Well.I.Ain't...

For my final day in Koh Phangan I attempt to relax, but it's as hot as an oven, my brain is fried and my insides are churning...not the most pleasant combination. I bump into Will, who I ended the previous night chatting to on the beach and he is equally hanging: he's not so much Will.I.Am today as Well.I.Ain't....so we give up on sunbathing and head to our respective rooms to sweat it out and wind ourselves in our bedsheets in a vain attempt to regain full health.
Feeling better later on, I once again head out alone. This time I decide to stick to Fanta, and it's amazing how detached I feel, watching the night's events unfold as a spectator rather than the ringleader. This place is definitely not the one for anyone wanting anything other than alcohol-fuelled partying, so I turn it in early for once, in bed before 1am! (for the first time since I arrived), ready for the ferry to the much more chilled island of Koh Tao in the morning, where I have already lined up some German buddies I met online to show me around and find me a place to stay. Good skills, huh?!

Isreali Men, hallelujah Isreali Men...not!

My Irish pals have departed for Koh Tao, but I decide that I'm having so much fun in Koh Phangan that I'll hang around for a few more days and join them later, keeping in touch via Facebook or Whatsapp in the meantime. This however means I'm a Billy-No-Mates once more, making puppy-dog eyes at strangers until eventually someone takes pity on me and makes the fatal mistake of smiling or allowing eye contact. Then that's it, I'm away again, chewing off the ear of aforementioned victim until they regret ever opening their mouths in the first instance. However, after a few buckets of Sangsom and coke, my not-so-secret weapon in the mate-finding process, the ice is well and truly melted and suddenly we are the firmest of friends...
There is one particular occasion when this method is not applicable...when approached by a pack of predatory Israelis. When they strike, I clam up quicker than a tired shopkeeper shutting up shop for the day, ramming my stuff into my bag and making a hasty retreat. Don't get me wrong, those guys love are party and are great fun in general, but as a lone female you won't stand a chance as they are more handy than your average octopus...eep!
So when Isreali Tom makes a play for me by the pool it's all I can do not to drown myself in the deep end as a means of escape. Steve happens to be passing with his visiting mates at that exact moment, and shoots me enquiring and disapproving glances as Tom attempts his corniest lines. Give me strength!
That evening I wander the streets of Koh Phangan alone, absorbing the heady mix of pumping house and techno music, buckets with multiple straws being sucked by several partygoers, heads down as they rev up into fifth gear for another full-on night of fun. There are 7-11 supermarkets, massage shops, beauty parlours, clothes shops, street-food stalls and a million tattooists all vying for business, not to mention taxi drivers and taxi-boat touts, bar staff and tour reps....sensory overload as I attempt to take it all in...
I watch a fire show, as Tom the Isreali once again approaches stealth-like, circling me like a Great White, flashy his gleaming veneers as he goes in for the kill. We head to Cactus Bar, my second home on the island, where I am rescued by a group of Northern lads, who haul me up onto the table and we dance energetically, Tom talking animatedly...to my ankles...
Another night, another trip up to Mushroom Mountain, another series of buckets, another 5am dip in the ocean, only this time one of the guys in the group gets paranoid and starts bleating about someone stealing his valuables from the beach whilst we're swimming. A quick scout around in the darkness and I manage to retrieve every 'missing' item from the sand, which amazes even me as I'm not known for my 20/20 vision, especially at the current level of intoxication. I am suddenly the hero of the hour, the mood lifts once more and we party on into the night....

Tapping Up My Tinders

The good thing about Tinder when overseas is that most of the people on there are resident in that country, so have an insider knowledge of the best parties, restaurants, beaches etc - better than any Lonely Planet guide, and with a hunky tour guide thrown in for free...sweet!
So when Steve offers to spend the following day taking me to the best restaurants and showing me around the island it's a total no-brainer...a resounding "hell yeah!'
First we go to Nira's Home Bakery in Thongsala for the best Full English I've tasted in forever - none of the tepid pale hotdogs and sweet baked beans that the Thais class as typical British fayre. This is the place where the in-the-know expats hang, eyeing each other casually over their perfect cafe lattes, safe in the knowledge that no riff-raff holidaymakers will ruin the vibe.
Hangovers abated, we head back out on the bike, me clinging on for dear life as we wind sans crash-helmets around the bendy dirt-track roads, Steve shouting reassurances into the wind that he knows these roads like the back of his hand. I smile through gritted teeth (I dare not open my mouth as I swear I've already swallowed several mozzies) and hope that he's right. I had no such fears the previous day, but it's amazing how emboldening a few Changs and whiskeys can be...
My fears are unfounded and we have a great day, before heading to Peppercorns, the most amazing cliff-top steak restaurant, which I never would have found had I not met him. We enjoy delicious Argentinian steaks as the sun goes down, chatting away about our lives back home, travel experiences, hopes, fears, his German girlfriend, a potential boyfriend for me at home, plans for the future...
The mozzy-swatting eventually become too much to bear, so we head back to The View for a few more poolside Changs, the view again is just breathtaking. Exhausted, we are both yawning and stretching away, so Steve drops me back to my hotel in Haad Rin and returns to his hotel to prepare for the new arrivals the following day. He also has friends arriving from the Ivory Coast, so I only see him briefly in the following days, but we keep in touch via Whatsapp and I may bump into him again when I return to the island for the Full Moon Party in a week or so...

