We arrived in Ko Phangan on the 21 feb in time for the world famous beach party which was scheduled for the 22nd feb. After a few hours it became obvios the beach party had been postponed back to the 24 feb due to thai elections. This interferred with our plans as we wanted to experience the full moon party but also we didn't want to stay there that long as we wanted to go back to Koh Tao to do some more scuba diving! This meant we didn't go back to Koh Tao and we are now in Phang'an, in south west thailand. The lonely planet books and every person will tell you that you will never get accomodation in Koh Phangan near the beach, Haad rin but we decided not to take any notice of these people and books and got a taxi from the harbour to the beach to Haad rin to look for a place. We split up and after a while actually found somewhere about a 2 minute from the beach, we couldn't believe our luck! Postponingment (if thats a word) probably was the reason we got somewhere.

The next day we decided to enter a beach volleyball tournament, teams of four so we were put with a french guy called vincent. I was a 2 day tournament, we started off horribly bad, lo0sing our first game and narrowly beating a team with 2 girls in, in the second game (its a dog eat dog world out there!), but this secured our spot for the next day. The next day we competed, somehow learnt how to play volleyball - setting and spiking etc, and won match after match. Aftyer all that we won the tournament winning a tidy 500 baht each! So if ever it comes up in apub quiz - the 'Guernsies' won the Haad Rin full moon beach volleyball tournament feb 2008 - now you know. The organiesers had a pretty tough time pronouncing the word guernsies - opting for the easier phrase the goonies.

The full moon party itself was crazy! About 30,000 people on a beach dancing to different dj's. It was a bit of a late one for me, i didn't return to my room until 9.00 the following morning!! i was pickpocketed at some point, although i didn't lose much - a couple hundred baht and my student card! i haven't used that student card yet so i wasn't devastated, in asia i never take my bank cards in my wallet, in case of such a thing happeneing. Pierre was ill (again) so didn't have anything to drink and he returned to the room fairly early and i lost ryan in the crowd - so i walked around checking different things out, dancing a little and talking to people. Sun rise was good & starnge at the same time. All is good, the following night we took the overnight boat to Surat Thani & then bus to Phang'An which is near Phuket where we aty for a couple of days before phuket. The boat was crazy, i thnk about 3 times the capcity was one the boat - literally people sleeping on top of each other. Luckily the place we booked our tickets, got us a taxi to the port early so we could get beds - we had no idea it would be so busy!