After a 24 hour marthon traveling session I arrived on Koh Phangan. After leaving the Perhentian Islands I'd shared a taxi to the Thai border and then walked over the boreder into Thailand. The plan was to get the train from there up to Surat Thani which is the closest place to get to the islands from. I was a bit nervous about it all as I'd read that the soutehrn 4 provinces of Thailand are actually in the midle of a war and that beheadings occur quite regularly in the villages! But we al got to the train station fine, balancing with our huge backpacks on the backs of mopeds ars they zipped in and out of the traffick. That was probably the most dangerous part now I come to think aobut it! The train then took 10 hours to get up to Surat Thani. By the time we got there it was about 9 p.m. and we'd left the island that morning at 8. We were met by a load of Thais offering taxi service to the port so that we could get the overnight boat. Not knowing what else to do we all jumped in. I was pleased we decided to go with it as the ferry turned out to be great! Everyone had a little bed assigned to them and it was surprisingly comfy. We woke up 8 hours later to find ourselves in Koh Phangan. Arriving at 6 in the morning has the advantage of giving you lotsd of time to find a room. But by 8 a.m. we'd found rooms in a place called Haad Yuan and were wondering what to do with the rest of the day!

Our rooms were realy cool stilt huts above the water and the rocks over looking the beach. The whole place had a very layed back feel. But it was only a 5 minute boat ride around the bay from Haad Rin where the Full Moon partywould be the next night. In preeperation for the party we spent our time doing absolutely nothing except chilling out near the beach.

The night of the party we headed round to Haad Rin about midnight. As the beach came into view we could see that it was absolutley packed (mostly with Brits!) On one side of the beach you have people drunkenly falling into the sea and on the other there's rows and rows of little booths selling 'buckets' of lethal cocktails.

To be continued...