We took the ferry
to the party island of Koh Pha-Ghan. The island is beautiful, actually;
lots of open space and big forested cliffs. The roads are pretty bad.
We spent a few days in the main town of Haad Rin to eat
awesome food and party at the Full Moon. Mmmm, food. With the
exception of Bali, for 2 months in Indonesia we had been more or less
relegated to fried rice, fried chicken, and fried noodles. They didn't
have the best vegetable selection there. In Haad Rin they have lots of
falang (Thai for honkey) food and hippie food. A lot of the
restaurants show videos. You can get drugs from the pharmacies if
you want, and Thai massage on the beach. The beaches are excellent--
big and white with clear green water, relatively clean.
Mellow Thai hippies selling jewelry, beat pounding the sand. Our bungalow was pretty expensive (150
baht=6 bucks a night), but it was on the beach with a hammock.
We needed that.
The Full Moon Party was crashed by lots of straights from Samui
"bridge-and-tunnel"-crowd" island). (Our quote for
the night was "Please don't feed or tease the straight people.") So the
beach was littered with groping drunks. Also the stuff we got from the pharmacies didn't do much for us.
("Make you feel like supa-stah.") The only
thing I did like about it was seeing the random Thai families who were new to the
scene and into it.