Full Moon Party

Trip Start Jan 02, 2008
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Trip End Jun 17, 2008


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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Friends of friends...it's so great when you know someone, who knows someone, who lives where you're visiting and offers to show you around and crash at theirs. Don is a friend of Marion and when I arrived in Koh Phangan I called him. His English is basic and communicating over the phone was a little difficult. I wasn't sure if he'd ever find me. He had no idea what I looked like. I knew he had dreads and tattoos, but that description matches a surprisingly large amount of people here. But he found me, the lost backpacker sitting on the street, and I jumped on his bike with my backpack and his dog, Lou-Lou. She's the cutest, most well behaved dog I've seen in a long time. Actually she's the first dog I've stroked, or even let go anywhere near me, since my dog bite in India.

The reason I chose Koh Phangan over all of the other islands in Thailand, was because of the Full Moon party. It's held on Hat Rin beach and I think I can probably say it's the biggest party I've ever been to. Thousands of people completely wasted, covered in paint, stumbling and dancing everywhere. My night started by hitching my way to Hat Rin and then helping Don make some money, by painting everyone who was drunken/drugged enough to let me free with a paint brush. Actually I used my finger, because we didn't have enough brushes, so my artwork was far from good! The funniest has to be the guy who wanted his face painting like Braveheart. Who's Braveheart? I've never seen the film...or maybe I have, but I don't remember what he looks like. So I made it up and just smeared paint all over his face. He must have been high on something, because he was happy with it! I was also covered in fluorescent paint. My back, arms and legs were glowing all night and even as I leave Koh Phangan, 4 days later, I still have yellow paint smeared down my arm. And my clothes will never be the same colour again...a souvenir of a crazy night. I watched the sunrise and danced until 8am. Even when I left the party was still going on.

Koh Phangan isn't just about the partying. It has some really beautiful beaches that aren't too crowded. I got to explore the island quite abit in the few days I was here. Don was great and showed me around alot. But I also spent quite a bit of time hitching my way round with Marion. I had left her in Chiang Mai, but she suddenly decided to come to Koh Phangan. It was so great to see her again and she's spent alot of time here, so took me to all her favorite places. I really enjoyed spending a few days drifting from one beach to another, finding somewhere different to sleep each night. We spent one night in a wooden bungalow on a beautiful, quiet, white sandy beach. Then after swimming in the amazing clear blue water and doing yoga on the beach, we hitched our way to another beach for more swimming, before meeting Don and some of his friends. We then all spent a night sleeping outside on the balcony of a derelict bungalow, on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea.
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