koh phangan

Koh Phan-gan: look it up on google, supposedly its pretty beautiful. That's what I here. I mean from what I saw it was pretty rad. All I really saw was from the pier where the boat dropped me off straight up and down some very sketchy roads to the beach of Haad Rin. This consisted of about 10 percent of the island. I know, it was a shame, but trust me my time on this beach was unforgettable (if I actually took some pictures of the place) so actually is was mostly a blur but luckily the kids I was hanging out with documented the place for what it was worth.

First day I arrived I got bombarded with Thai people asking me where I was staying, taxi, massage, etc. I had no idea where I was going but I put such a stubborn wall up that I never give into the people and what they say. Typically I nod my head and say "mio krap" (I guess this a vulgar word but it means no thank you) If you say it right they usually laugh and instantly stop bugging you. As if you know the language, so they pasture some airhead tourist that looks lost. Only, i'm usually the one that is way more lost. Anyways, I sat my bag on the ground, pulled out my book and tried to decide whether or not I wanted to stay on Haad Rin beach for the whole time. Either you stay there and party like a rock star or you go anywhere but there for a nice and relaxing time. I chose the route of a rock star, cause I am. I walked toward a taxi and noticed a bunch of people on another, I asked them if I could join, they said yes. I jumped on. The ride to the beach was really scary. Our driver seemed to have been drunk and had his foot heavy to the metal and flooring it. But for good reasons. Little that I knew, we had to pass a mountain of up and down roads just to get to the beach. Oh yea, the taxi's weren't your average taxi. It was a truck and everyone sits in the bed. If he rolled the truck, we would all die...So he floored the truck to gain momentum to get up the hills. It was a 20% grade incline and really steep. Some of the backpacks actually rolled back and we had to grab them before they fell off onto the road. Instead of a ride this was more like a roller-coaster but from a mobile circus in the middle of some run down town. So the adrenaline rush had a added punch. I enjoyed this.

40 minutes later we arrived to Haad Rin. Small town, internet cafe's everywhere, hotels cheap and expensive and lots of bars. These girls gave me a heads up and said to stay at "sun cliff resort" Its cheap and slightly off the main beach so I could sleep at night. I went straight there and got a place. One person bungalow, bathroom, balcony and a hammock. I'm already rocking and its not even nighttime. I set up shop and went to explore my surroundings like a dog. First things first I headed for the beach. Thousands of people in the water, playing soccer or just recovering from the previous night. Boats polluted the water and the amount of piss in the water was probably around 90 percent of the ocean. It was super clean. If you could imagine what the beach would be like without the people it would be really nice. I guess think of long-beach in LA. But I enjoyed this once again. Lots of people to mingle with and people watch. This is always fun.

That night was my lucky night: it was the half moon party. This means I get to hit up the half and the full moon party. Lucky me, or is it? My introduction to Haad Rin was pretty insane. At night the whole beach turns into this fire contest. Ropes get lit up and people(me) skip across it. Local people play with fire all night, every night, 365 days a year. On top of that you don't drink beer, but you drink buckets. Neon color buckets full of local liquor, the original red bull (which is pretty much crack) and sprite or a coke. These buckets send you into a whole new world. New friends were everywhere all of a sudden. haha. Like usual I found a group of kids my age and we partied all night. Maybe around 3 in the morning we headed to the half moon party. This was in "the jungle". You had to take a taxi out to get there. Easily 10,000 people were there dancing like it was a rave. Wait it was...That's the end of that story. Stories to ask me in person.

The next seven days were pretty much the exact same. Except I didn't go out to "the jungle". I did meet some great people though leading up to the actual full moon party. My friend Oliver that I met in OZ, later on met in Bali, ended up at Haad Rin so we partied the whole entire time. Our neighbors were from Canada and of course they sported there Canadian flag patched on the backpacks. Pretty funny, but that's what they got to do, unless they want to be associated with Americans. Tough life, huh? We hung out with Keven and Alex (Canadians) the rest of the trip. Rad dudes. One of the memorable nights was rallying up for the winter Olympics in hockey. The finals were America vs Canada. I was out numbered 3-1. They were all Canadians and the amount of American's that travel means I am a minority. We all pre-funked with buckets and partied hard on the beach until 3:15 a.m. until the finals started. We found this bar where it was all Americans/Canadians yelling at the top of there lungs at each other. At times I thought I was going to get in a fight but then the person I was yelling at just said we were playing. Of course we were, but then we would start to yell at each other again. My friend Oliver got way to excited and punched a whole in the ceiling. Haha. How the F did he get as high as the ceiling? Best part is the game went into overtime and the place went nuts. At the end, Canada made some shitty shot and won. The place literally went into a riot. The streets went crazy. Probably a good thing they won because it would have turned into a blood bath. I was pissed but didn't really care. It's just the whole competition thing. Luckily, the sunrise was just popping out over the ocean and cheered me up. This was about 6:30 a.m. Average night for Haad Rin. I didn't go to bed one time without seeing the sunrise. Maybe a couple of times, but my friend Oliver wouldn't come back till maybe 10:00 a.m. What a champ.

Full moon party: Each night leading up to the full moon, more and more people arrived to Haad Rin. That night more people than ever. Thousands of people on the streets in the day time. That night we all bought neon glowing paint and painted our whole bodies up. So fun. Bought some glow sticks and was ready to go. We got some buckets around 6 p.m. to get things going and then headed to the beach. By 9 p.m. the beach easily had 15,000 people. Bleachers were set up, scaffolding was built, and obstacles like a kids playground was set up. They set up this monkey wall that you could climb to the top of the hotel, from there you got to get a panoramic view of the whole scene. Definitely not safe, but check out the cool picture. We got the idea to go up to every girl we thought was worthy( plenty of them) and I would paint there bodies. Perfect game plan and it worked like no other. I maybe hung out with the guys for a couple of hours and lost them. Typical thing I would do, but its always on accident. I meet new people and by the time I turn around its a puzzle trying to find where and when your friends walked away. Oh well, that's the name of the game...

