Today we decided that we’d had enough of Phi Phi and decided to nick off to party capital Ko Pha Ngan. Our boat left at eleven thirty, and we were up early and had a few hours to kill, so we did what one would obviously do in such a situation – climb a mountain. Phi Phi has a massive peak at either end of the island, so we picked one and climbed up a crapload of concrete steps to get to a rocky outcrop at the top. Unbelievable views. I’ll upload some pics when I get them off Ariel.
After we reluctantly hiked back down to the pier we found our ferry, and after a day of alternating between boats and buses we eventually got to Ko Pha Ngan in the evening. For the first time haggling became completely impossible – literally every taxi on the entire island charged an outrageous 100 baht to go anywhere, a fact that took us a good half our of asking around to accept.
The island is famous in the region for its amazing beach parties to celebrate the full moon, and to a lesser degree half moon and even no moon. That said, there’s a party on the beach every night. The big nights just happen to draw crowds of tens of thousands. We arrived on the night of the half moon. We got to the party section of the island, wondered why it seemed fairly empty, and got some impressively cheap (and awe inspiringly bad) accommodation, which we later discovered to be about five metres from the main beach. After some asking around, we realised that we were in the location of the full moon parties. The half moon parties are off in the jungle somewhere.
We pay the absurd cab fair and go to the half moon party. It should be noted that taxis on the island are nothing like ones anywhere else. It’s like a tiny ute with some seats in the back. You sit in the back, completely open to the road. If you don’t hold on to something you can easily topple out. Anyway, the party had a crazily high entrance fee, and upon getting in I was devastated to discover nothing but terrible terrible trance music without variation, and drinks prices higher than that of Melbourne. Awesome. I actually can’t think of a way the party could have possibly been worse, short of an all night Abba marathon. Ariel somehow listens to the music and manages not to seriously consider suicide, in fact he even enjoys it. I lasted about half an hour before paying the taxi fee AGAIN and bailing back to the beach. This time the taxi is full, but they insist on taking my money and gesturing for me to get on. As the taxi starts to leave, I realise there are no seats at all, so I jump on the back and hold onto the roof racks for dear life as the taxi shoots off. The ten or so people inside decide they’d rather be uncomfortable than see me fall to my death, so I end up lying on top of five or six strangers for the rest of the trip. What a night.
Now I have a cheap bucket (Thai whisky this time) beside me and a tiny laptop with which to write my blog while the music from the beach rages behind me. Could be worse.
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