Full Moon Party

As it turns out we ended up booking one of the nicest hotels in the area, according to a local. It was really beautiful, the entire complex of private bungalows only a meander from the beach were all made of dark wood and had walkways that were all wooden planks. It felt like we were living on some sort of Jungle Cruise pier with tropical vegetation everywhere. There were palm trees that naturally grew around the complex and the dining area was ocean side--literally, the water would sometimes splash up onto the deck. It was quite picturesque and for being the nicest place on that coast of Koh Phangan, 52 bucks a night seemed ridiculously cheap. Gotta love Thailand.

On our first night on Koh Phangan, we attended the Full Moon Party that endured until the next morning. The whole experience was a bit crazy, we reserved a taxi (you ride in the back of a pick-up truck that has a cover and benches in the back) that ended up being for almost all the guests in the bungalow complex. Since there were about 30 people crammed in the back of the two taxis just for our hotel, the ride there was pretty cramped and entertaining. Many of the riders had Singha's for the road, drinking before we even got to the party! As our Taxi truck lunged around the curvy road, we all had to grab onto the bars on the top of the trucks cab roof. When we got to the party at 9:30, people (mostly white Europeans/Australians/Americans) were already in full party mode, drinks in hand and painted with all sorts of fluorescent body paint that glowed in the black lights.

The setting of the party was a flat beach called Haad Rin, the sand was so fine and wet that it felt like they had poured oil on the beach. The stretch of beach was as far as the eye could see, lined with about 8 different DJ's or bars blasting an array of music, anything from trancey- techno music to American pop. To fill the gaps between the different music areas, there were food booths with Thai attempts at American food like burgers and hot dogs and also bucket stations. These buckets that people were drinking out of were about the size of a two cup measuring glass. For 180 Baht (around 9 dollars) you would get a flask of liquor like Thai whiskey, with a can of red bull concentrate and a box of juice or can of soda. Mix together, throw 4 straws in and that was the end of most peoples nights. Most people would share 4 people to one of these child's beach toy sand buckets, my mom and I didn't even try to finish ours. Some people donned children's floaty inner tubesaround their waist as accessories, others had their bodies painted with all sorts of fluorescent designs that looked like tattoos.

The night was great, my mom and I were too nervous about getting taken advantage of or getting pick pocketed, so we didn't go all out. We went to great lengths to protect our money, my mom doubled her underwear and safteypinned a ziploc of cash in between them. LOL. People were actually more respectful and tame than we expected during the hours we were there, we felt quite safe actually. From what some of the other hotel guests told us the next day, after about 2 am things started to get messy, clothes mysteriously vanished, people thought that the sand was their bed, and everyone started to get a whole lot looser on the dance areas of the beach. Apparently there were about 20 thousand people there that night/morning. We left early because we were simply too tired.

As you all could have guessed the taxi drivers taking people back were all scamming us. Everyone but me and my mom that is! HEHE. So, we got in this taxi with a few people thinking it would take us all the way back to our hotel for 400 baht total. They stopped us half way and said we needed to get out and switch taxis, to a taxi with no one in it, in a part of town where we had no idea where we were. Yea right, as if my mom and I would fall for that. We threw a hissy fit and refused, the driver and his wife started yelling as us about how they would only take us half way because it was too far, therefore we would have to wait here while they fill up the empty one we needed to take. We refused. So they took us about 1 mile further to another taxi that was pretty much full, demanded we switch cars and pay them half of the 400. We refused, I got up in the woman's face yelling at her about how she lied to me and did not tell us any of their plans beforehand. It was pretty stupid now that I look back on it but all us tourists ganged up on the taxi drivers in the end and my mom and I saved a lot of people from being conned.

The next day, my mom an I had a recovery day that started with us discussing life over shrimp pad thai and soda water. After lunch and breakfast, we went walking around the tiny town adjacent to our hotel. We walked into a jewelry shop, not something we ever do, the man was a german man accompanied by a thai girlfriend. They were both very sweet and my mom and I spent a lot of time admiring all his unique hand crafted silver jewelry. That night, we walked down the beach in front of our hotel combing the sand for shells. We felt like were were really in paradise with the lazy waves lapping at our toes with a cool breeze. This was the first day that we really didn't do much except for relax, we were glad that we didn't go home after our horrid experience in Phanga Bay.