Next day was a struggle, incredible hang-over and we all had to catch a bus to Krabi at noon. It was about 11 and I still couldn't walk straight. I slammed all my crap into my bag and checked out. Woke Oliver up at 11:55. Barely got everything together and made it onto the taxi. Hours later as we were on the ferry these girls called one of our Sweden neighbors and said they were snoopin around in our room for things we probably left and they found Oliver's DSLR camera and a couple hundred dollars that he left in the room. Fuck, what a dumb ass. Lost forever. Our next stop was from ferry to bus. There was a store there that we all got food at. Then got on the bus. 1/2 later Oliver realized that he left his wallet at the store. Lost forever. Now he has pretty much nothing except for his passport. No money, no cards. We got to Krabi and he called his parents to wire him some money through western union....

That being said, Koh Phan-Gan is crazy. Crazy fun that is. All worth it.

Koh Tao

From Bangkok I jumped on a night train. Unfortunately I got the upper bunk, meaning it was way more claustrophobic and made for tiny Asian people. I am a giant out here folks, maybe not in America but here, ahh man. I couldn't imagine being actually tall out here...Originally my train ticket was for Surat Tani, but after talking to to a bunch of people they told me to get off at Chumpon. Chumpon was the main jumping off point to get to all the islands and Surat Tani was the jump off point further south. So, I did that. On the train it was filled with Thai people and a couple travelers. I got set up with this Thia grandma lady who didn't speak a word of English but we both tried to communicate with each other. Very difficult. I was eating some food and offered it to her, she refused but later on she busted out her tupperware full of rice and goodies. She offered some to me but this time I refused. I was drinking a Chaing, give me a break. On the way down the train stopped a few times to pick up and drop off people. When this happens food carts rush in and try and sell you food and drinks. Pretty rad though. I had no idea what they were selling. Mostly it was a plastic bag filled with these cookie like treats and doused with this brown fury hairs that lay on top of it. This bag was organized like a bag of oreos and had about 12 cookies inside. The Thai lady must have loved these things because she bought 6 or 7 bags of these. She's crazy. I asked her what they were but she just smiled at me and pointed to the bag for me to buy them. Next time around I bought a bag. They were good. Weird fluffy flavor but good.

Later on I asked one of the workers when the stop for Chumpon was and if he could wake me when we arrived. It was at 3:15 a.m. and there is no intercom on when and what stop your at, so you gotta be on point and ready to go when they stop. I fell asleep, woke up in a frantic, the guy didn't wake me up. He was passed out in-between the box carts layered in pillows and blankets like he was having a private slumber party. I woke him up. Got ready and jumped off the train. From there waited a few hours for the bus to take us to the pier. From there to Koh Tao. Lots of traveling in one night, about a whole day. On the ferry I met this chick Andre-Anne from Quebec. She was a French-Canadian. This girl has been traveling by bike since Vietnam! Hard as nails and non-shelon when we were talking about it. Made it sound like it wasn't a big deal. On top of that the bike was in horrible shape. Not even a road bike but a mountain bike. She did this for a reason to blend in with the crowd so the bike wouldn't get stolen. Anyways we ended up looking for accommodation together and going to the same scuba diving shop.

As we arrive in Koh Tao it struck me with amazement, white sand beaches filled with large bulky craters that pile on top of one another like play-doh. Some of the rock formations didn't even make sense, it's like the rocks were just balancing on top of each other and if you pushed them they would crumble down the mountain. Regardless, one incredible site to see. I consider this place paradise but each place I go to I say that, so I'll just put it in my top 10.

Andre and I got off the ferry and searched for a room. Luckily this guy sold us on accommodation so we got a free taxi ride to the dive shop. I ended up getting a 10 dive package and they paid for my bungalow. Which was right on the sand and epic view of this point called the Buddha rock.

First day of diving I soon realized that I signed up with a French boat. Everyone (20 + people) were all French. Lots of which couldn't speak English. Then there was me, only American that can only speak one language. Typical American. Oh well, we all got along great and the diving was insane. Saw lots of bull sharks, schools of barracuda, coral, fish I don't even know the names of and more. One of the dives we got surrounded by a school of fish (easily 2000 fish) covered us 360 degrees. I started to swim left and right to catch them but no luck.

Last dive I had I made the decision to do a night dive. I've been wanting to do a night dive since day one and this was my opportunity, so I jumped on it. Kinda nervous going into it. All they give you is a torch and that's it. When we decent-ed into the unknown you see pretty much nothing. Whatever you point at is what you see. So the dive was very slow. You couldn't see the reef until a couple feet away so you had to be careful. The hardest part about a night dive was keeping the right buoyancy. You have no depth reception so we were bumping into each other left and right. Each time the dive master found something we would all get close, but would constantly hit each others tanks together. Some things we saw were flat worms, blow-fish, stingrays, and oh the plankton. We all sat at the bottom of the ocean, turned the lights off and this bright florescent plankton sparkled everywhere you moved your hands at. So cool. That was one of the best parts of the night dive. As we came up toward the surface all you could see was black, then all of a sudden you pop out of the water and see stars surrounding you. This was quite the site. Night diving was amazing and highly recommend it. So glad I made that decision. Tomorrow, I head to koh phangan for the full moon party. What will happen here?