Island Hopping

Thailand turned into a bit of a blur of partying. Arriving at Bangkok airport with only the vaguest of ideas of what I was going to do: I bought myself a ticket down to Samui that would have me arrive sometime after 10 at night with no where to stay.

In fact, keeping in mind I had little to no plan and ignoring the fact I had a massive suitcase, several large jackets, thermal socks and a laptop; this was the most backpacker-esque 'Wanderer' trip I have done in a long time.

While waiting for my flight down to the island I met an English guy named Sean. After a few minutes of talking we found out we had more or less the same plan and decided to try to find a place that night. What started out as the exchange of a few words turned into 10 days of financially efficient craziness.

We dumped our stuff in our hotel room and headed out to the bars. In reality: Koh Samui is a little seedy in terms of the nightlife. Hundreds of sleezy Thai girls clawing at the white tourists that come into the bars. They start to get a bit inventive with their approach after a while, jumping on people like monkeys, flashing their expensive implants and... playing connect 4? you name it. Not really my scene but we managed to have some fun. It really hit home that I was in Thailand when I was constantly harassed by lady-boys on the walk home from the bars at 3 in the morning. They drive up and down the main street on their mopeds looking for unsuspecting tourists to take home and... my imagination didn't go much further than that but hey, at least they're honest: "Hey sweety, come back to my place!" "Do you have a penis?" "Well, yes, but look at these!" "Well they're very nice and props to your surgeon but no thanks."

On our second day on Samui we had dinner at the hostel's restaurant and met a couple of other young guys on a similar trail to us. One of them seemed to be your typical quiet, well educated, well off kid> about 19 years old and pretty inexperienced on the world scale... Get a few pints into him and suddenly an insane party animal appeared. It was all we could do to keep him from getting up on the tables and dancing in a pub with perhaps 20 people in it. When the live cover band offered him the mic our jaws dropped to the floor as he ripped up the stage and took the veteran performers by surprise. As the night progressed we collected a little entourage of European tourists around us and I managed to keep up the Swedish a little and even got to test my Norwegian skills: or lack thereof.

After two nights on Samui we decided it was time to move on. Along the way I heard rumors of the full moon party on Koh Pha-Nang that was coming up in just a few days. So we stocked up on supplies (mostly water to nurse our severe hangovers) and headed for the ferry. Due to lack of organisation; we were subjected to copious amounts of waiting and lugging luggage but come about 4pm we arrived at our destination.

For pretty much the same money we managed to get ourselves a gorgeous room with fantastic airconditioning, nice beds, clean, tv, great bathroom and a balcony with ocean views and an amazing hammock. It was a little out of the way but this turned out to be a good thing. The main area on Koh Pha-Nang is a penninsula with most of the action on the north-east beach. Rin Bay View was right on the south-east beach giving us peace and quiet just a 10 minute walk from the action.

After dumping our gear, taking a quick shower and getting changed we started a long wander of the streets to quickly discover a totally different feel from Samui. Koh Pha-Nang is quieter and feels generally safer and friendlier. The streets are littered with small delis, tattoo shops, all kinds of restaurants - all of which are constantly playing some kind of movie, 24/7 episodes of Friends or Family Guy, clothes boutiques and of course: bucket stalls. The beach is bursting with bucket stalls. A small ikea-style plastic bucket, filled with ice, half a bottle of Thai whiskey, a Thai Red Bull and your choice of soft drink makes for a very potent and inexpensive drink. On the down side they are quite addictive and after a few Thai Red Bulls... even at 5am sleep is far from a possibility.

Falling asleep took some time and as such; so did waking up. We ventured down to the beach in the late afternoon to get a refreshing swim and a bit of sun in before the next bucket wave. The life on the beach is amazing. Surrounded by all kinds of accents, one could spend an afternoon trying to work out where people are from. England, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Italy, Germany... I can´t think of anywhere else where that kind of diversity is so at ease and in such a small space. After buying myself a beer a little before sunset, we kept ourselves entertained by a bunch of Swedes behind us throwing each other several meters in the air while doing backflips. I felt like I had found the wanderer´s mecca.

