Oh the Kohs and how they shine

We have been Koh (or Island) hopping for the past couple of weeks and it has been wonderful. After our Night Dive and subsequent Underwater Photography and Deep Dive plus Advanced Diver certification, we left our beloved Koh Tao to Koh Phangnan, which is known primarily for its Full Moon Parties...well it is known only for its Full Moon Party and the gorgeous 2km beach with sparkly aquamarine coloured water that changes colour with the depth of the sea and the powder sand beaches that feel like warm clouds beneath your feet as you walk from side to side. We arrived after a pleasant boat ride to the pier and entered the mass chaos of the "luggage area," in which a barrage of weary and drunk travellers go head to head to dig through the pile of various backpacks and suitcases as quickly as possible to then get into a taxi to the beach to find the cheapest accommodation possible. This can be quite a feat when a Full Moon Party is imminent, as hoards (and when we say hoards, we mean like 50,000 travellers) come to this tiny island to worship the moon. Well, actually they come to wear bright neon coloured clothes in a throw back to the early 1990s, paint their bodies with neon coloured body paint and drink cheap spirits that come in a bucket with your choice of soda and a tiny red bull. You mix all of these drinks together in your bucket and then drink it down from about 6 straws...so disgusting, yet awesome for those baby teens and young twenty somethings...but a 33-year-old with poor coordination having just recovered from a bout of tonsillitis, this was going to be a special treat! We hoped on a pick-up truck style taxi with some very sweet, wide-eyed and a bit frightened Korean girls who we helped find a place to stat to which the rewarded us with the grossest most over-ripened mangoes in the history of the land, but we ate them up with a smile, as you do! When they found out I was almost 33, they both screamed in shock and refused to believe me. Now, I want to believe it is due to my skin and how fresh faced I look with a bit of a tan, but they said...and I quote..."you don't act 33!" Now what does that mean exactly...I am very mature damn it! We spent the afternoon exploring the island and all the shops and purchased some horrific (though I do love the 1990s) neon coloured attire and body paints and investigated this rum bucket situation and prepared for the next day's Full Moon festivities. We decided on Sang Sum rum, a very cheap local Thailand rum and ate John's favourite dinner ever...fresh fish that you choose, steamed with garlic and chili flakes with a side salad and potatoes...delish and drifted off to sleep dreaming about the full moon and crystal clear waters of Koh Phangnan. The next day we basically spent on the beach, me in the shade and Alex right smack dab in the sun; however, we did reapply our 50++ sunblock on the regular. The beach was packed with travellers watching the locals set up the beach for the Full Moon Party with excitement and anticipation. Most were already drinking from the notorious buckets...already! Can you believe it!?! Those are some hardcore travellers. During our beach lay-out session, we discovered this tiny woman who travels around on a scooter with a tiny freezer attached to the back of it selling these ice creams in the shape of a cube on a stick and they are like ambrosia. They taste like creamy frozen circus peanut candy from America and after I had one, I was desperate for another...they were tiny after all and I had never tasted anything like it...and so begins the quest for this tiny woman and her freezer motorbike. Alas, I was never to find her again, but the memory of that cube ice cream lives on forever...a moment of silent remembrance please. Back to the Full Moon, as dusk began to fall and the sun set beneath the palm trees and the full moon rose high within the twinkling star filled night sky, all the travellers departed to get kitted up for festivities. Alex put on her neon orange daisy duke shorts and a black bikini top and I wore a very long black dress. Come to think of it, I did look a bit like a nun...but I am a bit old for Full Moon Parties, aren't I?! We ventured out to the beach and the sea of neon faces and bodies running around from one side to the other carrying their loaded buckets. There was everything one would expect at a Full Moon Party...fire twirlers (some were kids aged 9) and they set random sticks and poles and balls dangling from ropes alight and swing them around and do turns...very dangerous, yet memorizing to watch. Further down the beach is a huge fire jump rope and interestingly, this is located right outside the medic centre. As one can imagine, when hoards of drunk people decide to take their turn at the massive fire jump rope, there will be injuries. Alex and I decided that the most fun part of the evening was watching the drunkards jump, get burned and race to the medic centre. Music was blaring everywhere and it was infectious, Before too long, Al and I were dancing the night away amongst thousands of paint covered