In the morning, I woke up and went for a “swim”  I say “swim” because the turbulent water broke right on the beach so really it was a little bit of swimming and a lot of running into a wall of waves which I love anyway, so it was fun.  Didi was there and we made arrangements to get to Ko Phanang.  I booked accomodations at Mai Pen Rai Bungalows mostly because it was the only thing really available that had a high rating.  Later, I got a facebook message from Mark saying that he booked a room at the exact same place without even knowing it, so the big meet up was meant to be.

Didi, Anne, Sebastian, and I took the ferry ride over in high rising and falling waters and on a ferrry packed full of backpackers and people rarin up for the Full Moon party that night, it became a lot of sitting quietly looking at the horizon so as not to vomit.  Didi popped out her iPod and we listened to Red Hot Chili peppers the rest of the way which made things a lot more enjoyable.

Upon arrival, we found transportation to the Mai Pen Rai bungalows and then it took like 40 minutes across half finished roads up through the jungle on windy hilly paths and then back down to the beach.  At first we thought, “where are they taking us?  this is waaay far away from the full moon party” which was going to go off very near where the ferry pulled in.  Once we finally got there, it was beautiful.  There was a tiny little beach with waters similar to Ko Samui (sidenote: the beach sand on Ko Samui and Ko Phanang is not nearly as good as Railay, it’s large and sticky and really annoying to try to get off; by far, Railay is better for beach and water, but the views on eastern Thailand are nice)  The best part was the bungalows themselves.  They’re literally right on the beach.  And where the beach turns to rock, they’re just built on top of the rocks.  We walked to the other side of the beach and up the side of a huge rock.  We walked through a little tunnel in the rocks and on to a cute stone path with steps and bridges along the way.  At high tide, you had to time your passing just right so that you didn’t get splashed.  In fact, the day after the full moon party, Didi was walking to the restaurant and didn’t think about it and go completely pummeled by a wave and soaked her to the bone.  She had to walk back and change.  It was pretty funny though.

Our bungalow was up on stilts of course with a large patio that had chairs a table and a hammock (which was very comfortable to read on in the morning).  The actually integrated the natural stone of the surroundings and built the bungalow around them so that you’d have a wodden wall and then suddenly a huge rock would be coming through it cemented together with other smaller rocks.  The bathroom was also huge and completely done in stone.  The floor was wood and you could see through the tiny cracks in the structure and even though we didn’t use the provided mosquito nets, we never had a problem.  I think it was too windy for them.  There were a bunch of these little silk worms, but I don’t know if they were really silk worms, they didn’t build a coccoon, they just hung from the tree by strands of silk.

Anyway, long story short: fairy tale place, reminded me of the scenes in the video game Myst.

We went back to the restaurant to get some food (great chicken cheese sandwich there!) and sort out what to pay (turns out they keep all your food, room, internet use, and everything logged in a book until you check out and you pay it all at once, which can be kind of painful if you’re not careful).  As we were sitting down, I spotted Mark sitting at a table talking with people and he was completely flabergasted to see me!  The great meet up had actually worked.  Met up with Sebastian and Didi AND Mark!  Now it was time for full moon party madness.

That night, we took the taxi at 10pm (the taxi is once again actually a hooded pick up truck) down to Haad Rin for the party.  There were many of us together in a group (like 10 or so) and on the way to the beach, Mark bought some new flip flops cause he’d lost his other ones and I bought some glow n the dark paint and started face painting myself and others.  I gave Didi a heart and Mark a mean lookin blue foo man choo!  We quickly learned that individually drinks are seldom sold here, the option of choice is to get a bucket, put a bunch of straws in it and fill it with whatever concotion you want.  I recommend redbull and vodka, keeps you awake and it’s delicious.

Now let’s see if I can peice together what occurred after that.  I remember lots of drinking, dancing on the beach, there was music everywhere and people everywhere.  If you had to go to the bathroom, just pee in the skim zone of the water.  there were a few stages which we got up on and started dancing.  I picked up some torches and started carrying those around.  It’s really kind of blurry after that, but I do remember when Didi needed to use the toilet and I showed her where it was (the actual toilet, not the beach) and then turned around and our group was gone.  I would later find out that everyone had somehow disbursed around the same time and lost track of everyone else.  This was about 3am.  Didi and I still had fun dancing on the beach and wondering around.  We got hungry after a while and went to eat something, can’t remember what, I just remember I family guy was on and I was laughing stupidly at that.  Didi saw a massage place and wanted to get a massage which was fine with me cause I just passed out in one of the massage mats for I guess an hour.  When I woke up it was light, and the taxi was gonna pick us up at 7:30am.  We wondered back to the rendevouz point and were happy to find Mark there still alive.

So this is how everyone elses night’s went: Mark woke up on the beach and can’t remember how he got there, there were two lady boys around him asking him if he wanted to come back to their bungalow which luckily he was awake enough to say no to, then upon getting up, he found that jumping off one of the stages had really injured his legs more then he’d thought.  Lucy found some other peeps and they ended up jumpng into the ocean for a swim.  Chris lost Alex, his girlfriend, and showed up at the rendevouz point hoping she would be there.  He was worried cause he had her money and everything.  She ended up meeting some other people and staying at their bungalow until the afternoon when Chris finally returned to Mai Pen Rai and found her there.  phew.

All in all, a crazy night, but a lot of fun.  We spent the next two days recovering and enjoying the sites of than sudet beach.  We hiked up to a waterfall and went swimming and played some games in the open air restaurant, saw some huge monitor lizards in the river.  Very nice way to end a vacation.

This morning, we all got up early, and having packed the night before, it didn’t take long to get down to the restaurant/reception and pay the bill which actually ended up being like $80 for all three days with food and taxis and everything.  I would definitely recommend this place to anyone, it’s very remote but that’s kind of the point.  No hot water though.  If you take a shower in the afternoon it’s not that bad.

We all had one last cheese chicken sandwhich, cause it was so good (except Didi who had the tofu sandwhich cause she’s a vegetarian).  There were a lot of people getting on the taxis to go to the ferry cause it was the only taxi of the day and so they had to call on another one and Anne and Sebastian ended up going in another taxi.  Our taxi had 13 people in and I opted to stand on the tailgate and hold on to the rail for most of the ride.  It made room in the compartment and it was fun.  They pack those things with as many moneymakers as they can.  Upon arrival, we said goodbye to Sebastian cause he was getting on the 11am ferry to Ko Samui to make his flight.  Anne and Didi were taking the 1pm ferry to a bus to Bangkok.  My flight wasn’t until the afternoon from Ko Samui so I decided I would take a later one and hadn’t booked yet.

I left Didi in a shop and went to the ferry ticket place to check times and prices only to find out that the next ferry after 11am was 4:30p which would cause me to miss my flight and it was one minute until 11!  I ran back, backpacks and all to Didi and told her I had to leave now.  She ran back with me, we found Anne and Sebastian at the peir.  I bought a ticket for that ferry but it was a different company then Sebastian so we all said our long goodbyes, it’d been a good trip and I got on the ferry alone, waving as they faded into the myst.