Well it is probably more than fair to say that this day did not start very well, in fact it was easily the worst part of our trip so far. Early in the morning I heard some shouting coming from just in front of me on the bus. An English lad just in front of me was holding what looked like a Thai bloke by his shirt asking "what the 'f' are you doing", he pushed him away and the bloke ran down stairs. The English lad claimed the Thai bloke had been crawling around the floor when it was pitch black on board. Everybody began checking the belongings and it turned out that a girl was missing a credit card. This was all and she wasn't sure if she had lost it but it did make everyone suspicious around us. It wasn't long before we began to be worried about our bags in the boot of the bus. It wasn't too long after that we stopped, although we were not at the pier ready to catch the bus to Koh Phangan, we were still an hour away and didn't have a clue where we were. As we got off the bus the Thai bloke who was on the bus earlier quickly got in a car and drove off and our bags had already been unloaded. We were told to leave our bags and sit down but I wanted to check mine, I knew I had $300 in emergency cash in my bag. It was gone! I told Zo to check hers and her emergency cash had gone too, about $150. We told everybody else to check their bags and basically anything that was of any value had been taken. We were quite lucky compared to some; a French couple had lost 350 Euros, 2 passports, 2 ID cards and an iPad. I confronted the driver of the bus but he just played ignorant. He was obviously in on it but what could we do, we couldn't call the police because we didn't know where we were.Well the only thing we could do was wait until we got to Koh Phangan and report it to the police there.

Well getting away from that now, we have thought about it really and concentrated on enjoying ourselves. When we eventually got to the pier and began to board the boat I noticed a familiar face standing next to me. It was Tom who we had been trekking with all the way back in Chiang Mai. Had a good chat about what we had both been up to since seeing each other last. When we got to Koh Phangan we quickly settled into our bungalow. It had a great location, only meters from the beach, however it was very basic. Fan and cold shower, although with how hot it was outside I was glad to have a cold one.

Our first whole day we had rented a moped, still with Tom and Lisa, and took a trip into Haad Rin, the location of the Full Moon Party. It is a gorgeous beach with crystal clear water, we had brought anything to go swimming in today but we made plans to come back the following day to do so. We stopped off at the English pub, The Mason's Arms, on our way to the east coast. After a swift pint and game of darts we headed up the east coast to look at the beaches up there. On way back we stopped at a lake we had spotted earlier. They had built a trapeze swing into the water and also had inflatables in there. They were in the process of building a Total Wipeout style course on the lake; almost wish we had come 2 months later when it would be finished, although Tom and I did have some fun with what was there already. That evening we stopped off at the Amsterdam Bar to watch the sunset. Such a great place to watch it from, I came here 3 years ago to watch it too!

Our second whole day in Koh Phangan was the day/night of the famous Full Moon Party. First we headed into Haad Rin to spend some time on the beach and top up the tans. Next we went shopping for clothes to wear that night, it seems that everybody tends to but Full Moon t-shirts/vests that have luminous colours on them; there would be plenty of neon lights to show them up later. We also brought ourselves a some luminous body paints to, you can get people to do it for you at the party but we decided it would be far cheaper to do it ourselves, even none of us would ever claim to be a good artist! We also bumped into Andy and Kaylee who we travelled through Laos with, spoke with them for a bit and tried to arrange to meet later at the party, we never saw each other. After we went back to our bungalow to get some sleep to make sure we could last the whole night later on. The party was already well under way when we arrived at around 9pm. There were fire displays going on, plenty of people trying to play skip rope with a large rope that was on fire, lots of locals selling buckets of very cheap alcohol and music coming from every direction you could look. We brought ourselves a bucket and began to join in with the rest of the party. Although not attempting the fire rope we did give the slide a go, where you have to go down a slide with flames coming up either side. We spent most of the night drinking and dancing, pretty much the same as everyone else. We got back to our bungalow at around 7am, thought we had lasted pretty well.

The following day you will not be surprised to hear that we were not in the mood to do very much at all. We did not get up until about 1:30pm, all we did from there was grab some food at our accommodation, play some cards in the afternoon and get some more food with Tom and Lisa at the food market…early night was more than on the cards. Our last whole day was spent riding around the island again. First was breakfast at our favourite breakfast spot, the local bakery. We set off in search of Koh Ma, an island just off Koh Phangan that could be reached at certain times when the tide was out over the sand. First attempt we missed the turning and ended up pretty much back in the town we were staying at, only about 1 hour wasted there. The second time we found, although the tide was in and the weather not that great some we didn't go over to it just got the mandatory photos and grabbed a drink at a local beach bar when it began to rain. When the rain eased off we headed back via one of Koh Phangan's waterfalls, worst we had seen so far and it's fair to say I wouldn't recommend anyone going to see it. That evening we went to the local market they have in Thong Sala (the town where we were staying) and the food market…again! Zo and Lisa needed to use the internet so Tom and I hit the bar for a casual beer or 4. Koh Samui tomorrow.