Me again! welcome dear friends to the wonderful world of Ko Phangan! (although i should proberly tell you im actually in Bangkok again right now...all will be explained)

Sooooo, we arrived in Ko Phangan around mid to late evening after a somewhat tiring journey involving numurous buses, ferrys, tuk tuk's and more buses! one point to remember for future knowledge, if someone picks you up in a mini bus and says they are taking you to the big bus ready for your really long journey - they're not. the really long journey will be in said mini bus where you will be squashed in with everyone elses crap and luggage for nearly 5 hours. just so you know.

Anyway, when we got to our lovely power beach resort we quickly decided we required air conditioning and a tv in our room, something that our current booking did not allow for. so we upgraded for the good of our future hangovers (obviously hangover = the need for fresh air and a tv!) and settled into our lovely little room set right on the private beach...its such a hard life :P we even managed to make friends with people who were staying next door to us...i cant remember their names but i will always know them as naked canada guy and friends! why you ask? well, when they called us and we went over to chat, it turned out they were all from canada, and one of them was kind of hiding round the corner in the room and when we enquired as to why, we were invited to view proof that he was infact naked with a VERY small flannel covering his special place...hence why he is naked canada guy and they are his friends. See, all very simple when you think about it!

The next day was the culmination of all our experience and research into the dreadful entities that are Thai Drinks Buckets. The Full Moon Party. A monthly ordeal that started out as someones birthday party and now lays claim to being the cause of over 200 passed out bodies, hundreds of injuries, and thousands of body paint covered ruined items of clothing found on Hadrin beach at the end of each month. And boy was it fun :P We prepared for the monsterous event by obviously spending the day shopping and finding the perfect full moon t-shirts to wear that very evening - it turned out we were the only ones with our particular shirts which was somewhat of an achievment if i do say so myself! So it was that we had people coming up to us all night congratulating us on the sheer wonderment that was out shirts! (they really were quite cool :P) So, as evening came we geared up with our disposable cameras and what was left of our dignity and headed out to the beach. now, before i continue, i should warn you most of what im about to say was gathered post-party from pictures and is kind of a culmination of both mine and alice's memories...both of which were slightly on the fuzzy side!

SO from what i can gather the following events occured in some order:

- we got some body paint art done up our legs and arms and on our faces - really quite good though!

- callum, our one time friend from bangkok, smoked a joint in front of an undercover policeman and got arrested - bad times for him!

- we saw a dog running along the beach and i found this so shocking and entertaining that i felt the need to chase said dog for about 5 minutes shouting 'THATS A DOG, THATS A DOG!' at the top of my voice - dont worry no dogs were harmed in the making of that perticular embarassing event!

- I made it my duty to take pictures of myself with all the passed out people on the beach...there were a lot of them.

- we made a friend called Gustav who's neck was burnt from one fo the fire shows - he gave us his crap to look after whilst he swam in the sea to try and cool it down - sea salt does NOT help burns.

- I projectile vomited in spectacular fashion on the way back to the hotel...4 times. I suspect (and hope) this was the last portion of the evening.

And that was Tuesday.

Wednesday, as you can imagine, was a bit fo a write off in terms of actually doing anything. We both woke up fairly early in considerable amounts of pain (although 22 year old hangovers are apparently a LOT worse than 18 year old ones!) and spent the next half an hour using up the rest of the camera film taking pictures of each other and giggling histerically...until that hurt too and then we just lay there. infact, the situation was so dire in my case that i actually forgot i was in thailand and rang my mum, as i would usually do at home from upstairs in my room, to ask her to go and get me mcdonalds. She wouldnt. She said it would be cold by the time it got to me. She thought she was funny. I didnt get my mcdonalds. i did however get an incredibly dirty hotdog from the local 7/11 when we finally managed to be vertical long enough to make it into town - my god that hotdog was good! I mean seriously, anyone who has been travelling with me will know that i have wanted a dirty street hotdog basically everyday up to this point, and Alice, wonder that she is, found me one by stalking a girl on the street who happened to be eating one whilst i was in a shop. Now THATS a friend!

The next day we decided to do something that both of us wanted to do but neither of us would do if we were on our own. Can you tell what it is yet? No? Well im not surprised! we had Colonics!! Yes friends and family members we paid a stranger for the privilage of putting a tube up our bums for half an hour....strange? Yes. Embarrassing? A little. Am i proud of our adventurous spa treatment? Damn right I am! I figure its one of those things that you cant go through life without doing, and now i can say that i have done it...and no i did not take pictures. On a seperate note, the retreat we went to to get it done was absolutly amazing! it was literally on top of a mountain but when we finally made it up there, i have to say it was one of the most ebautiful and peaceful places I have ever seen. And everyone there was so healthy and happy and relaxed, i could have stayed there for a long long time and been perfectly content...but not with a tube up my bum, half an hour was perfectly adequate for that. We celebrated our little adventure by having dinner in town at a really nice little place that happened to be showing 'step brothers' on the big screen (always a good film!) and by getting our pictures from the previous evening developed. If anyone has seen the bit at the end of 'the hangover' where they look at the pictures for the first time..it was scarily like that! i think we actually disgusted ourselves slightly with our behaviour...just a little :P

So that leads to Friday, 2nd of april and day 74 of my trip. We left Ko Phangan at around midday and started our ridiculously long journey back to Bangkok - our 14 hour journey to be precise! we took a truck to a ferry to a bus to a tuk tuk to an office where we waited for 2 hours to get on a bus to another bus to Bangkok. By the time we got there it was 4am on Saturday and our plan to do some last minute interneting and mcdonalds'ing didnt really happen. infact we ended up checking into Buddy's Lodge on good old Khaosan Road on a 'no questions asked, straight payment up front' basis for about 8 hours until we had to check out at midday! im pretty sure they assumed we were doing something naughty...im not quite sure what though...

It was at this point i may add that i discovered my second debit card had been stolen along with a couple of hundred baht, leaving me with a very panic ridden mother and one surviving bank card in my possesion. I however have got to the point where i cant/dont worry about this sort of thing because if it can happen, it will happen, and trust me it has happened - so there is no point getting upset over stolen s*** :P And so my thailand adventures have come to a close, I am currently at the airport waiting for my flight to Vietnam and Alice is about to be whisked off to New Zealand for a while. I have to admit, i have had the most wonderful time in thailand, its been everything i hoped it would be and more! i think its safe to say though that the people definitly made it as opposed to the places - beaches are just beaches after a while, but a group of people or just one person that you can have fun with, laugh with, get into trouble with and embarress yourself with, well thats a pretty damn good thing to find! Its strange to think im not going to be travelling with Alice any more, we have spent a good 3 weeks together and gone palces we never planned on going and done things that we definitly never planned on doing and its just been ridiculously fun all the way! i honestly dont know if i would have survived the night boat and long journeys with a smile on my face if i was with anyone else! But we both have other places to go and other people to see (we are very important incase you were wondering...) so in about 10 minutes we are planning a massive emotional movie like goodbye infront of my gate and my god is it going to be dramatic. The perfect ending to a brilliant month.

Bye Thailand xxx