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After our nice relaxed two weeks on Koh Samui with family, we had arranged to stay on Koh Phangan which is known as a party island due to the famous Full Moon Party which takes place there every month. As luck would have it we would be over there at just the right time for it!
So we arrived three days before the party itself with the intention of chilling for a few days and then going to see what all the fuss was about. Well on the first day we went for a walk along the beach to look for some food and drink, thinking there'd be loads of beach bars with good music and atmosphere to sit at. We walked for quite a while and found nothing, until we came across a small bar attached to a guest house playing reggae. We took a seat and tried to get a drink, the only guy there was actually one of the guests who grabbed us a bottle of beer each. We soon realised the actual owner was a very hyper Thai guy who would not stand still. After a while we also found out that you could help yourself to drinks in the fridge as long as you told the crazy Thai guy or marked it down somewhere, I liked this place!
After quite a few drinks we got chatting to the German guy who'd we'd met when we walked in. His name was Tilly (short for Tilman) and his friends Eva and Alex who'd just arrived from north Thailand and were shattered after a very long journey but very nice guys. After a while we started talking about the Full Moon Party and what peoples plans were. Tilly suggested it wasn't very good as it was sooo busy and full of drunken idiots, which is kind of what I suspected. However there was a different party, at a place called Eden Gardens which he suggested and that could only be reached by boat! Sounded much more our cup of tea and was the next day too, one day before the full moon party! Oh it was also Eden's 10th anniversary party so sounded like they were having a big night for it.
The next day we hired a moped to explore the island a little bit more and also find a bar showing the England V New Zealand rugby match which was on later. So far we'd only really motorbiked around places which were very flat and Koh Phangan definitely isn't like that! In fact the place where we hired the bike, next to our guest house, was halfway up a very sharp incline. Trying to get up it from a standing start was just impossible, we did try and looked very silly. The only way you could do it was ride down and then up the next hill in order to get up enough speed! We went into the main resort called Haad Rin, which is where the party happens, just to have a look. The beach was already pretty busy and the party was two days away. Lots of people drinking and sunbathing with booming sound systems going in the background and lots of Thais selling buckets of alcohol!
We went back to our little guest house to drop our bike off and get ready for the evening. Once we'd watched England only just lose to New Zealand we met up with Tilly, Eva and Alex and headed over to Eden Gardens. Like I said earlier the only way to get to where was by boat, this was a little scary as it was dark and the waves were massive! After about 10 minutes we landed onto the deserted Haad Tian beach, we'd not gone far but this felt like a million miles away from Haad Rin beach. We walked to the end of the beach, over some rickety walkways and found our way to Eden Gardens. It was a fantastic venue with lots of really nice people and chilled music – well compared to elsewhere on the island! We stayed here until the sun was coming up, by then it was definitely time for bed. This of course meant getting a boat back and we had to help the boat man push our boat from the beach in order to get it out into the sea. Actually kind of fun. Not the usual kind of walk home from a night out! Walking along a deserted beautiful beach in the bright sunshine, getting soaked by the big waves to push out our boat and sailing home! Once back in our guest house we slept until the afternoon.
Of course that evening was the Full Moon Party and we briefly discussed going but all we really wanted to do was watch a movie and go back to bed. We certainly cannot party like we used to! The rest of our time in Koh Phangan was uneventful, we moved guest houses and booked our onward tickets to Penang in Malaysia but mostly tried to avoid the rain which had settled in since the day we got there.
On the day we were leaving Hannah woke up feeling unwell getting continually worse as the morning wore on. Now our boat wasn't until 5pm but we had to check out by 11am so Hannah struggled to get all her stuff together and we were just about to leave when she said she needed to lie down for a bit.... uh oh. After a while I realised she wasn't going to get up again for a while and unfortunately had a tummy bug. Of course we had a train ticket, a boat ticket and a hotel in Penang already booked so I now had to try and find out if we could change the dates of all these. Luckily we could but it did require me walking around to several different travel agents, getting lost in the process in order to do it. The following day she felt much better and we left Koh Phangan.
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