautiful sunset.

The next day we had a lazy morning in the hammocks, reading, chatting to some new arrivals in our resort and headed out to do some shopping in the afternoon. Jack bought a hippy T-shirt and a hippy vest. Char bought a tie dye dress..... now we look the part! We planned to go to moonlight cinema which was an open air jungle cinema to watch 'The Beach' but when we arrived we were basically the only people there and decided that our money would be better spent on a beer and some atmosphere. We sat on Haad Rin beach and spent the evening drinking beer on cushions in the sand. We attempted to buy some alcohol for the following evening but because it was a Buddha day no shops were serving alcohol.

After our last good sleep jack headed out early on an alcohol and snack run before we needed to hand our moped back at 10am. We had a very chilled day writing postcards and relaxing on the beach and met some people who were also heading to the party later on. We drank with them in the evening and covered ourselves in the obligatory fluorescent UV paint before heading out to get yet more alcohol. The "buckets" of alcohol that were being sold were 150 bhat £2/3 and contained as much alcohol as you wanted.. our first lady we went to poured in half a bottle of rum and then topped it up with 1.5 cans of coke, it did the trick and we were soon dancing on the beach with 40,000 other travellers! The beach was totally transformed from the relaxing holiday feel of the night before and had about 10 different stages with all genres of music. By far the best was a small techno stage where everyone was dancing like no one was watching and we stayed there for hours. We tried out just about all of the stages throughout the night as we all got more and more drunk, it was fantastic!

...the next morning was very touch and go, we had to check out and get a taxi to the peer where we sat with our heads in our hands alongside hundreds of others still sporting the remanence of yesterday's UV paint. Uuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh why did we do this!? Next stop Koh Samui...

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