The Black Moon Party

Waking up with a hangover in the early evening completely disorientated is not the one! Is is 8pm or 8am or.....and what day is it again?

Despite this, temporary amnesia as to how rough I felt after my last foray to KC Beach Club kicks in and I find myself heading towards there again. Tonight is the Black Moon Party at Cha Cha Moons, so I decide to check out the location beforehand. It turns out it's at the opposite end of Chaweng Beach, next door to Ark Bar. Zharita had told me how much she hated Ark, and I nodded along whilst secretly making a mental note to check it out as it sounded like my kinda place...."fire-dancers, drunken youngsters raving raucously and pumping music....yeah, sounds awful mate..."

I book my ferry crossing to Koh Phangnan for Tuesday morning and decide to grab a Chang at Ark, where 2 cool Aussie dudes called Sonny and Brex strike up a conversation with me immediately. We chew the fat for a while and shoot some beers, belly-laughing and getting increasingly rowdy. They are flying to South Korea in the afternoon, but I still easily persuade them to join me at KC Beach for a few hours first. We sink yet more beers, dance and smoke some menthol shisha as the DJ pours aural sunshine over the crowd. They reluctantly stumble off to make their flight, making loose plans for us to meet up again in a week's time when we will all be on Koh Phangnan. They are replaced instantly with 2 Aussie girls, also from Melbourne, in a kind of Aussie tag-team - Talia and Amy see the guys leave and come to chat to me. Cue wild dancing on sunbeds, cocktails, craziness and an Israeli dude getting a bit fresh with one of the girls, before I extricate myself from the carnage and head back for a pre-party power nap.

Waking an hour or so later I rinse away the fuzzy head in the shower and power on down to Cha Cha Moons for the Black Moon Party. A couple of young German guys rush up to me and apologise for being late. Seeing my blank expression they explain that I invited them to the party earlier in the day and we arranged to meet...I swear I have never seen them before in my life....have I?! I think I style it out convincingly....

The drinks flow, the music get louder and harder and the atmosphere is electric. A stray dog casually plonks himself in the middle of the dancefloor and remains there all night, looking bemused as the crowd closes in around him, bouncing up and down, and he is seemingly oblivious, even managing to fall asleep...

By 4.30am I decide to slip off, saying my goodbyes to my new Thai BFF, a gay guy called Pok, before making a cheeky pit-stop at Mac Donald's for a dirty burger. I meet several other partied-out travellers and we chat for an hour or so before heading home, me in the wrong direction as usual. Luckily I bump into a guy I'd met earlier in the evening and he points me in the right direction, my head finally hitting the pillow at 6.30am.....goodnight/morning....Zzzz