Sorry, I know it’s been a while. I have not had good Wi-Fi since I left Koh Samui over a week ago. I have also been very busy and haven’t had a lot of time to myself.
After I left Koh Samui, I took a ferry to Koh Phangan. The hostel I stayed at was one of the biggest party hostels on the island I’m pretty sure! I met so many amazing people. I now have friends from Italy, Germany, France, Wales, Canada, England, and more. I also met some guys from the US. They were all lawyers on their Bar trip. Two of them were together from California and the other from Texas; the other one was a solo traveler from New York. We all became friends immediately. I was glad to have them. Also, Steve from New York who I met back in Bangkok came to stay at our hostel and also hung out with our crew. We all had a blast. There was a different party every night! The first party I went to was a beach party. It was pretty low key. A lot of dancing happened. The second party was called the Maya party. Wow, this party was probably the most fun. Our little group was definitely the life of the party and we danced our asses off for, I shit you not, three hours straight, non-stop. I don’t mean just slightly nodding your head and kicking your feet dancing, I mean arms flailing, getting low, booty shaking, rave dancing. I bet I burned a million calories doing it and had the time of my life. We even started a dance-off circle at one point. I think Danny, the lawyer from Texas totally owned it.
So, that was fun. The party the next night was supposed to be a “Waterfall Party”, but apparently the waterfall was dried up, so what was the point of a Waterfall Party with no waterfall? Instead, there was a crazy-ass pool party. I will post pictures later. It was insane! I have never seen so many people in a pool at one time. Of course everyone was dancing, inside the pool and out, because that’s what you do at parties on Koh Phangan, you dance! That party was also a lot of fun. The next night was a “Jungle Party”. We all had really high expectations for this party because we heard from a lot of people it was supposed to be the best. The setting of the party was really neat, however the energy of all the people was so low. No one was really dancing. It was a lot of nodding heads and kicking feet like I talked about earlier. I thought it was just okay. All of these parties are the parties leading up to Full Moon Party. I had no idea there were so many different parties! I knew about Half Moon and Full Moon and I thought that was it. Boy, was I wrong. All of the parties leading up to the Full Moon Party start so late. At our hostel, Happy Hour was at 10 PM and they had a recording of what sounded like a WWF announcer, with a 5 second countdown “In FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE, ITS HHHAAAAPPPPPYYYYY HHOOOUUURRR!!!! NOW COME TO THE BAR AND GET YOUR BUCKETS!” It was so ridiculous, but so funny. It cracked me up every time I heard it. Happy hour consisted of buy one bucket get one free. After that week, I never want to see a bucket or drink red bull ever again. Its how we started off every single night, Red Bull buckets. They don’t just have normal Red Bull like back in the states. This stuff is serious. It’s like normal Red Bull on speed. It’s called M-150. I didn’t sleep a whole lot while I was there because of this stuff. So, happy hour would start at 10pm, which means we wouldn’t actually go to the parties until about 12:30 or 1 am. That was so strange to me, but I eventually got used to it. The pre-parties at the hostel were always fun! There was a lot to do there. They had pool tables, ping-pong tables, beer pong tournaments, a pool, video games, and we decided to play drinking games with cards. We had SO. MUCH. FUN. Evan, the lawyer from New York, introduced us to Horse Racing. That game was incredibly fun! Then, I also played a different version of Kings that an Italian girl introduced me to, also so much fun! Finally, comes the Full Moon Party that was on Saturday night. It was massive! It consists of a huge party on the beach. There are tons of stages set up with different kinds of music playing at each stage, with a crowds of people dressed in neon and fluorescent paint, dancing at each stage! If you didn’t like the music at one stage, you could walk down the beach a little bit and find a different stage with different music. I actually met another girl from Indiana! She was from Indianapolis, which is insane! We immediately became friends and come to find out later that she is also a nurse!! It was so strange how random it was meeting her. After that I instantly lost my crew, which sucked. I spent the whole rest of the night trying to find them! Haha! I was fine, Mom! Don’t worry I wasn’t really alone, I ran into some people I knew. I tried doing a fire jump rope, which wasn’t smart. Haha! I was terrible at it… but everyone else was too. It was quite difficult. I fell onto the burning rope immediately, frantically trying to get up off the flames. I succeeded and did not burn myself, thank god! After that I lost my flip-flops. Woops! Then I found a huge water slide that I just HAD to go down. The slide was really fun, but then my shorts were wet for the rest of the night. At the top of the slide, I ran into one of the Canadians I had met in Koh Samui, so he took a video of me going down the slide! That one will have to come out at some point. I am going to try to get it from him somehow. After that my night was pretty much over. I went back to the hostel. I still hadn’t gone to sleep yet and it was quite entertaining seeing taxis packed full of people in the beds of their trucks coming back to our hostel and the one next door. At 8 AM it was like a party all over again. Full Moon Party really does go all night long, but goes by so fast!! That day a lot of my friends were going home L… it’s so sad to see people that you have become so close with leave. You never know if you will see them again and that is the sad part.
After all that I was feeling really lazy, dirty, and just plain exhausted. A lot of the people from our hostel were going to Koh Tao, so I decided to do the same. I got a nicer resort for a little R&R. I have spent most of my time in my hotel room watching movies. It’s been very nice actually, after a crazy week like I had in Koh Phangan. I believe I’m going to stay here in Koh Tao for a couple more nights, hang out with Shelly, then make my way to the other coast and visit Koh Phi Phi and Koh Lanta, and then catch a flight to Chang Mai in Northern Thailand. I think I’m almost fully recovered. Haha!
I miss everyone back home so much. I think about all my friends and family a lot! I am really enjoying traveling solo, but sometimes I wish I had someone who actually knows who I am and what I’ve been through. But that passes and I know I have to buck up! I have two more months of this! I am so looking forward to Northern Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia! I have lots of exciting things planned!
