Yesterday was pretty crazy – The day of the full moon party! After getting some much needed sleep I felt fully recovered from jet lag and full of energy. I headed down to the hotel restaurant to grab some buffet breakfast. No baked beans though. Just a weird selection of meats, cheese and bread. I went for toast and cereal. No point getting all adventurous at that time of a morning.

Calm Before The Storm

I had another wonder around Koh Phangan in the day and had a few steady beers in the beach bars. It’s so different here to Bangkok. It feels like a different country. Really hot and tropical! Weird, I was missing Bangkok yesterday, and felt a bit alienated by the complete change of scenery, but now I feel more settled in.

At one point I ended up walking round a dodgy wooden path up the mountain, I decided to stay close to the beach.

For dinner I had another Phad Thai. I think it’s my favourite meal now. I’m going to eat it for the rest of my life. This one cost only £2 roughly. Steal.

On the beach I could see all the various stalls and dancing podiums being propped up in preparation for the party!

 

Booking A Boat To Phi Phi

My plan was to head to Phi Phi the day after the full moon so I had to get this booked and sorted. I went to a Tours agent and booked my taxi and boat. The boats aren’t as regular as I thought and getting to Phi Phi meant I’d have to stay a night over in Krabi. This meant I had to cancel and rebook my Phi Ph hotel for once day later. Booking.com saves the day again there.

So I booked all this up. But of course… I missed my taxi in the morning. Another stranded Thai. More on this later.

Horrible Full Moon Vest

I decided I needed more souvenirs to add to my wooden Buddha. So I bought a horrible full moon vest from one of the many shops selling them. I opted for a less obvious one – the rest said ‘Full Moon Party’ all over them. I nearly got some horrible elephant trousers too. Not sure why I like buying things I don’t want.

The Full Moon Party!

The full moon party was mental. By around 8pm the beach was full. Lots of different open beach dancefloors. There were rows and rows of stalls you can get cheap drinks from. A lot of them offering free shots and free ‘hugs’. Weird.

Lots of other weird things like a sleeping area. Tarot reading stands. Skipping ropes that are on fire… people just joining in skipping! Fire juggling, Water orbs… I had a good wander round and eventually bought a bucket of vodka. After having a few of these I ended up right at the bottom of the beach, where I saw some steps leading up to a hipster looking mountain bar…

Mushroom Mountain

The bar at the top of the mountain is known as ‘Mushroom Mountain’. Infamous for selling ‘Happy Shakes’ – with, yeah… hallucinogenic mushrooms in. Lots of travellers in there sitting down on the floor drinking these shakes. They all looked fine. I doubted they do much. Just placebo. Naturally, I decided to buy one and give it a go. When in Rome and all that, or Thailand rather.

They’re quite expensive, about 8 quid. I buy one and sit down. I don’t know if it did much… if it did it was very subtle. I got chatting to a fellow Brit and an American. We head back down to the beach together.

After a while it did begin to kick in I think. I felt a bit tired and floaty but nothing too bad. I later got told that Mushroom Mountain should be done at the end of the night, not the start. So, a little tip for you there. By the way, I’m not condoning this behaviour. Drink happy shakes at your own risk. Little disclaimer there.

Memory Loss

So I don’t recall much after we went back down to the beach, we danced, got more buckets, and I somehow got back to the Hotel at around 4am. I know it was 4am because I had sent a drunken WhatsApp message to the group chat at that time.

I woke up like this.

For some reason I had a penis drawn on me.

Missed my taxi… Another stranded Thai

I didn’t wake up until 12. My taxi to the pier was booked for 11. I think I strand around 2 Thais per day now. It’s my thing.

I booked another taxi and managed to get the ferry. A very hard long journey when hungover.

A Thai couple (2 blokes) asked if they could take a photo of me. One of them started getting quite ‘affectionate’, so I stayed out the way i the cabin for most of the ferry ride.

Then… In the cabin some guy wouldn’t stop staring at me. It must be the horrible vest.

Oh, and look. A real life monk…

It took around 2 hours to get to Donsak, and then another 2 hours in a taxi to get to Krabi.

Krabi

Krabi has very jungle like terrain, with no cars, just beaten tracks with bikes and tuk tuks. Once I got into Krabi town I had to get another boat across to get to my hotel. Once I get to the hotel I discover I’m the ONLY person staying here. Can’t be good. I mean how bad must a hotel be to have NO ONE stay in it.

It’s a really nice hotel, they are little beach huts, they even have a bath on the balconies! It’s quite dark so I can’t get any good photos just yet.

I check in and get some dinner with a Chang as I write this. Pad Thai again, of course.

Takeaways

• There’s no point booking boats and taxis in advance you can get one on the day. You’ll just end up missing it and stranding Thais, or maybe that’s just me.
• Don’t have a Happy Shake at the start of the night!