Koh Tao and Koh Phangan

We boarded the overnight boat at about 10pm, which was basically a run down cargo boat with a converted dorm room. We entered the array of bunk beds, which sadly did not seem to have had much cushioning invested in them, and tried as best as we could to get some sleep which wasn’t easy as someone had brought a small child with them and it was wailing as loudly as it could, presumably it also was not impressed with the mattress softness. We also had to make sure we were up and ready for when the boat arrived in Koh Tao at 5am.

The boat's sleeping quarters

In a sleep deprived daze, we dragged our bags off the boat and tried to work out what we could do at 5am with no reserved hotel. In the end, we sat ourselves on the beach for a while, Jonno amusing himself by taking pictures of the dogs who were having important looking meetings with each other. At 6am we were bored of this, and managed to find a coffee shop to loiter in for a while. After an overpriced breakfast (for our traveler budget), I went in search of a hotel and managed to find one not too far up the road- it had a bed, ensuite bathroom, tv, balcony and fridge (I was so tired I was sold at ‘bed’). After a quick rest but not managing to sleep, we went to explore the area.

Some important 6am meetings

Exactly what you need as an accompaniment to chicken stock

The conclusion of our exploration was this. If you enjoy diving, Koh Tao is the place to go. If not, there is not much for you. And neither me nor Jonno have dived before or had the huge urge to do the three day PADI course at the time. The roads were full of tourist shops, restaurants, hotel resorts and diving centres, and the only culture was the tourist culture. It is a beautiful place though, with some pretty beaches. The area we were staying in was Mae Haad beach, with the busier Sairee Beach about a 30 minute walk away. We carried on our exploring there, had another overpriced meal at a beach restaurant and went and sat on the beach in one of the few areas of shade under a tree. After overhearing that some very irritating girls next to us were from Epsom and feeling ashamed, we continued our wander, but then Jonno started to have a migraine so we stopped and walked back to the hotel as fast as we could so that he could get some rest.

We had been informed by a few sources that the best way of getting around Koh Tao was by renting a scooter, so the next day this is what we did. After discovering an amazing local coffee stall that served bags of iced coffee, we hopped on a bike with a map and started in the direction of one of the small coves of beach area. However, the roads were not exactly scooter friendly- most of them were sandy, rocky sheer inclines- a few were so steep the scooter could not manage both of us on the bike so I had to get off and walk parts, and I feared for our lives very frequently on the way down. We managed to make it to a couple of the beaches and they were pretty- but they were also private beaches owned by the hotel resorts so when we had just got settled at the second beach we were told the beach was closing so we had to leave. So we returned to the main Sairee Beach to watch a beautiful sunset.

Amazing bags of iced coffee

One of the many great sunsets

We spent our last full day on Koh Tao back on Sairee Beach, where we rented a kayak for an hour to see if we could see any of the sea life which was captivating so many divers. Unfortunately there was not much life going on at the surface of the water that we could see with goggles, but it was fun anyway until the point of getting back to the beach and forgetting where the kayak hire shop was so the last 10 minutes were slightly frantic.

The next day we had booked a boat to Koh Phangan where the full moon party was happening. The boat was pretty much only for westerners but they had put nice seats and a TV in it and were screening a film.We arrived in Koh Phangan and were herded into shared taxis. The cheapest hotel we could find to book online was 14 pounds, which was a small stuffy hut but the hotel did have a small swimming pool and Jacuzzi which made up for it. We found another hotel down the road for lunch, and sitting on a table nearby were an Irish couple with ridiculously high standards. They had the nerve to complain to the staff that there were some lizards in their fridge and they wanted them removed- honestly! We spent the rest of the day making the most of having a pool to sit by, trying not to be too sad that we didn’t get any fridge lizards with our room.

The luxury of a pool!

The following day we rented a scooter and went to explore the town. We found another iced coffee stall which also added jelly to their drinks, however Jonno was not its biggest fan. It was quite entertaining to watch him fishing out the cubes of jelly with a disgusted look on his face. We found some shops and managed to get all the essentials for the evening, a fluorescent top and UV paint. We were turning a corner to get to some more shops when suddenly we bumped into two of the Spanish girls who were on my yoga course in Rishikesh and had also come to Thailand. After a quick catch up with them, discovering they were staying on another part of the island and agreeing to meet up with them properly another time, we headed back to the hotel to try and have a cheeky nap before the madness of the full moon party began.

Tasty jelly drink

The full moon party had started in the eighties when a small group of travelers began to gather on the beach every full moon for a small celebration. This has now turned into a world famous event every month and they even have half-moon, black moon and quarter moon parties too. We were initially not sure if we wanted to go, as we had heard that it can just be a mass of teenagers getting horridly drunk and doing really stupid things, and also the noise and rubbish that the locals have to deal with. But a lot of places had said its worth going if you are in the area for the experience of a beach party of 10,000-30,000 people, and the locals support it as they get a lot of income from it. So we decided to see what the hype was about and go.

