The goods and bads of Koh Phangan
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2008
1
38
62
Trip End
Aug 07, 2008
Ko Phangan,
Thailand
Saturday, July 19, 2008
I don't like our bungalow as much because it's rickety and cobwebby and full of bugs (though I haven't gotten bit yet...), there's no a/c, only a little fan, and it gets really hot in the day
Our bungalow
. I literally can't sleep in that room past 9 am because I feel like I'm baking. It's quite similar to the rustic bungalows at the animal sanctuary, except it's a little more artistically painted, and hotter.So on Thursday we got in super early, slept a bit after we checked in. John called (!!) so I got to have a nice long conversation with him before venturing out for breakfast/email etc. In the afternoon I hung out in the outside bar area of our hostel with people, played with all the little orange cats, then went downtown and to the beach with Liz.
At 7 pm people began gathering downstairs. Beer, talking, laughing, etc. There was talk about going out to eat but then a massive thunderstorm began, so Sebastian's friend took orders and then brought back Thai food for everyone. Eventually the beer ran out so we began drinking those stupid buckets! I think our bucket was vodka, lime juice and sugar. Lots of pictures of bucket drinking. Everything was really, really fun until we went to the beach around midnight.
The beach was weird. There are tons of little Thai kids running around, trying to sell you flower necklaces, hats, lanturns that you then light up and let off into the sky. I literally saw kids as young as 5 years old doing this. Parents? They might have been around watching in the background, but might not have. Too hard to tell, in the dark.
That's questionable, but it got worse. We were next to a group of five white guys (American? English? I don't know) who were all really drunk and one of othem stuck out his foot and tripped a little Thai boy who was walking around selling things
View from our balcony
. The boy was probably about 9. This kid's automatic response was to leave, go get a full beer bottle from somewhere, come back to the guy who tripped him, and try to hit him over the head with it. The grown-up guy actually got out of his chair and stood up in the kid's face, obviously towering over him. The two of them were yelling at each other. I mean really, how many things are just wrong with this situation? The guy only sat down when his friends began yelling at him, saying "The kid's only like 10, dude!" A few different people came over to try to diffuse the situation, and one guy slipped the bottle out of the little boy's hand when he wasn't looking. I began trying to get him to play Connect 4 with me, but he was just so pissed. I've never seen a little kid be so angry. Worse still, the same group of guys caused more trouble. My blood was still boiling when a few minutes later, a different Thai girl came over to a different guy in the same group and asked him to play Connect 4 with her. (Basically, the kids wander around playing Connect 4 with the westeners that are partying on the beach, and when the kids win, as they often do, the westener has to pay them money). The guy that she came up to wasn't interested in playing with her, but instead of just saying that or ignoring her, he began swearing at her in really awful language: "You little Thai *%^$, get the $%#^ out of my face," and he said even worse things that I don't even want to write
Cats & baby kitten!
. To a little girl. All that shit made me feel really not in the mood to just drink and party anymore, so I left shortly thereafter and took a motortaxi back to the hostel. Everything went fine with that; I sat and pet the cats for a little while and then went to bed. Good day, but not a great first night in Koh Phangan. That's the problem with islands like this--it's almost exclusively foreigners visiting and then acting drunk and stupid.
Shortly after I left, a girl that's staying at the hostel with us realized that her purse had been stolen off the beach behind her. Passport, journal, ipod, camera, wallet, everything gone. Another bad experience. Hopefully everyone and everything will safe tonight at the Full Moon Party.
