Next destination was another part of Koh Phangan. We stayed at a place called the 'Nice Sea Resort' recommended by Emma and her friends when they stayed in Thailand 5 years ago. Really basic place and bungalow and a toilet where you use a bucket of water to flush! It's a lovely safe family run hostel, parents called Nit and Pot! So we felt very at home there, and often found ourselves chilling and chatting to the family and other travelers who stayed there. It was in quite a secluded area, very peaceful and so not a lot to do. The bungalow was equipped with two hammocks though which we seemed to spend a LOT of time on! I had a thai massage on the beach one day and OWWW! So painful! They try and stretch your muscles and click your bones! Quite an experience having a tiny old thai women standing on me and bending me in very questionable positions! We also spend a lot of time booking our next hostels/sorting out bus back to bangkok here.
After this place we headed up the road to a much busier area of Phangan. Its on Haad Yao Beach, and were staying in the 'High Life'. The places definitely goes by its name. Me and James have a bungalow with a sea view overlooking the gorgeous beach. My sister and friend Oscar have also joined us for 3 weeks of Thailand and Cambodia and are staying in the bungalow next to us at High Life too! Awesome to have a little crew, and we both agree its good to be hanging out with more people we know too! The first evening we all met up and went down to the beach and had beer and some tasty barracuda with veg (a type of fresh fish from the sea). The following day we spend a total of 7 hours on the beach! We were having so much fun, drinking numerous amounts of cocktails and didn't realise quite how long we were in the sun for! James and Oscar also played football with some locals on the sand. It's safe to say we all got a bit burnt that day!
That evening I got sick so James stayed in with me to be Nurse Griffin! Emma and Oscar went to see Muay Thai Boxing in a stadium, but Emma also seemed to catch the same bug as me and ended up throwing up outside the stadium in front of people eating in an Italian restaurant! What a classy lady!!! We think perhaps it was the ice in our cocktails we drank, as the boys had beer, and they always use drinking water for the ice which can make you ill.
Luckily we both felt better the next day after an epic sleep. We got a tuk tuk to Thongsala Pier. We hired 3 mopeds from there for only 2 pounds each a day. I went on the back of Oscars and Emma and James had their own. HOWEVER... 2 minutes after being on the bike James crashed his. He has come away with some nasty cuts which I have tried to keep clean from infection and we went to the pharmacy to treat them. It was safe to say James' biking days were over. Luckily he was ok to carry on. So I took over James' bike and Osc and James shared one. It was incredible. We went all the way around the island, biking on long windy roads right next to the sea. We stopped off at a coconut farm where they were chopping up huge piles of coconuts in the midday sun. We gave them 100 baht (they only wanted 40 baht but we felt sorry for them) and they offered us a coconut each with a straw to drink out of. So refreshing! We also stopped off to have lunch at this restaurant overlooking the whole of Haad Yao, and enjoyed Pad Thai (the main dish of Thailand) and watermelon shakes.
That evening we took the bikes back and took a tuktuk back whilst sipping the beer and riding on the top of them! This evening meant one thing....It was time for the FULL MOON PARTY! We stocked up on bright Tshirts and headbands for everyone and Oscars Spanish friend Juan is also travelling and joined us. We had pre drinks on our balcony overlooking the sunset. Then the hotel provided 3 big tuktuk trucks for 26 people staying at the hotel going to the party, and we all jumped aboard with our drinks en route to Haad Rin Beach where the party is.
It was an incredible experience. You buy buckets with spirits and mixers in, you can get UV paint (fake) tattoos, we went on a water slide which is lit up by fire and we went on the balcony of this bar called the Rock which overlooked all 25 thousand of the crouds! It's basically just a HUGE party set on this beach with different DJs playing loud music and everyone dancing/chatting to people. All you can see alongside the sea is all the men weeing in too, was v funny! We were all very sensible though and made sure we had a meeting point in case we got lost (yes parents, that parts for you!)
Today brings us to a relaxing day in the sea nursing our sore heads! What a week its been. We are heading off to Bangkok in 2 days time to go to the weekend floating markets, and off to Cambodia after that!
James sends his love and so do I :)
Copencah (bye for now, in thai)!!
xxxxx
