Ko Phangan

Ko Phangan is the maddest party island on Earth. It's official. Nothing can touch it when the full moon party is in full swing. It makes Ibiza look like a February afternoon in Margate.

I arrived on Tuesday evening and got myself a bungalow on a beach called Ban Tai, 4km out of Hat Rin where the full moon party is held. The next morning that decision seemed slightly pointless as it p*ssed it down with the hardest rain I've ever seen for hours. I didn't mind too much really though as I slept til lunchtime anyway.

Around 3pm the rain subsided a bit and I headed into Hat Rin to meet Adrian. Since there was nothing else to do we thought we may as well go for a beer! All the bars in Hat Rin play movies and sitcoms all day so we ended up swigging a few Beer Chang's watching Family Guy and playing some pool. Later on we met a few more Irish lads and headed down to the beach where the real action goes on!

There are bars all along the beach front, blaring out house and hip-hop all night long. We wandered among them drinking our buckets. There were 5 of us originally, but each one of us ended up wandering around alone talking to random people, which is what I think every other person on the beach was doing too. I also managed to lose my flip-flops somehow!

Next day I managed to scrape myself out onto the beach in mid afternoon for a bit before heading back into Hat Rin. I didn't bother buying anymore flip flops as I'd probably just lose them again anyway. I won't bother to describe the night as it was pretty much a carbon-copy of the previous one (except without the distraction of shoes!).

The next day was Friday and the night of the big full moon party. Woohoo! I got into town about 5pm and met with Adrian for a few warm up beers. It was a real struggle after the previous 2 nights but we forced ourselves. We decided a bit of sea air might help so got down to the beach early, bumping into the other Irish lads on the way. It was only about 8'0'clock so we chilled out with a couple of beers, all swearing not to buy a bucket before 11pm. We lasted until around 10.30 which I think was a good effort!

By that time the beach was absolutely heaving. There were estimated to be around 10,000 people there, but there may have been more as this month was the full moon party's 20th anniversary celebration. The bars seemed to be playing their music louder than ever and it was deafening. Everybody was covered in flourescent bodypaint and jumping around like mad people - it was fantastic. The party went on and on and on. Everybody seemed to be wearing a lot less clothing and crashed out bodies were starting to appear on the beach! The sun came up and still everyone was going. Of course we'd all lost each other but we bumped into each other intermittently before staggering off again.

I finally went home exhausted about 7 or 8am. Adrian was out until 12 but he'd passed out sleeping for a few hours on the beach (losing his wallet in the process). I took a disposable camera out so I'm looking forward to seeing what I've managed to take on that! The next day was obviously a train wreck so I'm not even going to go into how bad I felt...

Off to Samui tomorrow to meet the other lads. I've also started applying for jobs in Korea. Scary stuff that... I could potentially be working in a couple of weeks time!