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  Ko Tao, Thailand
Friday, July 11, 2008

We made it to to our guest house in Ko Phangan just before the skies opened. Ko Phangan certainly doesn't have a lot of the home comforts that Ko Samui has to offer i.e. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Boots but what it does have to offer is Alcohol, Massive sound systems and PARTYING and lots of it. The Full moon party takes place every thirty days on Had rin beach. Had rin is a peninsula in the south east corner of the island. On the west coast of the peninsula you have HAD RIN Sunset beach(Ill let you figure out why its called that) and on the East of the Peninsula you have(You guessed it) Had Rin Sunrise beach. Sunrise beach is the location of the Full Moon party, where revelers drink and dance and do God knows what else until sunrise. There can be from eight thousand to thirty thousand people at these parties so it can get messy from what I hear.

Unfortunately we were not going to be there for the full moon party, but none the less there is still plenty of fun to be had on on Ko Phangan and Had Rin Sunrise beach

Caroline enjoying a bucket

. Every where you go in the town there are restaurants showing the very latest Big Screen releases, and I mean the VERY latest. Myself and Caroline enjoyed watching Will Smyths latest one "Hancock" (Which is a bit crap) one of the nights we were there and we spotted "Wall-e", which is the latest Pixar film which isn't even released yet, in a stall one night for sale?

As I said There is plenty of fun to be had on Had Rin Sunrise beach every night. The beach is lined with bars and stalls, with fire eaters and dancers outside of most.As you walk along the beach the vendors in the stalls are screaming at you to come over and buy a bucket. A BUCKET? I hear you ask. Well a bucket is ...... a bucket filled with ice, alcohol and a mixer. Sounds like a recipe for trouble! It is.  SO far on this trip I have tried to avoid these buckets, but we were on Had Rin Sunrise beach so we said why not?

Our first night on the beach was a lot of fun, but us being us we overdid it a little bit so the next day was spent nursing a sore head.

There has been one thing that has consistently made me laugh as I have traveled round Asia and that is the way that Asians write the English language

Fire Dancer

. It just never quite sounds right. Mind you there has been plenty of times this blog hasn't quite sounded right, so I cant talk and I have nothing but admiration for the way the Asians take it upon themselves to learn the English language which, lets face it, isn't an easy language to learn.

But in a restaurant in Ko Phangan I found one of my favourite mistakes on a menu. As I ordered "Spaghetti Bolonic" from the menu,  I wasn't sure if I was going to be eating or bending over. Now I know technically it should be colonic but it still made me laugh, and it still makes me laugh every time I think of it(Do I need psychiatric help? who knows?). Incidentally, another one that springs to mind was the guest house in Luang Prabang in Laos which we stayed in,  which had the rules of the guest house typed out for us on a page in our room." You must not bring back woman which is not you wife to making love" read one, and "you must not bring back woman to making pornographic movie" read another. crazy!

So we were only in Ko Phangnan for two nights and one full day. Our first night we over did it, so the second day and night we took it easy. I decided to rent out a scooter on the second day but unfortunately the roads in Ko Phangan turned out to be quite different to Ko Samui. The main town is Thong Sala which is about 8km From Had rin, but the roads connecting the two towns is, well, quite treacherous. Up and down very steep hills. As I start to ascend the steep hills, with a cliff on my left hand side my little scooter starts coughing and spluttering as if to say"Cough cough lose some weight Cough cough, are you crazy trying to get up this hill, a big man like yourself and a small scooter like myself Splutter splutter" So at the top of the hill I decided I wanted to make it to our next destination, Ko Tao,  alive and turned around and came back to Had Rin with my tail between my legs.

As I said Ko tao was our next destination. This is a small Island about 40 km north of Ko Phangan. You come to Ko tao to do one thing and one thing only, Scuba Dive. There is only one problem, Caroline is a VERY nervous swimmer. So we head to Ko Tao after two nights in Ko Phangan with one very excited Diver to be(me) and one VERY VERY nervous diver to be(Caroline). Will she complete the 3 day course? Time will tell

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