At Bangkok airport i'd hoped to fly out the same evening to get to Koh Samui but there weren't any cos of the bad weather. So the extremely fabulous people of Bangkok Airways found me a hotel near to the airport, booked my return flights and even the ferry to Koh Tao - brilliant people!!! So had quiet night at hotel in the middle of nowhere exciting and watched another of my new dvds (do we see a theme?).
So, far too early the next morning i flew out - bit of an issue with my carry on bag in that it didn't fit above or below. Had to carry my laptop and shove it under, sitting next to a kid so it didn't matter, she had room. She was irritating as though. Ooh but at Bangkok airport i got extremely excited (and i'll admit, tearful with a goofy smile on my face that drew some deservedly odd looks) at finding a Boots!!! It was like the mothership calling me home...i bought some shampoo and tissues. Anyhoo, after much waiting and false assurances from the people at Koh Samui airport we finally got picked up and taken to the ferry port thingy place. Got chatting to a really nice Israeli woman, an underwear designer, very cool! (another theme emerging...).
The ferry was absolute hell. It was a catamaran - i don't get the design of those things, it just threw itself from side to side and up and down and lurching, and never having been sea sick in my life before i very much was. Ew. Got to the hotel and opted for the cheapest room, only for 2 nights and it looked fine, and it was except it wasn't an automatically flushing toilet (not too big a deal), you're not allowed to flush anything (this i do not like but it's everywhere), and blah blah blah. But it was fine. Didn't do anything on Koh Tao, didn't find the boys and it rained hard the whole time so there was nothing to do. Apparently they'd left already cos there was nothing to do.
Went as planned to Koh Phangan, sight of the Full Moon party, and no one had heard of their hotel so i went somewhere random and this time went for the expensive option - the cheap room involved a squat toilet at which i very much draw the line! Just no. So my room is nice, aircon, sort of tele (fuzzy but i watched that dreadful SA-England rugby match at the beginning of the group games when they massacred us. It was a South African sports channel - me thinks they're gloating just a tad too much), minibar which i've raided...pool and beach. V.nice.
Was a lil miserable at not having found Matt and Tyler and seemingly having no prospect of meeting up with them, so was glumly sitting alone in the hotel restaurant watching the cabaret when 3 northern English guys kindly invited me to join them, hooray! people! The entertainment was hilarious actually, 2 'ladyboys' (natch i didn't realise til after cos of my blind as a batness and cos one of them was really very pretty) dancing and stripteasing (i looked up and voila there they were!) and kissing an American guy - the question is did he realise she wasn't quite a she?? The guys thought he must've cos it was obvious (cept to me). Well well.
Off we went to the Full Moon Party. Great stuff!! I didn't take my camera sadly cos i'd been advised not to take any valuables. So no pictures yet, hopefully i'll get some off people eventually. So it's basically this big beach party at the time of the full moon -duh - and people get drunk and take drugs (i wasn't tempted on either front, just had a couple of buckets and that was me done, water for the rest of the night) and dance and party!!! There're fire throwers (who were crazy/impressive) and people who paint you in UV paint (i'd been advised to wear something crappy so's not to ruin anything nice with paint) and mainly dance music - but just as i was getting bored and considering going home a bit of rock or cheese'd come on and i was happy again, so the music was alot better than i'd expected. And different over the beach, some places trance (where i assume people'd take mushrooms - a guy in the taxi on the way back was wibbling on about having had 3 mushroom shakes and another one who'd had a nightmareish trip on just one), some hard house and where we were more mainstream dance (it's fine when i know it!) with some funner bits thrown in). 'We' was Matt, Tyler and many others from the other group, Tyler had managed to find me!!! Amazing. I took a walk nearing sunrise when the music was boring me to explore the rest of the beach, where we were was definitely the best, but on my wanderings i bought a top as a souvenir and greeted randoms.
Sunrise seemed to be the queue for proper cheese, YMCA, Dragostea sin te, Madonna etc...brilliant. After a bit of a faff and waiting for a taxi (he insisted on waiting for loads of people to fill it) i got back at about 7:30 - not bad for me!! Not beaten my record but it's pretty darn good going these days! So i slept for a while, nice and snuggly in blankets with cold aircon :-) got up at 1 or 2, discovered i had no running water, went to complain and for a swim instead - waaaay better than a shower actually. Lovely. At about 4 i went for breakfast, an Indian takeaway. Now it's the evening, think i'll go for a wander then have dinner and watch a movie. Nice. Really pleased i went to the party, properly didn't want to yesterday but i did and it was really cool, good stuff. Tomorrow i'm ferrying to Koh Samui and flying back to Bangkok to hopefully meet Valentina...do hope she'll be there by then! And then...i dunno! It's a mystery.
