So far Koh Pha Ngan is not my favourite place to be - in that our accommodations are not all that accommodating, the beach next to our place is rocky and the beautiful "5 minute away" beach is actually a good half hour drive away haha. Nothing like honest advertising! I've had another migraine day and we were both afflicted with ailments whose naming borders on too much information.
Last night was the infamous Full Moon Party.
What. The. F.
It really was the biggest party I've ever been to. Allegedly attracts about 20-30,000 people (don't doubt it). I believe the party (which was conceived in the 80's as a way to thank tourists and now used as a way to gouge tourists) is the only reason anyone comes here, minus the fabulous beach it is hosted on... whose sloppiness this morning I can only imagine. Bottles and buckets (they sell little buckets and fill 'em with a mickey of liquor, a can of pop, and stick a straw in it) everywhere.
I do believe I've never seen more drunk (etc.) people in one area in my life. The water in that bay is beautiful too... except that my night-time view of it was constantly obscured by the backs of no less than a dozen men at any given time donating their fluids to the ocean. Nice.
I'll have to backstep a little and say that our accommodations have one thing going for it: its hostel-like common area. It's pretty much just a restaurant/bar but you take your shoes off at the door and there aren't any chairs, just cushions on the floor. It has created a great atmosphere for meeting people. For instance, we all left together for the party and our tuk tuk bore us (Brock and I, duh), an Italian, a Finn, a Brit, a french girl, a 6'7" Swedish adonis (seriously the dude towered over our 6'2" Brock), heaps of Irish, and 4 guys from Calgary who didn't even know eachother prior.
The tuk tuk in Bangkok are really quite small and made for about 2 people, whereas the Tuk tuk on the islands are basically just pick-up trucks with benches put in along the sides. And of course they cram as many people as they can and cannot fit into them! They'll even pile 30 pieces of luggage on the roof seeing as how I doubt there are load-bearing restrictions or maximum capacities... or any kind of safety standards whatsoever.
We've seen welders without masks, road construction crews wearing crocs and sandals, even a lot of the taxis haven't had seatbelts. I am not very confident in the structural integrity of most buildings in this country, except for the proud monuments of western franchises who do seem intent on abiding by safety codes despite this inherent lack of laws enforcing it. My anxiety ebbs when I see the quiet honesty santity of a Starbucks. That's when I know that the Gods of Capitalism smile down upon me.
I am oddly absent of any fear in that regards though, I'm more worried about the scary mofo that is dengue fever. Incurable and prowling like a B in H along the northern jungles of Laos.
Tomorrow we leave for Krabe (Pronounced Crabby)... yes dad, it must have been named for me ha ha. There we'll be doing all the typical Thai tourist stuff (elephant riding, rock climbing, canoeing, visiting the beach from the movie "The Beach.")
