Koh Pha Ngan is known around the world for it’s famous full moon parties, but from what we read about them it’s become such a shit show now that we were glad we were not going to be there during the full moon.  We were there however for the half moon party which is much more tame and our speed.

We didn’t get any pictures from the party because we decided it best to leave our camera and go pro locked up at the hotel because we didn’t want any of our equipment to get ruined from all the body paint.  We didn’t have anything to worry about, it turns out and we should have at least brought the go pro to get some video and pictures.

This is the place we stayed on the island…ours was one of the bungalows up in the trees.  We could never quite figure out which one.

Our balcony had this view looking out into the gulf:

The only thing that was weird about this place was the bathroom:

That’s just a huge rock that I guess they couldn’t get out so they decided to just build around it.

Anyway, besides the half moon party, pretty much all there was to do here was chill out on the beach where the main full moon party normally takes place.

Now just imagine this beach at night packed with so many people that you can’t move.  Everyone is trashed.  Some people are on drugs.  Music is blaring.  People are just walking into the ocean to go to the bathroom.  They even have a special “Pass out” area that is cordoned off and monitored by locals for when you can’t even make it back to your room and you can start to realize why we didn’t want any part of that mess.  Oh and the prices triple and quadruple for the full moon party too.

The half moon party was perfect for us.  We got in a red truck with a cover over the back and benches for us to sit on and they drove us into the middle of the jungle towards the middle of the island.  When we got there, hawkers were selling all things night glow.  Hats, shirts, necklaces, and of course face/body paint.  Our hotel had signs all over the place saying that if they had to replace the sheets or anything in the room due to body paint, we’d be on the hook for it, so we decided to skip that part.

That’s us getting ready to head out for the party.

We got there and danced to some pretty decent music (don’t judge, we met on a dance floor!) Had a few over priced drinks, wished we had a damn camera on us because they had all sorts of props set up to take a picture with, and called it a night.  We can’t hang like we used to back in our early 20’s.  When we were leaving, there were tons more people getting dropped off, ready to take this thing into the early morning hours.

A few more lazy days on the beach here and we were off to our last island, Koh Tao, which would turn out to be our favorite.

Koh Tao

Another boat to another island, but this time we wouldn’t want to leave.  That might be because we knew it would be our last island in Thailand, but it might have had something to do with the room they put us up in.  We booked a hostel on this island and when we finally got there, they told us they were full.  But we had already paid, so they put us back into a truck and sent us to their sister property, which just happened to be one of the nicest dive resorts on the island.  Koh Tao is known as the place to go in Thailand if you want to learn how to scuba.  Most of the resorts on the island will give you a deep discount if you book a lesson through them, but even that price was out of our range, not to mention how much it would have cost for the lessons themselves.

So we had a week in a really nice resort room on the island, which greeted us with this view when our boat pulled up:

And these types of daily sunsets:

One night, while we were waiting for the sunset, enjoying some beers, a bunch of firecrackers went off in the distance.  This was right around the time that some bombs had gone off in Phuket, an island we were on just a few weeks ago.  People were tense.  People also apparently don’t know the difference between bombs and firecrackers because when they went off, a stampede of people began running down the beach right towards us.  So we just sat and watched as all these people went running past us, a genuine look of panic in their eyes.  I guess our years of fourth of July fireworks growing up in the states made us immune because we just watched and shrugged as they went past.  A few minutes after they stopped, people began to trickle back past us.  We didn’t say anything to them, but a few of them laughed when they saw us still chilling in the same spot, beers still in hand.

I also took my favorite picture of the entire trip here.  I had noticed this palm tree sticking out over the beach and started hatching a plan.  One day while walking out of our room, I grabbed a flower from one of the trees in our hotel and stuck it behind Mandy’s ear and asked her to keep it on.  When we got to the tree, there were some guys taking pictures of themselves on it.  We waited around for a few minutes before they finally noticed us waiting and offered to jump off so we could get our shot.

She wanted me to get on so she could take a picture of me, but I think you’ll agree I’d look ridiculous on this thing.  Mandy on the other hand…

There’s another small island called Koh Nangyuan you can go visit that has a unique beach on it, where you get to pick which side you want to be on.  Or just flip back and forth between them.

We went snorkeling for the last time on our trip here.  I’d post some pictures, but Mandy put together a great little short video of a sampling of our snorkeling through southeast Asia and here’s as good a place as any to post it:

So that’s about it for our island adventure through Thailand.  There’s one more part to talk about Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Chiang Rai before we go through Laos, and then Cambodia.