Hanging in Phangan

Today I woke up feeling like my Thai maid had had a crap on my tongue during the night...as I'd forgotten to close my door properly before stumbling into my bed, there's a good chance she had.

I am filled with guilt at still not having booked The Sanctuary for my week of yoga, fruit smoothies and clean-living....so I reach for my mobile, turn on the wi-fi....and get straight on Tinder in search of another party.

Within minutes I am matched with an English DJ, bar and hostel owner called Guy, who offers to come and pick me up from my hotel and take me to a private party in Haad Yao, on the other side of the island. He tells me to be outside in 20mins, so I shave my tongue, conceal the bags under my eyes and fling on a sequinned chiffon cover-up over my bikini. Sorted.

Guy roars up in his battered purple Mustang, his dog Cassius crammed in the footwell as the back is filled with speakers and DJ equipment, and away we zoom. We stop at his bar to collect yet more speakers and Cassius jumps out too. Once we're all loaded up we set off again, only to realise 15minutes later that we've left the dog behind...d'oh! Koh Phangan is very hilly and bendy, so it's quite a white-knuckle ride, especially with the car full of stuff and the dog drooling down my legs in my footwell. It's also at least 35degs with 85% humidity. This combo is not conducive to immaculate grooming, so I have no option but to scrag it up and rock the 'Bohemian Chic' look...which is just as well as when we finally arrive at Seaboard Bungalows, the location for the party, I'm greeted by an array of dope-smoking, rake-thin Swedish girls, effortlessly looking amazing through lazily stoned eyes and pouty lips. Guy introduces me to everyone and I instantly forget their names, choosing instead to sink a few Changs and attempt to look relaxed and at ease as the blatant tourist amongst this close-knit group of  in-crowd locals...

A few hours pass, Guy is spinning some cool tunes, everything is peachy, until one of the Swedish mafia aka Amelia realises that it is Guy who has brought me to the party and he fancies me. It then becomes apparent that Amelia is in fact Guy's on-off love interest (more off than on thanks to him), and she is now spitting feathers and baying for my blood. Gulp!

Luckily one of the gang, Stephen, hears my prayers for a knight in shining armour to come and whisk me away from the situation (or at least transport my butt back to Haad Rin), and we speed off on his scooter, leaving Guy open-mouthed and eating our dust...

Stephen is a hotel manager for a 5-star resort called The View, which is in Bang Tai and is Bang Tidy...result! So we spend the rest of the evening swimming in the infinity pool, sipping whiskey on ice and admiring the most amazing view, right out across Phangan and over to Samui. The tunes are on, the drinks flow as does the banter....another cracking Phangan experience for the Thailand trip memory bank....

'Shroom For Manouvre

I find my 'alone time' day in my room strangely depressing rather than relaxing - as someone who is more Tasmanian Devil than Tantric Yogi, I don't do alone very well. Most people define relaxing as a quiet day of chilling...to me it can be torturous - my brain is too full of inane chatter that I like to casually offload, aloud, into the unsuspecting shell-like of any willing (and quite often, unwilling) victim. I'm like the malfunctioning Duracell Bunny with no off switch. You could make a horror film about that quite easily, no?

As usual I have a restless night's sleep: as a lone female traveller I find I've always got one eye on the door, even when asleep, like a lizard I occasionally swipe my tongue over an eyeball to keep it moist....okay, okay, I don't quite go that far....but it's an idea, especially as my eyes are totally dried out from overuse of contact lenses combined with minus degrees air con.

