Bangkok was really fun and I had a wonderful time there; however, it was definitely time to get the hell out of there…
We took an overnight train down south to continue our adventure. The train wasn't too bad. It was completely different than Chinese trains, thank goodness. Chinese trains are completely packed full of people as I have explained in previous posts. The Thai train was far superior. We had our own seats that turned into beds. The train was full of foreigners making their way towards the islands, so basically everyone was partying on the train….
We stayed up until about 2 AM drinking beer and chatting with random people on the train. We eventually went to sleep and the sleeping situation was actually pretty comfortable. My little unit had curtains that blocked out any light and I slept just fine. All the beer probably enabled me to sleep soundly until we reached our destination….
Ko Phangan
At 6:30 AM the train stopped and we boarded a bus to head to the pier. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we were ready to get to Ko Phangan. From the pier we took a two hour ferry ride to the island.
Photo's from the pier:
If you look closely at the picture on the left you can see a tiny little Buddha nestled into the mountain. Thailand has a very prominent Buddhist following throughout the country. I would guess that, per capita, more people are Buddhist in Thailand than China.
From the ferry:
It was a gorgeous day, there's no denying that. The ferry ride made us even more excited to get to the island and get straight to the beach.
Finally…. The beach…..
The beach was pretty spectacular. It was a relatively small beach and it was not overly crowded, for reasons I will get to soon. The beach was swarming with dogs. I don't think that these dogs had any particular home, they just hung out on the beach and at the different restaurants that lined the beach. The picture above on the left shows one, of many, dogs in the area. The picture above to the right shows our favorite restaurant. We ate there at least once a day while we were on the island. The food was cheap, the staff was cool, and I can't complain about the view...
This beach was the home of the Ko Phangan Full Moon Party. We were not there while the Full Moon Party was going to take place, basically this is why the beach wasn't packed full of people. You can google search "Full Moon Party" to see just how crazy the event is…
More pictures of the beach….
The beach was great. The weather was perfect and the water was warm. After spending so much time in China and as of lately, in the cold, it was so nice to be on a beach.
Ko Phangan is notorious for its party atmosphere. Every night, no matter the month, week, or day, there is a party. There are advertisements, billboards, flyers, etc. for the party that is happening each night of the week. It was pretty cool. The first night we went to a "club" that was right on the beach. For some reason I took no pictures of it… I guess I was busy focusing on other things… The place was awesome though. It seemed like some millionaire just built a gigantic mansion on the beach and then decided to turn it into a club. There was a pool, dance floor, huge bar, and everything else a beach club needs. Fun night….
The next night we went to a beach party. It took place on the same beach that we had been hanging out on all day (the same beach shown in the pictures above).
The beach had a few bars that were throwing big parties that night (it was a wednesday I think? I don't remember). The one where we spent most of our time was the Cactus. Pretty fun place.
The bar had a few local guys (actually children, the youngest one I met was 15 years old...) who were doing all sorts of tricks with fire. They had flaming balls at the end of chains, batons covered in fire, and other various fire toys. They were swinging them around and the crowd, or should I say group of drunk people, and everyone was cheering as the tricks were performed.
The bar put on a bunch of different games that the people could enjoy. I took part in a few of the games. The first game they had was a balloon game where we had to tie the balloon around one of our feet then run around and stomp on other people's balloons. About 30 people started in the game. I made it to the 4th round when 5 people were left. Pretty bitter I didn't win…. The winner got a free bucket of alcohol. You would think that bars in such touristy areas would skimp people on how much booze they actually gave you… Definitely not the case…. After one bucket, I was pretty drunk. Probably for the best that I didn't get another for free…
The pictures above show an arm wrestling match. Maybe 20 people took turns battling it out. It was pretty entertaining to watch.
Another day, another party… A POOL PARTY!
This was a pretty awesome party for sure. Same deal as the party from the night before. Buckets of alcohol once again, and just as strong… This party got pretty out of control. Tons of people in the pool and they were just absolutely hammered… I partook in some of the pool party festivities; however, I did not bring a towel so I was slightly cold every time I got out of the pool. Good thing I brought my drunk coat!
The last night we were on the island they had a Half Moon Party. The Full Moon Party takes place on the beach that we visited everyday while we were on the island. The Half Moon Party takes place in the middle of the forest on the island. Basically we took a taxi to the center of the island and arrived a giant pit that had all the amenities of a massive club. I only took a few pictures as soon as I got into the club, or pit, area. The rest of the night was focused on partying…
If there is anything that these parties are well known for, it would be the amazing body paint that you can get while you are there. As you can see from the picture above, there are dozens of artists advertising their abilities to paint some impressive art on your body. I refrained from paying the ridiculous prices to get such art on my body though…
I took these pictures basically as soon as I got there. There were already a lot of people there, but an hour after I took the pictures, the crowd size doubled, easily. There were a lot of people there… It was pretty awesome though. We were basically in the middle of the forest and surrounded by trees, neon lights, and extremely loud club music. Pretty unreal experience.
The island was definitely most well known for its wild partying, but that isn't all that we did while we were there. When we woke up, typically in the afternoon, we would spend our days at the beach, laying in the sun, playing around in the ocean, and napping. We spent most of our time on the beach that I have shown before; however, we made some trips to a couple other beaches around the island.
