Full Moon Party and Ko Pha Ngan
Trip Start
Apr 20, 2007
1
6
32
Trip End
Sep 20, 2007
Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand
Friday, May 4, 2007
Since my arival I have been staying at Ibiza Bungalows (thanks Becky for the excellent suggestion), they are a series of small huts right on a beach and in a quiet part of the island about a 30 minute drive from the main hub of activity (Han Rin). My bungalow is second in from the beach meaning I have gorgeous views during the sunny spells, and a front seat for some rather dramatic thunderstorms that are happening the rest of the time!
The bulk of my time this week has been spent hanging around with a group of travellers who met at various points around South East Asia and have decended on Pha Ngan for the legendary full moon party! Some of them have been to upto seven Full Moon Parties before and others like me were attending their first one this year, they are all however experienced travellers (the minumum being about 9 months) and have some great stories to tell. I have really enjoyed listening to their tales from around the globe, Asia, The Amazon and The Sahara to name a few. I didn't feel the need to tell them about me missing a plane as that story kind of pales when compared to some of the quite amazing stuff I have heard about giant Anacondas, getting stranded in the desert and runing away from angry local tribes!
As well as being great entertainment during the rain they were also good people to be attending The Full Moon Party with, as they could give me some handy tips for how to get the most out of the night. The most common tip I was given was to steer clear of the alcohol that is sold by the bucket on the beach as it is a good way to get very drunk very quickly! The second most common tip I was given was to go straight for the alcohol that is sold by the bucket on the beach as it is a good way to get very drunk very quickly!! With that clear, (sort of), we set off for the party at about 10pm arriving half an hour later. We decided that if we get seperated (which is common on a beach with upto 10,000 people falling around drunk) then we would reconvene at The Morning After Party in a bar just off the beach at 10am. Well we didn't even arrive at the party without loosing about half the group, there were nine of us altogether when we left the bungalows; Rob, Dan, Stuart, Mark, Andy, Clare, Rachel, Jenny and myself. En route to the party we were forced to split into different Tuk Tuk's for some reason (mainly of benfit to the drivers pockets) and we didn't see each other again!
I was with Rob, Dan Mark and Clare and was intending on staying with them as long as possible but had already decided that when the football kicked off at 4am (Liverpool vs Chelsea in the Champions League); if needs be I would disappear into one of the bars on my own as no one else seemed quite as excited as me about the football!
The night began well; the weather held out for a few hours I was sharing my bucket of alcohol with Rob so I wouldn't be blind by the time the football started and I was just taking in the scale of it all. Because of the bad weather all week and it not being peak season it was a small turnout for the party (only about 5000 people on a 1 mile stretch of beach!) which according to the experienced Full Mooners was good because it meant less queing and crowding. I did take a wander up the beach while I was still relativley sober and its quite a sight seeing crowds of people everywhere (including the sea) drinking, being sick and getting rather "friendly" as people dance (stagger) everywhere! I stayed with my group on the beach until it was the time for the football, I went off to watch it in one of the many beach side bars and bid farewell to the group. Dan decided to come with me under strict instructions that if he was with me he was not supporting Chelsea!!! The bar we went in was jammed with red shirts and the only Chelsea fan I could see stayed very quiet as the Liverpool fans (including me) were constantly singing throughout the match! There were a lot of locals in red shirts and leading them in a chorus of "Rool Neva Ralk Arone" was priceless!!!
(For anyone who didn't see the match Liverpool deservedly went through on penalties and Chelsea bottled it under the pressure from the Anfield crowd, sorry Dad and Jim!). (Well not that sorry!).
When the final penalty went in I literally went nuts (the buckets were kicking in) and ran out onto the beach bought a bucket to myself (big mistake) and staggered round with Dan screaming at anyone in a Liverpool shirt!!! The next few hours (about 6 actually) are a bit of a blur, I know me and Dan did find Rob and Clare again (god knows where Mark went) and I was with them for a while. That was until a New Zealand girl distracted me for a while with challenges such as "tell me something I've never heard before"! I think I was hanging around with her until about 7am at which point the rain decided it wasn't holding out any longer! Luckily by that point everyone was so pissed no one cared and in fact the rain was greeted with cheers from the masses; I was regretting the choice of a thin white T-shirt as I was looking rather like something out of a wet T-shirt contest from hell! Luckily the humidity meant that within 5 minutes of each down pour stopping I was pretty much dry.
Again theres a bit of a blur as to what happened next but I do remember arriving at the Morning After Party at 11am and found Mark leaving just as I was arriving! About another hour was spent in there before my bed was calling me and I had to leave, it was at this point I realised my flip flops had disappeared and my feet were bruised, blistered and cut!
I finally arrived back at The Bungalows at about 12.30pm and was pleased to see that with the exception of Mark, I had outlasted everyone of the "experienced" Full Mooners by some distance. The last couple of days have been spent recovering and listening to each others stories of what happened that night (I can't really remember too many details of my night after the football and am recalling bits and pieces as the days pass!).
Today everyone is pretty much fully recovered and most of the group are leaving tomorrow with the rest of us leaving in the days after that. To celebrate the last night of us all being here together, we are going back to Han Rin tonight to have a few more buckets of alcohol on the beach which will no doubt lead to similar amounts of mayhem!
So that pretty much sums up the Full Moon Party and my time on Pha Ngan; reading books, making some great new friends with a mixture of great and useless travel tips and getting very drunk on the beach.
Its hard work this travelling!!!
Photos of the bungalow etc will acompany this entry, (there are none of the party as I decided not to risk my second camera in two weeks!), but currently I can't plug my camera into the PC I'm using so it'll have to wait till tomorrow.
Much love to all.
Ben
LIVERPOOL FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
