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Well, I'm writing this after the maddness that was Koh Phangan - is there any other way to do Koh Phangan I suppose?! The island is crazy crazy, constant partying everywhere...however we managed to somehow get booked into the only quiet secluded spot on the whole island! Completely ignorant to the island we booked in about Feb time Mai Pen Rai bungalows purely based on the fact that they looked lush in the photos. The photos did not lie, it was paradise, hippy paradise! We got there all detoxed from Samui and ready to party only to find out that we had firstly no phone signal it was that out of the way, secondly that electricity runs only from 11 am till 4pm and then again 6pm till midnight (that means no breakie until gone 11 - killer!) and that we had to get a water taxi to any sort of civilisation! I was a wee bit gutted at first and threw a mini-tantrum as I needed to get in touch with my friend Jade who I was meant to be meeting for fun and games in Haad Rin (main beach in Phangan). Pulled myself together and took a look around and realised how lush the place we were staying was so realised it was worth it. See photos for the view from our beach hut, it was amazing. The beach was gorgeous and the hut itself was amazing, it had the original rocks in the bathroom from the rocks it was built on and a gorge four poster bed, we loved it! It reminded us of the sort of place a celeb would go for rehab, it was so quiet...well not for long...we rocked up on the beach with our ipod speakers etc, little bit of house to liven the place up! One of the dangerous things about the Mai Pen Rai is that they put everything on a tab for you, food, drinks, jewellary bought off the stall - EVERYTHING, and then you pay on your last day....you dont want to know what our bill amounted to.....
The first night we just stayed on the beach, met the rest of the people who were staying there and got nicely drunk around a camp fire - very cliche travaller but loads of fun....what was not so fun was the walk back to the hut from the other side of the beach after midnight when the lights went off everywhere, particularly the walk up the steep steps to our hut after one too many in the Reagge Bar...but we survived!
The next day we got a water taxi over to Hadd Rin and met Jade. I hadnt seen Jade for three years since she went globetrotting and hadnt returned so needless to say we nattered all day long! That night we went out in Hadd Rin for the pre-Full Moon party warm up. This island has any excuse for a party, there's the Full Moon Party, the Pre-Full Moon, Post-Full Moon, Half Moon, Black Moon - any excuse or justification really and I LOVE this idea of using nature as justification for going out and getting wrecked!!! Anyway so we went to the pool party, we met our Jungle buddies as well beforehand and all went to the pool party together. Jade introduced us to Sato, some cheap wine drink from the 7-11 here that we can get for 30 baht (about 50p ish) and get very very drunk before going out (we're penny-pinching travellers now - dont judge us!)...have a feeling that it's the Thai version of White Lightening or Lambrini though as all the Thai people pointed and laughed when they saw us with it - never mind, it does the trick and saves the pennies!!
So we went to this random pool party in the hills in Koh Phangan, it wasnt really our cup of tea, loads of Americans and Canadians...well every idiot from the western countries, all jumping the pool and snogging etc but it was a good laugh with our gang, we just stayed well away....somehow we ended up on the beach later for the warm up parties and that was great....Claire-Lou managed to lose her flip flops (the first of many) and I lost my voice, I sounded like a 70 year old smoker - classy! We all stayed at Jades and stumbled back around dawn time and piled in her bed.
The next few days we just sun bathed and got over our monster hangover, topped up the tan and recharged the batteries ready for the all might FMP! We also met our NBF's for the next few days, Erica and George - new additions to Team Leeds, what is with all the people from Leeds travelling??!!! Are there any people left in Leeds?! You'll see them both on lots of photos....
FMP day, we got the water taxi over at 10pm - love the water taxis, something novel about them at the moment! We went over to Jade's place, had lots of Sato wine (Sato Girls!!) and then headed to Purple Haze for more drinks picking up some randoms along the way...Got to the FMP about 1 am and it was heaving! I've never seen so many people dancing in one place (well festivals but you get the drift!)...the rest is a bit of a blur, me and Claire-Lou have lost a good few hours of our lives but AM claims to remember all of it but she's too lazy to put her memories on here (bad AM!)...I think it was after the fourth or maybe fifth vodka-redbull bucket that it all got a bit too much! Lots of dancing and meeting lots of people then all of a sudden it was like someone turned a light switch on and it was suddenly light! Once again Claire-Lou managed to take off her flip flops and lose them, she never learns, so Jade stole someone elses for her to wear (what goes around etc we know - dont judge us!) and I managed to lose my phone, god knows what I was doing with it, probably swapped it for some buckets or something! By the way that phone is now cancelled so dont bother texting me on it! We refused to let the party die so we went on to some random club called Backyard Club...however, it was full of weirdos so we decided it was high time to call it a day and headed back to the sanctury of our nice un-spoiled and full of drunk idiots (bar us naturally) beach and carried on the party there (obviously!)...I dont remember getting up the steep steps to our hut but I woke up about 14 hours later feeling more than a little rough!!
We all agree that we absolutely LOVE Thailand, especially the islands (and Pai!) but it would be amazing to just for a day not to be sweaty and covered in sand 24/7...even when you have a shower (cold, Thai's dont seem to know about hot water) you still manage to find sand and there's sand in the bed, in your clothes etc - its bloody everywhere! When I woke up feeling rough as anything from the FMP all I wanted was a bath, clean pjs and a tv...however soon got over it when I was lying on the beach soaking up the sun and attempting to get a darker shade of white (its getting there!) with a few drinks (hair of the dog!)...Our hut was slowly becoming home to far too many creatures of the island as well, we found Geckos EVERYWHERE, one night a huge one decided to run around the hut all night making this strange sound they make (sounds like the crazy one from Little Britain, ah-ah-ahhhh) and AM was scared to death...then we walked in and found the hugest spider ever (Jungle style size) just chilling on our towel - I wanted to cry! Then the following night two bats of all things flew into our hut - Claire-Lou was petrified, I wasnt too happy, luckily they went out quickly...not to mention all the mosiquitos and flies (for which I'm dinner everyday, covered in bites) so we decided that it was definietly time to move on and booked a boat over to Kao Tao.....
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