Our first night on Ko Phangan (the 3rd of March) we checked into a little bungalow-style guesthouse in Haad Rin with two rooms for the five of us. At around 420 baht per night it was rather nice.
We were all pretty wrecked from an entire day of busses and ferries, so just had a couple quiet drinks and acclimatised to the area a little.
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The next morning the group of us went to check into our next accommodation - Drop in Club Resort.
Now there is a bit of a story behind this place. I initially found the property on booking.com late last year; it had a rating of around 7.5 from only a handful of reviews and looked really ritzy in the photos. The plan was to get a villa for us to hang out in and a three bed family room for the rest of us.
After booking the place I started doing more research into where it actually was - Google Maps didnt seem to provide the right answer as to where the actual place was. I then came across the resort on Trip Advisor. Wow. On Trip Advisor they had a couple hundred reviews and the average score was around 2/10, with a rank 89 of 92 properties on Ko Phangan. Great. The reviews said things like dirty bedding, rude staff, non-functioning utilities..
Most bookings on booking.com have free cancellation - not this place; half the cost of the room must be paid to cancel. Might as well see what it was like I figured.
We rocked up at reception and the bloke behind the counter had no idea we were coming. He sort of looked at me like "you booked this how?", not actually knowing the property was still even listed on booking.com. I showed him the receipt and he must have seen the price we were willing to pay because after that he changed his tone.
We ended up with two villas, one of which was the biggest on the whole resort - the master villa so to speak. It had a huge bathroom complete with (broken) jacuzzi, big shower and two toilets.
This place is just crazy. Never would it fly back home. The balcony handrails are all eaten out by termites and barely standing; most things dont work (such as the elevator); the villa pool is dirty and probably not worth swimming in; there are abandoned bars and restaurants scattered around...
It is just derelict. From what I can tell the property has been around since the late 90's, and in its prime it would have been an incredible place to stay. But now...
I have heard from the American hostel owners at Bodega that Thai workmanship is not exactly up to scratch. Thai's build things to work, not to last. It is easy to see that with no maintenance and a poor base this place just got totally run down and kept deteriorating. Its pretty well FUBAR.
After all this writing about how shoddy Drop in Club is, it has actually been a great place to stay. We haven't been cramped up in a little dorm for four nights - we have had serious space to move around. The master villa we have has a balcony area covering more than any accommodation I have stayed in to date. In the time we've spent here I have only seen four other people staying.
It also has character. Walking around you can see how pimp it would have been to stay here, but at the same time, you can be amazed at how fucked it is now.
Chris also bought a pack of firecrackers that we have been throwing into a little pond in one of the rooms, or at least trying to..
Any other place we have stayed would have kicked us out for the amount of noise we have made with these crackers, but here we have pretty well free reign - its crazy!
The five of us found a little Thai restaurant a few minutes away from us and a few minutes from the beach; it was one of the cheapest with all Thai dishes costing around the $4 mark or less. We proceeded to eat almost every meal at this place. The staff began to know what drinks we were going to order.
We spent the night checking out the beach and hanging out at "Mellow Mountain", the bar situated up the mountain at the end of Haad Rin beach. It had a hell of a view of the beach and we knew by the next day it was going to turn into total chaos.
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Thursday, 5th of March, full moon day.
We woke up late, after midday some time. Everyone wanted to take things pretty easy in preparation for a big night ahead.
The party officially starts at sundown and officially finishes at sunup, but people start and finish much earlier and later than that!
We ate, we had a few drinks starting in the late afternoon and we walked down to check out the scene at around 8.30pm. Still pretty quiet.
A bunch of people were wearing UV paint, so we thought why not give it a go and buy some. We spent the next two hours in the room painting each other with crazy designs and just general stupid stuff. The UV painting was half of the fun of actually going out!
We head down as a group around 11pm and by now the party has really started to pick up. The alcohol buzz from earlier was beginning to wear off but we all just wanted to go nuts and dance.
