Koh Phangan 11/06/06

Oh great, woke up around 8ish so actually slept well for the first time since I arrived!!!
We went for breakfast, I had pancakes with fruit which was nice except for the watermelon - not a big fan.
We wandered down the beach to the main street area ( more like a dirt track with some huts as shops/pubs etc) which was really sweet actually. We looked around a couple of shops and I bought a little bag and some postcards.
We walked quite far down the track but then the huts sort of dwindled off a bit so we turned back.
We then decided to go kayaking, which the receptionist didn't think was a good idea as it was windy. We ended up getting one double boat which 3 of us could sit on - onlt 2 ores(sp?) though. It was good, we paddled round to a beach on the other end of the bay just passed some rocks, although the co-ordination was not always great. We got out at the other beach and swam a bit. We headed back after 15 minutes or so and were going to go to another smaller beach but it was a little too windy and the wind kept trying to send us away out to sea. We just decided to head back to our beach. I did enjoy it anyway and we were out for little over an hour.
When we got back it was about lunchtime so we sat in the car to eat. Prawn sandwich and some chips, very nice but didn't really need any chips.
After lunch Kelly and I decided to walk over some rocks to one side of the bay, where was Dad!!, which was good. We saw a dead Blowfish caught between some and there were heaps of crabs on some of the rocks also. I walked all the way to the end tip of the rocks and checked out the view. We walked back over some rocks and the jumped into the sea, which of course meant that I could a bit wet!!!, so decided to dump our stuff on a lounger and go for a quick swim - very quick in my case.
I sat reading on the lounger a bit and then moved over to the hammock which was comfortable but I got a bit freaked out by all the big ants wandering around below me and over my stuff... Returned to the lounger and wrote my journal for a while. Renu came over so Kelly, Ali, Renu and I chatted a bit. Bekki joined us also.
We went to get ready for dinner at 5.30. Went to the bar at 7ish. Ellie, Ollie and Imogen then came down.
It was all rather disorganised. Kit booked us into a restaurant down the beach but people were all coming at different times.
We had the meal just a brown rice salad which had a little too much dressing on it but was ok.
Just passed 9 Kelly, Kristine, Ali and I paid and went to buy our taxi boat tickets to the full moon party.
We all got on the taxi boat which was an experience, very rocky while people were getting on - almost capsizing it at times. We had to walk into the sea and then climb in which meant we were going to get wet, oh well. It was a 40 minute ride, the back spray was rather bad.
We got to Haadrin Beach at 10ish and the beach did look pretty amazing with all the people, lights and fire throwers.
We all jumped off and Kristine and I went to get a drink. We found a guy with a bucket and so he bartered for us. We got a little bucket each with 1/4 bottle of vodka ( I know I shouldn't drink it!!!) and 2 cans of shark (like red bull) 220baht so pretty cheap.
We then sat and watched the fire act for a bit and then everyone sort of came over and said we were going to start at one end of the beach and work our way down. So we began to walk down. When we got to the end most of us got these luminous tattoos which were pretty funky.
We went to dance but it was drum and base style so Kristine and I walked back up the beach to find better music. There was normal music next along the beach and the like trance music. We went back and grabbed Kelly and Ali to take them to the normal music. We danced for a while and these guys go this poor kid, selling paradice necklace things, to do some funky dance moves - he was so sweet. We ended up buying a necklace each from him. The Thai guys loved Kristine which was funny!!!
We then decided to go and get another drink but got a bit distracted and decided to look at drink in the 7/11 but it wasn't great. We went to check out the streets behind the beach, they were quite busy as well. We met a few people as we walked round them and then went into an internet cafe for a bit.
Grabbed some water next. Then we checked out a clothes shop and I got some Fishermans Pants which are so comfortable and only 140baht so bargain.
We wandered all the way to the pier and then thought that we should probably go back to the beach, maybe find some of the group. We grabbed an ice cream each and walked through the crowd.
We could not see anyone from our group so we watched another fire act, just amazes me, until they finished and started to pack everything up. It was then almost 2am so we knew there were some people going back on a taxi boat. We went to find the boat, Nancy and Nadine were on it but they didn't know where anyone else was.
Kristine and I walked to the other end of the beach to see what was down there. There weren't as many people there which made it much easier to walk about and look around. They set fire to a Full Moon Party sign, as in pic, just where we were so that was quite good. By this stage though we were both really tired and ready to go..
There were taxi boats everywhere but we didn't know what our beach was called which really didn't help.
We thought we would just go back off the beach and wander through some of the other streets but just as we were leaving the beach we saw Kelly and Alissia - thank god. So we all went to the taxi boats and were working out what the beach was called, Kit appeared and told us the name. We jumped on the 3am taxi boat and were off, after a little wetness from wadding into the sea!!
Felt a little ill on the journey home but chatted to one of the guys on the boat. There was another guy who wasn't with anyone who was completely collapse, they ended up having to dump him on the beach - poor guy.
We were welcomed by about 7 dogs when we arrived at our beach, 3 of which ended up on our balcony for quite a while. Got to sleep around 4.30am, had a good time.