So with gritty eyes, I pack my bag and get to the pier, ready for my ferry crossing to Koh Phangan, aka Party Central. I perk up when I spot Kieran, one of the guys I stumbled across after the Black Moon Party who had also had cravings for late-night munchies and headed for the Golden Arches.
He introduces me to his cousin Diarmid (Dermot) and the Irish and I board the old and rusty ferry, me feeling smug upon seeing their green and hungover faces. Perhaps that quiet night was a good idea after all...

Kicking off their shoes, they lay back on the wooden benches for the crossing, Diarmid explaining upon seeing my wide-eyed expression at the fresh, huge black star tattoo on the sole of his foot : he'd met a girl called Priya a few nights before and thought it'd be a grand idea, after a few Sangsom buckets (local whiskey and coke), to have her name tattooed on his foot, approximately an hour after first laying eyes on her. Whaaaaat?! Upon waking the next morning, he then opted to remedy the situation by getting it covered (badly) with a giant black star. So no tats in 26 years to 2 tats in 24hrs.....? Yep, it happened. (I've heard so many similar stories, even 2 young girls who had "Same, Same...But Different" (a common saying over here) inked boldly across their burgeoning guts....jeepers!

We survive the crossing without any dramas and head for Haad Rin Beach, home of the legendary Full Moon Parties. The Sunrise Resort is cheap but in a prime location in the centre of the beach, with a decent pool, air-con...and 24hr pumping, bassy, tunes. Whoops! My room is the cheapest option, so I am sandwiched between the pounding music...and a primary school packed with hundreds of screaming Thai toddlers....ouchy!

We drop our bags and sink a few Changs around the pool...and a few more...and a few Sangsom and cokes for good measure, just to be sure. We keep meaning to go and get washed and changed out of our swimming gear...but it never happens, and we end up dancing on tables, swigging buckets, dipping in and out of the sea to cool off until 5am. And the best thing? No-one bats an eyelid. The great thing about Thailand is that no-one makes an effort - and coming from a place and job where appearance is everything, it's extremely refreshing to squish my hair into a ratty bun, aim a sweep of mascara in the general direction of my eyes and away we go. I don't think a Thai person has ever worn a stiletto (except the ladyboys, of course).

Diarmid and I are befriended by a straight-laced Austrian couple, so find it highly amusing to persuade them to share some Mushroom Shakes with us. We make a trip up the rickety wooden steps to Mushroom Mountain and the barman wizzes us up a magic mushroom-laced cocktail in his blender, mixing with plenty of ice. It tastes surprisingly good, and is gone in seconds. 20mins or so later and we are all having the time of our lives, beaming from ear to ear and engrossed in the most seemingly deep conversation of our lives. In reality we are discussing the merits of the Crazy Frog song and similar, but hey...

Having bonded over fire soaked limbo poles, raucous arm-wrestling and frantic tabletop raving, Diarmid and I have a matey slap on the back and slope...okay...stagger...off to our respective rooms - him at the poolside apartment with balcony, me on a third-floor room with no balcony over the school. The Austrians were seen  silhouetted against the beach, Nina reprimanding Chris for his shroom-zoomed crazy behaviour....And Kieron? He crashed out hours before, last seen swigging Diarolyte-laced bottles of water. ...

The Recovery Position

A mere 3 hours after collapsing into my bed following the Black Moon party my eyes ping open and refuse to close again. The room is like an icebox, refrigerated to the max with the air con cranked up, so that my neck is stiff and I can't feel my extremities. I feel like I've just trekked to the North Pole...naked.  I also appear to have been savaged by several hungry mozzies who are flying lazily around the room, drunk on my vodka-spiked blood. These are incognito mosquitos - unlike the ones in other parts of the world, these Asian badboys don't make that annoying droning sound heralding their proximity, or any sound at all in fact, preferring to make a stealthy approach, like an insect SWAT team.

Cursing them loudly, I eventually admit defeat and drag my weary carcass down to the beach for a restorative Thai massage and a local spicy dish of sweet and sour something-or-other. The Aussie chicks are Facebooking me to come party at the beach club again, but whilst my head is saying yes, every other part of my body is steadfastly refusing to allow it, so instead I almost wear my flip-flops out dragging my exhausted limbs back to the hotel, armed with various drinks and munchies for a quiet afternoon in a trance half-watching Despicable Me 2, which is about as intellectual as my brain can handle right now.

I spend the rest of the day in my decompression chamber of a  hotel room, psyching myself up for the ferry crossing to Koh Phangan bright and early in the morning. I have to remind myself that I'm supposed to be relaxing on this trip, and I am permitted the odd non-eventful day betwixt the dancing and partying. Yin and yang, rest then Chang.....

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