After a few hours of not very successful napping, we started getting ready. We had read that there was no point getting there too early otherwise you probably won’t last the night, so we aimed to leave at 11pm and actually left at midnight. We figured if we just started walking towards the direction of the party, we could grab one of the many shared taxis that were going that way. However, none of the shared taxis stopped for us so we ended up walking it which took an hour. It wouldn’t have been too bad but the temperature was still ridiculously hot and there were a lot of uphills, which made it very difficult to not sweat the UV paint off. At least we had a gin and juice concoction to keep us going! We arrived at the beach at 1am and the party was in full swing. The bars all along the beach had set up their own clubs with different genres of music, and you could wander in and out of each of them. There were also stalls with the lethal buckets of sangsom- cheap thai rum with energy drink in a bucket for as little as 3 pounds. Some people were just relaxing on the beach, there was a sleep area for people who needed a quick nap, and others had gotten far too excited and were rolling around in the sand with each other…I didn’t investigate closer! Anyway, we danced for a while and once the gin ran out we got a bucket to share, but it became all a bit too much for poor Jonno whose gin tolerance is not as fully developed, and after a few hours he sat down in the sand and said he felt sick and was ready to leave. So we left at a shamefully early 4am, and not wanting to put Jonno through the hour walk back to the hotel I went in search of a taxi. The first guy I came across said he would take us, and we agreed a price. He then motioned for us to climb aboard his motorbike. Little did I know that he was almost as gone as Jonno, and I found myself perched on the very end of the bike, trying to keep Jonno upright, trying to stop myself from sliding off the back and being aware that we were passing police checkpoints while the driver was just about managing to keep the bike upright. After a ride similar to a theme park experience without safety equipment, we arrived at the hotel and I managed to guide Jonno to the room. He then made himself quite comfortable around the toilet and stayed there for most of the night and the next day too, while I took full advantage of staying somewhere with a pool. Even though we had not survived the whole night until sunrise at the full moon party, it was good fun and worth it if you are in the area and want a drunken night out.

Every club needs one

Raving it up

After tasting the lethal bucket concoction

The following day we were due to check out of the hotel but still wanted to spend a couple more days on the island as we had not seen much of it. The Spanish girls from the yoga course had said they had a great beach hut over the other side of the island, but by the time we rode over there to check it out we realized it would have cost more than it was worth to get a taxi to take all our bags over there, so we found a nice bungalow for a reasonable price which was about an hour walk from our hotel, and we could ferry our bags there in a few trips with the scooter we had rented before we had to check out and return the scooter. After this was complete, we rented another scooter to check out the beaches around the island which were fairly busy but very pretty, with white sand and clear water, and watched another beautiful sunset to end the day. Most of the day after was also spent on one of the beaches which had turned a lot quieter overnight as tourists were leaving the island after the rush of the full moon party

We had arranged to meet up with the girls from the yoga course that evening who had told us there was a jamming session at one of the cafes in the area. Before going there, we decided to get some dinner and found a local roadside restaurant. The meal itself was fairly uneventful, but I went to the toilet before we left and returned to Jonno running his hands under water, the restaurant staff getting out their first aid kit, and the explanation ‘I’ve been bitten by a dog’. After checking that no limbs were missing (it was just a few cuts across his hand luckily) and getting a bit more of the story (Jonno was spinning the bike key in his hand and it flew off his finger and landed next to a dog- it had a collar so we think it belonged to the restaurant. The dog gave him a funny look, Jonno picked up the key and went to pat it on the head to reassure it that he wasn’t aiming for it, and the dog freaked out and bit him on the hand before running away), the next thing that came into my head was that we hadn’t had a rabies vaccination and did we need to get it checked out by a doctor. The dog didn’t seem rabid and a quick google revealed that there had not been an incident of rabies on Koh Phangan in 15 years, so in the end we decided that it would probably be fine and didn’t require a trip to the medical centre. So we continued on to the café to meet up with the girls from the yoga course. The café turned out to be a outside garden café with a hippy vibe, and most of the people there were doing yoga courses in a few nearby schools. We had a nice relaxed time chatting, listening to people playing music around a fire and playing with poi. Another Spanish girl who we talked to told us some stories of her travels in South America (which we are also planning to visit), and taught us a phrase in Spanish which translates into something like ‘what the F is your problem?’ in case we came into any trouble there, always good to know.

Jonno's almost severed hand from the bite

The next morning we had a boat and bus booked to return to Bangkok, as we had to go via there to any other destination anyway, and after talking with some people and doing a bit of research we had decided to visit Burma/Myanmar. We had to apply for a visa at the embassy in Bangkok, as this was the only way to get the visa which allowed a border crossing by land. We had a few hours on a boat, a three hour wait for a bus, and an overnight bus before returning to Bangkok.

The islands of Koh Tao and Koh Phangan are beautiful and there are some amazing beaches, but definitely felt like more of a holiday destination than a cultural travelling experience for us. It was nice to have a few days relaxing by the beach and we might return for a beach resort, sunbathing and cocktail drinking holiday in the future but they are places that have been made to meet the needs of westerners and we did not feel like they gave us an experience of the real Thailand.