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Published: February 15th 2011
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After 3 days of nursing ourselves back to health and generally climbing the walls, we finally escaped Koh Samui and fled back to Koh Phangan. The main motivation for returning was the Black Moon party taking place at the end of the week. Our VISA deadline sadly meant that we weren't going to be here for the famous Full Moon Party, so the Black Moon would have to do.
We decided to stay at a different part of the island, Hat Yao beach, as we were told it was one of the nicest beaches...whilst being far enough away from the 24 hour partying on Hat Rin. We had a strange moment on the way to Hat Yao when the manager of the resort we stayed at last time, Mr Nice. suddenly appeared on a motorbike behind our taxi! It was a bit a awkward as he was a nice guy (in both name and nature) and we made small talk with him. By the way, the taxis on Thai islands are 'sangtheaw' buses, which are basically converted trucks, with seating on the back...this makes it entirely possible to chat to the person riding behind on a motorbike!
We booked
into a group of cheapish bungalows. tucked inbetween are couple of pricier resorts. The Bungalows were nice, with hot showers, fridge and TV, although they were run in a slightly haphazard way by the English manager who seemed to be consistently recovering from whatever party he'd been to the night before with only 2 hours sleep! Unfortunately the weather was getting worse and rain showers were getting more regular.
On the first day I have the bright idea to hire a moped to check out the rest of the island. It's dirt cheap to hire a bike on the islands (around 4 quid a day). The lenders really make their money back by charging for any damages done to the bike (as we found out later!).
Clio was a little nervous about joining me on my bike ride and took a lot of convincing. She came round eventually and soon we were zooming along the bumpy, winding roads of the island and admiring the views of the various bays and mountain ranges. It was a great experience and we seemed to be dealing with the roads pretty well...until a momentary lapse in concentration...
We rode past some
elephants and decided to go back and have a look. From a stationary position I turned the bike around and with a little too much throttle the bike started to tip over and with 2 of us on the bike...basically I dropped it. We both hit the road with a crack and a smashed wing mirror underneath us. Seconds later we're stood at the side of the road with blood all over our legs. We'd only grazed our knees, so it could've been much worse...however we were now a good mile from civilisation, being handed tissues by some confused locals, working in a roadside cafe.
We rode to a nearby pharmacy who offered to patch us up. As they were ripping open all sorts of packets and bottles, Clio, was quite rightly was thinking...how much is this going to cost us?!. It came to 25 quid in the end and we only had about 5 with us! I told them we'd return with the money tomorrow
We then reluctantly took the moped back to the shop and after a lot of tutting and headshaking, I was given another bill for 25 quid. This was getting expensive! Now that
we had no mode of transport (and a lot less money), I'm afraid to say we never returned to the pharmacy with the rest of the money...very bad karma (or karm-acy).
So now we were sporting matching knee bandages, like a neon-sign exclaiming 'please come over and ask us what happened!!". It definitely brought our street cred down in the local area...the worse thing was, it was actually a really good day before that happened!
After a few days of lying low (mainly due to the weather but also because we daren't go into the sea with our fresh injuries) the Black Moon Party arrived. Koh Phangnan is famous for the Full Moon Party which now attracts thousands of party goers each month. The island has now started creating regular parties on different beaches, with slightly different atmospheres and music.
The Black Moon Party is on Ban Tai beach and is a 'psy-trance party, with neon decorations'. Clio and I meet a couple of fellow party goers in our resort and set about drinking as many bottles of Chang as we can before we set off. By the time we leave we've got a new gang of
friends, including an american couple, a girl from South Africa called Minke, and a couple of guys from France.
By the time we get stuck into our first bucket, we're already well on our way and as with all anticipated nights out, it's over too quickly! I can't remember too much about the rest of the night, but I do know that when I jumped off the taxi back a the resort...I wasn't wearing my flip flops! I have to walk to the shop barefoot the next day to buy some new ones. The whereabouts of my flip flops still remains a mystery!
So, despite a good night out, the gulf coast islands haven't quite done it for us. A large part of this is down to the weather and we're hoping that when we go to Krabi the sun might show up for a few days.
Until next time, a rather sore and rained on
Ali and Clio xx
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Ann Pope
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Disaster strikes again
What are you like?!