travellers worshiping the moon and the buckets filled with booze. What a night. Three buckets later, two drunk girls make their way back to the spinning hotel room and pass out for the night with ringing in their ears and booze in their bellies. The next day was eerily quiet and as we emerged from our room and made our way down to the beach, we noticed a tumbleweed blow through town. Everyone was passed out in their rooms...or someone else's room...sleeping off all the debauchery from the night before. We sat on the empty beach for hours watching a few hardcore ravers trying to detox the drink and drugs from their systems. One poor guy was sitting under one of the black light tent with pupils the size of pinheads desperately clutching a bottle of water and rocking back and forth. Eventually he just fell back into the Jesus on the cross position and passed out...never letting go of his water bottle. We thought about taking it from him and hiding it, but that would be pure evil and we are not pure evil...just a tiny bit evil after all. Eventually, others began to join us on the beach and a game of 'count the bandages' soon began. We must have counted over 100 when we decided to walk around and eat John's favourite dinner again for the second night going and prepare to depart to Koh Samui the next day. We arrived at the pier about 2 hours early, as we all know how I like to be nice and early to get a good seat, but soon got bored so decided to start a game of beach athletics. Pictures will soon follow, but it was loads of fun...we have mastered the javelin and the shot put, but the other events still remain on the drawing board. The boat ride to Koh Samui (the largest of the 3 islands) was very quick and we met a lovely English girl named Zoe who is travelling for 9 months on her own. We shared our Full Moon Party stories and decided to stay in the same hostel in Koh Samui, which has been fun. We spent the first day walking along the 6km beach and back again along the strip of shops running parallel to the beach. The beach here is lovely, but nowhere near as spectacular as the beach in Koh Phanganan. We spent the whole of yesterday walking 2 hours to the Football Golf field for a good old game of, what else but Football Golf. Now, this is a game that none of us have ever seen or played before in our lives. There are 18 holes, as in a game of golf, but instead of using clubs and a tiny ball, you use your feet and a football (soccer ball for all you Americans). It may sound easy, but we are here to attest that this is NO easy game. Now, we all know who won the game, as she dominates in the athleticism arena, but I had hope as there was another candidate that I could beat to a pulp athletically...oh how wrong I was. It was that damn hole 8...I swear...it was on a hill so I would kick it up and it would roll down across the field from one side to the other. I looked up at one point, wiping the sweat from my eyes, to see Al and Zoe having a good old laugh at my feeble attempts to get that ball in that hole. They kept yelling out, "maybe this will be lucky 13," then, "maybe this will be lucky 14," and so on and so forth until I eventually got in a hole in 17. That really hurt my score and there was really no comeback from that so I accepted my watering can trophy next to their Jules Rimet trophies and took a humiliating picture to add to my photo albums of sport disappointments of my life. We couldn't bare the 2 hour walk home so treated ourselves to a pick-up truck taxi ride back to the Swensen's ice cream for cones all around...even for the loser. Oh, and Alex is now obsessed with ice cream, which is so strange as she has hated it for all of her life. Then back to the hotel for 10 free minutes on the Internet and an evening of Law and Order repeats. Today, has been a very rainy day and we have spent most of it debating a plan of action, as we extended our stay for 3 weeks in Southeast Asia to travel to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, but they are all experiencing torrential downpours, flooding and other random and horrific tropical anomalies so we are struggling with what to do. I am a little pissed that I pressed to change the ticket now, as we could be leaving for sunny Australia in a few days, but I just did not feel finished with SEA. This place is amazing and the people are so beautiful in so many different ways and there are so many other countries here that we just have not had time to explore and really want to! Oh, the travellers decisions...we have met so many people that experience these dilemmas...sometimes due to timing, sometimes money, sometimes other reasons, but always a dilemma! We will continue to discuss our options and come up with a plan, but until then we have been given 1 free Thai massage here at the hotel and due to our Ayurvedic magical foot massage experience in India, Alex has graciously given me the free massage and the opportunity to experience the Thai massage technique and compare it to the Indian one so please look out for the Thai Massage experience blog due to hit your nearest blogspot soon...