Koh Phangan...

My last week in Chumpon was well...a little boring so I decided to ditch school (eesh!) and get a boat over to Koh Phangon. This island hosts the famous full moon parties every month and it just so happened that the night I was there was a full moon. A friend of mine from London was staying there and kindly let me crash at his. After being introduced to his friends we had a couple of drinks and food at their hotel then headed down to the beach to check out the party. It was crazy! So much fire and disregard for safety! Some guys were spinning round these long poles which were lit on fire, they had obviously been doing this for a long time and it was very impressive. Not too far away from these guys however it all got a bit silly. First was the big slide that had two poles on fire at the bottom which you had to go through with a crash mat at the bottom although most people just seemed to end up in a heap in the sand, then there was the skipping rope. This was a huge rope, again set on fire, with someone holding each end and anyone could just run in for a go of skipping in the middle. I remember being quite good at this at school but decided against seeing if I was still as good due to the fact that the rope was on fire! All night people kept trying their luck, running in and out and not doing too badly but you saw so many people being hit in the face with the rope or falling and landing in the fire and all of this seemed to only get more people wanting to try! We decided it best to just watch from a distance. Then onto the buckets, they were selling these 'buckets' which got filled with a large amount of alcohol, a mixer, ice and straws all for the price of about 2 quid...hmm...I stuck to beer! The party was quite an experience and I'm glad I got to go and had a really good night. Unfortunately I could only stay the one night as I had to head back to Chumpon the next day so said my goodbyes and got on the boat back. The boat ride was full of people who were either still drunk or very hungover and pretty much everyone still covered in fluorescent paint. The majority of people got off at Koh Tao so I then moved to the deck at the front of the boat for the rest of my journey were I got to watch the sunset into the sea...nice! My last day in Chumpon was a good one, got to mainly just relax on the beach and have some drinks with some of the friends I had made whilst staying there then off to bed.