Koh Phangan, Thailand.

With a bit of persuasion I decided to make the trip to Koh Phagnan for the full moon party. We had heard so many mixed reviews of the night we weren't sure whether it was worth the journey, but one of Reena's friends was there from London and thought that we might as well!

Since we were kicked out of our divers accomodation we decided to take the ferry across on the day of the party, then get the ferry back the next morning hoping that we'd be able to stay up all night. That way we could save one nights accomodation! We made it Haad Rin Beach just after lunch and met up with Cecilia. Am I glad we made the trip over... we spent all day in her hotel pool! Such a luxury for us.

In the evening just before dinner we went out and sat on the beach. We could see storm clouds approaching from Koh Samui, an island just south. The wind picked up as the clouds drew closer and it rained for 20 minutes or so. Pretty cool to watch!


We saw this dead creature on the beach. After consulting a marine life textbook, we decided that it was a porcupine fish. Very sad :(

After dinner it was time to head down to the beach. Apparently at this time of year there are a lot less people about, which suited us just fine. We didn't lose each other once - and there were seven of us! We were told before we left Koh Tao that there was a good chance you'd lose each other in the masses and spend hours finding one another again (if you didn't have a meeting point).

There's loads of guys and girls on the beach flinging fire on strings around their heads (i forget what its called). Impressive though.

The full moon party is an excuse for people to excessively intoxicate themselves (they sell alcohol by the bucket load - literally), and party like crazy the whole night through. Theres different 'tents' down the beach pumping out various kinds of music, from cheesy dance to drum and base. We spent the night working our way down the beach through each one. By 4am I was getting really tired. Some people had already conked out by midnight (not exactly sure what they had ingested!). There is even a designated sleep area in the middle of the beach where you can go and sleep in 'safety'. I just found a quietish spot to set up camp and passed out! I kept getting woken up by well meaning party goers to see if I was ok, which was slightly annoying since I was fine and only wanted to sleep! Reena tells me they kept leaving me free bottles of water - I didn't get any though, Reena drank them all!

The view from 'mushroom mountain' (its easy to guess what kind of shakes they were selling up here), looking across the water down the beach.

On the ferry back to Koh Tao at 7am. Everyone was pretty much passed out on the top deck. It looked like the aftermath on a battle field! I cant help thinking that the guy in the white t-shirt must have had such a sore neck when he woke up...