Koh Phangan. Home of the legendary full moon party. Once a month, Haad Rin beach on the island is invaded by 30,000 tourists looking for a good time. A week long party leading up to the main even. There is quite a lot to keep up busy during the while waiting for the nightlife to start, but not much to do before 11am as most people on the island are up all night, including the locals.
There are two options for getting to the island. Take the local ferry, which costs 200baht and takes about an hour or take the private carter speedboat, which costs 800baht but it only takes 15 minutes. Now our airplane arrived late, so we had to take the charter boat. It was my group of 6 and another group of 4 Canadians. We had to take a taxi to the charter jetti, but once we were dropped off, the taxi left and there was no boat. fifteen minutes passes, what now? an hour passes, um... what's going on. It was then that we decided to visit the local store and stock up on beers. We bought all the beer they had for sale in the shop, which was only about 40 beers. And proceeded to have an impromptu dock party, with someones ipod and speaker cranked. It was pretty awesome.
Eventually, the boat arrived two and a half hours late. And we got to the island, dropped of our bags at the accommodation and went to the bar. This is where we were introduced to "The F***king Bucket" which is it's name on the menu. Basically it is a one litre (30 ounce) bucket, that is filled halfway with the spirit of your choice and topped up with the mixer of your choice. I got a jagermeister, redbull and coke mix. The reason the top up the redbull with coke is because the local redbull is six times stronger that the western redbull drinks. It was a great night.
This is a great island to explore by scooter, our group of six basically had the roads to ourselves, only every few miles, coming across another few tourists on bikes. We hire a four cliff side bungalows to house our group and it was the most spectacular view I had ever seen and at US$10 a night, it was a bargain. There was a 5 night minimum stay, which was fine. We got there 3 days before the party and had a day of rest after it.
In the next post I will give a bit more information about the activities available on the island and of course the Full Moon Party.