Unfortunately, far from the pure and utopian portrayal of Thailand by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach we were those drunken idiots on the mainland. We were the stumbling fools that had no idea of the purity that was just across the water. And we loved it.

Out to dinner that evening we sat ourselves at a big table in front of a movie and tuckered into some Pad Thai: the cheapest and possibly best dish on the menu. As seating options in the restaurant became slim we started to let a few groups of people join as at the table and before we knew it there were 7 Swedish girls sitting around and chatting to us. After all, part of the reason I went to Thailand in the first place was to keep up my language skills.

After dinner we headed down to the beach to get onto the buckets and enjoy the fire performers. Ball and chains, staffs, fire blowing - the kind of things they were doing would completely destroy and OH&S here- flaming poles flying into crowds of people? Only in Thailand. Whistles blew and before we knew it they were putting together the balloon game. Pretty straight forward; everyone ties a balloon to one foot and tries to put everyone else´s with the other. The winner gets a free drinks. The game is set up into rounds and when the whistle blows... stay on your toes. We soon discovered this was just about a nightly event in the absence of utter craziness (ie. the Full Moon Party)

Later that night we heard about a place called Mellow Magic Mushroom Mountain: a couple of bars on the cliff at the end of the beach. So incredibly dangerous walking up and down those rocky steps... and couldn´t stop thinking... How is this place legal?! What felt like 20 minutes there turned out to be 5 hours and after speaking with some people who had spent way too much time there, we made our way down to the beach. We ran into an American guy who spun the most passionate and amazing story about the perfect beach and to quickly get on the boat with him to paradise. We quickly conferred amongst the 3 of us and decided: what the hell, why not? Once we were away it turned out he was completely full of it and just wanted some company for the trip to his bungalow on the other beach. But even though we were conned, it turned out to be a pretty fantastic beach and we got to meet Yut, Sammy and Claus. The Thai-Rastafarian who ran a little hut on the beach with music, beers and great chicken sandwiches and his two ´local´ Italian/Germans who tried in vain to get us to try every drug I had ever heard of. On the day before the Full Moon Party we got to bed about 10am.

The actual Full Moon party was a bit much actually. Easily 10,000people on one beach and a blend of music so that you couldn´t make anything out. Perhaps we had too much fun the two nights before? Randomly I ran into two of the girls I worked with in Norway. You can imagine on a insanely crowded beach in Thailand, you don´t really expect to run into people you know...

Two days later we jumped on yet another boat to check out the smaller island of Koh Tao. Unfortunately we didn´t allow ourselves enough time to dive as one does on Koh Tao: the island for us became more or less a repeat of Koh Pha-Nang. But better in many ways, quieter, cleaner: but more expensive unfortunately. Koh Tao for me? More buckets, more chill lounge-bars on the beach and better quality fire-twirling. Getting the crowd involved and twirling chains and poles at the same time? Quality stuff.

Two days later we got on the boat to Samui to begin the end of the trip. We met a couple of Finns and from there things got a little crazy. Basically we jumped on a last minute plane to Bangkok after a few cocktails on Samui and got driven all over the city in Tut Tuts and went to the most exclusive clubs with the priciest drinks and in a haze I headed back to Bangkok airport to start the journey back to Perth. This was a series of events that led to me not sleeping for two days and when I got home at 2am I seemed to still have the energy to debrief with mamma and have a slideshow.


Obviously this lack of sleep didn't really equip me too well to deal with the excess luggage charges I got stung with trying to get out of Asia. The best I could do was get a $700 charge down to about $400 by getting it shipped back to Australia. Turns out this whacked me in the end anyway as quarantine needed to look at my sneakers to make sure there weren't contaminants on them and thus incurred an inspection charge. I love excess luggage.

Saying goodbye was an emotional time. Such fun has not been had in a long time and we are beginning talks for another round of Island Hopping later this year.