Walking along the crowded beach to the north, every 15m of so is a different hotel playing different music. We settled on a place called Tommy Resort playing harder electronic dance and stayed there for while. I was really starting to feel the heat from the crowd and all the movement; it was totally packed out.
Adam and I went out to grab some water and a beer - the last drink of the night. The enormous energy from the tens of thousands of people packed onto this crazy beach in Thailand was enough to keep the spirits up to dance well into the night. I danced until around 4am completely sober.
I stayed up until sunrise, watching it from the rooftop bar at our resort before heading to bed.
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Once again, we didn't do a whole lot the day following the full moon party. No one in our group was hungover, just completely exhausted from so much movement and energy.
I ended up meeting up with Nathan, the Canadian I met in Osaka a few weeks earlier. I knew he was going to be around for the party so it was good to catch up and share stories about where our travels have taken us since we last met.
He had spent time in Myanmar (Burma) since leaving Japan and was following pretty much a reverse route of where I had been - Phangan, Phi Phi, Phuket, Bangkok. We have decided to try to meet up on the 14th of March for his birthday in Bangkok and travel up north to Chiang Mai together. It's not much time for either of us so we'll see how that ends up!
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Yesterday was my last full day with my mates from back home.
Adam, Chris and Errica went off to organise their ferry and bus back to Bangkok while I laid by the pool and read The Hobbit on my ebook reader. 7:30am they had to leave - 1.5 hours ago as I'm writing this.
We had an early last dinner together at a new restaurant. I splurged and had a burger - Western food is generally much more expensive than Thai food over here.
Adam, Chris, Fitzey and I had been toying with the idea of getting matching tattoos for the trip since before we left Australia. Ideas were thrown around such as full moons, owls, traditional Thai writing...
"I dont want no Asian shit on me" -Chris
Adam, Fitzey and I checked out a tattoo parlour not far from the beach. We were quoted 500 baht for the traditional Thai writing to be done with a bamboo stick. Sweet we thought, what a bargain - only $20.
We went back to the room and started thinking; we wanted something more unique and meaningful than Thai writing that none of us could read or understand. Then we had the idea to put English writing in a Thai style.
We sketched out a design and gave it to the shop. Adam had the idea to make it cursive to make it harder to read and look like Thai from a distance. The white guy running the shop quoted us 1500 baht for the four of us - buy three, get one free, he said. 375 each, even better!
After fiddling with fonts on the computer and getting it perfect we got it under way. Chris was first up - who, like me, had never had a tattoo. Chris was nervous about getting it done; he didn't like the idea of being constantly stabbed with a sharp stick.
I wasn't so nervous myself - I've donated blood and had immunizations, they generally aren't too bad. After they started on Chris I was happy to hear that it wasn't as painful as he thought it was going to be, and by my turn it really wasnt.
We didn't finish until around 3am. Fitzey went up first to hand over the cash, a 500 baht note. The dude just looked at him like "uhh, where is the rest". Now I dont know if it was some kind of break down in communication, a slip of the tongue on his behalf, or a flat out scam, but we all heard all night was five-hundred and fifteen-hundred thrown around, but apparently it was five-thousand each or fifteen-thousand for us all. 3,750 baht, around $140AUD each. Ouch.
I had to run to the ATM to grab extra cash by this point - I don't carry more than 1,500 on me ever, and I barely had enough stashed back at the room.
Even with paying 10x more than I expected, I am still happy with it. It has a great story behind it and I'll always remember the crazy party in Thailand with my closest mates.
It reads "Full Moon Party, 5 March Koh Phangan, Thailand 2015".
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This morning I had to say goodbye to Chris, Adam and Errica. Very few words were spoken between us, just big hugs and a few tears. I love you guys for coming out and experiencing this part of the country with me. I don't know when I will get to see you guys again but whenever it is it already cant come soon enough.
Man, goodbyes suck.
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