We got to Ko Phangan 6 days before the half moon party to make sure that we were able to get somewhere to stay for the big night. It wasn't too much hastle getting there as we just had to hop on a high speed ferry for an hour and a half from Ko Samui. Once we got there we decided to head to Hat Rin where we thought the party would be held. Turns out the half moon party is actually a half moon "festival" and it's not held on the beach but it happens in the jungle...

So in Phangan we found a great beach and spent a lot of time doing nothing on it! Luckily one day we went home early and it decided to rain as soon as we got back to the bungalow. It was the heaviest rain I have ever seen but within half an hour the sun was shining again and the ground completely dried up. It was on this day that I got a bit peckish and this in turn led me to lose a quarter of my molar tooth to the Thai equivalent of a chewit...great, so I'm on a remote(ish) island with a big hole in my tooth and i curse myself for not bringing an emergency dental repair kit (The one thing that is not in my bag)! The doctor told me not to go to the dentist on this island and to wait until I got to Krabi as this is mainland and they will have more dentists there. So I was sent away with sound advice..."eat on the other side of your mouth"...doctors are so insightful.

The day of the half moon festival arrived and we warmed up with a vodka bucket on the beach...it was valentines day so there was a big fire display on the beach and the fire throwers were amazing...I do not understand how they have any eyebrows left with the speed they throw the sticks around! Once we had finished our bucket we got a taxi to the festival. When I say taxi, I mean pick up truck loaded with as many people as could possibly fit into the back of it...then some more. After this white knuckle ride we got dropped of in the middle of the jungle and headed towards the UV lights and banging music. Inside the big gates was amazing, we were surrounded by giant palm trees and there were so many people on this giant dancefloor which had DJ booth way above the crowd. There were UV lights and glow sticks a plenty! There were a few bars and you got a free drink with your ticket. We had our free drink and ordered in more buckets! There were so many people all dancing around, some with crazy UV tatoos, most people with a bucket. All in all it was a really good night, we had such a laugh and drank a lot and to our surprise we were not hungover the next day, excellent!! (We only took one camera so these pictures are on Barry's blog www.offexploring.com/barryfrench).

We left for Ko Tao the day after the day after half moon and it was enough to make the best of travellers sea sick. When we arrived at Ko Tao we were surrounded by Thai people offering taxi rides and accomodation but we decided that we would walk along the beach to find somewhere to stay ourselves. This was a mistake at midday so we jumped in a pick up truck which took us to the beach that we wanted to go to. Once we got there we had to decide whether to go left or right and we went for left...we walked for what seemed like hours and looked at a few places and finally turned up at a place with a pool and thought we would treat ourselves for the night and stay in a nice place. We decided that we really were not treating ourselves once we got into the room as it was not worth the money that we paid at all! It was big and had a TV but that was it really. Turns out we never even went in the pool as we went for a walk to find the beach and realised that we should have turned right at the beginning. There were so many amazing places if we had just turned right! Well we found the beach and it really wasn't that big so we went on search of this other one. We walked that day in total 6 miles, in the blazing sun, in flip flops only for me to be chased by dogs who wanted to play with my skirt, I was not up for playing with potentially rabid dogs so remained calm and rapidly shot into a bar until the dogs disapeared. Turns out the closer beach was the better one.

The next day we found this really nice little bungalow. It was really small and just fit a bed in it and a wet room and some room to shift around but was really nice. The lady who owned it couldn't do enough for us. She gave us lilo's, mats to lay on, snorkels and food all with the biggest smile you have ever seen. The beach we went to was amazing. It was just across the road from where we were staying and it was just us and a couple of other people on it! The sea was crystal clear and there was not a wave in sight and we were nicely shaded at midday by some palm trees.

Ko Tao was the place where I witnessed what it must be like to eat fire. I ordered a green curry and barry had a red curry and we asked for them not to be too spicy. He told me he would sort that out and told Barry that the red curry is not too hot anyway. All I can really say is that I would not like to try the spicy version. We drank a litre and a half of water by the time half of our curries had gone! There were some great beach bars on Ko Tao. One night we just sat there on little floor cusions on the sand drinking cocktails and looking at the stars. I could have stayed there forever! We wished we had spent more time here but hey, there is no law about not coming back one day.