This beach was very cool. It was in a very quiet part of the island and had an awesome dock that went out about 200 yards into the bay. It had beautiful views as you can see from the pictures. The water was dead calm and it was a great area to swim around.
The other beach we visited was on the opposite side of the island. We were staying on the southern point and this beach was on the north. We spent most of this day riding mopeds that we rented for the day. The cost to rent the mopeds for the day was about 4 USD. Not a bad deal… On the mopeds were zipped all over the island. We saw some pretty amazing views while we were riding around. We saw luscious jungles and elephants. I refrained from taking pictures of elephants while driving the moped…
Here are some pictures of that beach…
This beach was so cool. It was a very quiet beach as well. There were no resorts or hotels in this area. Only small vacation houses and a few restaurants and hang out areas. What made this beach so cool was the massive sand bar about 100 yards out from the shore. We walked through knee deep water to get out there. It was sweet. Had to take an emotional, "staring into the distance" pic, of course….
As our time on the island came to a close, we were definitely ready to head towards our next distention, Phuket. We were drinking a lot on this island and I definitely needed a change of pace, not atmosphere…
Phuket
We took about a six hour bus ride south to Phuket. The bus ride wasn't too bad. I basically slept or read the entire time. When we did finally arrive in Phuket, it was about 9 PM and we decided to spend our first night in Patong. WOW, what a terrible decision that was. First of all, its like a miniature Bangkok. This means that it is absolutely insane. And after partying all the time in Bangkok and Ko Phangan, it's the last place we wanted to be… The hostel we booked, of course, was on the main party street on Patong…
THANKFULLY, the night we arrived in Patong there was absolutely no alcohol being served in Thailand. This was because it was the night before elections. I guess the government doesn't want their citizens voting while hungover. That doesn't mean that the area wasn't absolutely insane. Even though there wasn't a drop of alcohol being served that night, the place was still jam packed full of people. Walking to the hostel was a nightmare. There were people all over the place, as well as prostitutes. My face was touched maybe a dozen times and I was asked to join all these women in their "places of business" during a five minute walk to our hostel. I was NOT in the mood. I was extremely tired and all I could do was think about sleeping.
We got the HELL out of Patong the next morning. We went about 30 minutes south to an area of Phuket called Koran. Koran is a popular place for families to visit. It is much more relaxed than Patong. Just what we needed.
We stayed at the greatest hostel I have ever been to. No joke, this place was amazing. The Pineapple Guest House. I can't speak any higher of this place. The staff was great, the accommodations were simple, and the people who stayed there were very generous and just great people in general.
As soon as we arrived at the hostel we headed straight to the beach, of course…
Koran had an amazing beach. The water was even warmer than in Ko Phangan. We had a very relaxing couple of days lounging around the beach.
The next morning, Devin and I were feeling ambitious. We decided that we wanted to hike up the mountain in the area to a large Buddha statue.
Before we embarked on the journey, the staff at the hostel explained to us that eventually we would get to the end of a road and find a very small trail towards the Buddha. Well, we got to the end of the road, and hacked through some bushes for about 100 yards until we gave up. It was hot, we had no idea where we were, and we could see the beach, which looked a lot better than seeing a Buddha statue… The picture above shows the view that we had as we started walking on the "trail". We hiked up the mountain for about an hour before we called it quits.
We spent the rest of that day on the beach. The hike had made us extremely tired and we lounged really hard on the beach all day long and into the night. We had some breathtaking views from the beach…
Pretty staggering sunset if I say so myself. We left the beach. Got dinner. And partied.
I know I said that Koran was kind of a family area, but only kind of. If you wanted to party in Koran, you definitely could, and we did. It wasn't a very crazy party scene in the area, but we most definitely had a very interesting night…
We went to a small alley street that had about 15-20 small bars within it. As we hangout and drank there we realized that no men worked at these bars. All of the bars were run by relatively older women, with a lot of younger women getting drinks, talking with the men who were at the bars, and sometimes playing games with them. There were a lot of older men there… like a lot… There were maybe 10-20 guys our age at these bars.
We had been sitting at a table at this one bar for a while when a couple of girls asked us to join them up at the bar. These girls were prostitutes. It was very clear. I don't mean to sound mean or judgmental about their profession, I do not intend to be. In Thailand it is a legitimate business and a means of life for a lot of these women. Nevertheless, we sat at the bar with them.
Before sitting down, I made sure we didn't have to pay for "their time" and they assured me that we did not have to. After drinking and talking with them, I started to play connect four with one of them. I won every game… The girl then suggested that we all play some jenga. Genius idea.
We must have played five rounds of jenga. After winning, we got to sign our names on the little jenga blocks. I wrote my name on five different blocks… I guess I'm good at all these childhood games when I'm drunk…
After a while we decided to call it a night and head back to the hostel. As we were leaving, we paid for our drinks and the girls tried to get us to pay for "their time". Shocker!!! We kindly reminded them of the deal we made before sitting with them. They remembered, and we left. Fun night.
I figured I would end this post with a story other than drinking….
All over Koran there were massage parlors. Each massage parlor had large fish tanks outside. We saw them everywhere we went and we were determined to actually try out these fish tank massage things.
What a weird/strange/odd experience it was. It was easily the weirdest feeling I have ever experienced in my life. Hundreds of these little fish just sucking on my feet and shins…
So strange. Can't even explain the feeling. Don't know if I will ever do it again….
Anyways, thanks for reading. Next stop…. Malaysia!
Jono
