Craigs’ big trip

WOW, this has certianly been a trip to remember, if I were to quickly summarise the highlights, these would be :

• Koh San Rd in Bangkok, amazing place
• Sema, her cocky attitute would win anyone over
• Being hussled by an old lady for really expensive pop corn
• The Sarikatang resort, was beautify, the staff were awesome
• Crusing around the island on quads and mopeds
• The massages at the resort
• The cost of food and booze
• Seeing a real Muay Thai fight
• Buckets!
• The Full Moon Party
• Seeing the sunrise twice
• Having some cool stories to tell, that didnt quite make the blog.

And last but not least…..Meeting some fantastic new friends who accepted me into their group, this made the trip!…

Dave, Bevan, Steve, Matt & Angela, Matt & Kate, Stephan & Emma, Cliff & Amanda, Jeremy & Nicky, Grant & Ruth.

thanks guys, you all ROCK!!!!

Well, its good night from me, and good night from him!

CraigieeA signing off, mission complete.

(16th September)

We all had a wake up call at 5:15am, we were being picked up by the shuttle at 6am.

A large 11 seater van turned up to pick up the group that were leaving, Matt and Angela were staying a couple more days.

It was a cozy squeeze with 11 passengers, let alone the tiny amountof luggage space that was available for all our bags.  The back of the van looked like a game of Tetris!.

We all got to the ferry terminal in Tongsala and amidst confusion wit the non english speaking driver, we had to walk our bags cross country to another peir to catch the ferry.

We are now ready for our 20hr trip home….Koh Phangan->Koh Samui->Bangkok->Brunei->Auckland.

A looooooong day, we arrive at 8:30am on the 17th September.

The trip is complete!

(15th September)

Not too much to report on this day, except everyone was not feeling very energetic, so it was pretty much a day to each other.  Most people slept and hung by the pool.

The Coral Bungalows next door had started a party about 10am and carried it through till about 7pm, a few of the crew went for a look in the morning.

Dinner that evenign was pretty uneventful, everyone was knackered…

(14th September)

I awoke to find a huge lizard dead on my bathroom floor, it would of been about a foot and a half long…it had beautiful colors.  Not sure why it died, and I’m pretty sure it was dead because when I picked it up by its tail and dropped it off my deck, it didnt move….unless it played dead really really well.

A few of us hired some mopeds and headed about an hour up the island to another paradise spot to try some snorkelling.  The trip up was pretty cool, it was hot, the sun was shining and we were thrashing mopeds..

I dont rememeber the place where we stopped, but it was idylic and had a huge sand bar to another island, which was stunning.  We snorkelled and swam for a bit then came home.

We headed into town to get some fluro paints, as its tradition to cover oneself in fluto designs for the party.

I was feeling a little tired, so had a red bull or two to help revive myself, which seamed to do the trick.

We all met for dinner at 7:30 at the resturant, which was a compulsory buffet dinner, which is a great money maker for the hotel as its an extra 500 TB ($20) per person.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!!!!

Once dinner was over, everyone started applying the fluro war paint to the dismay of the other diners.

We would certainly not get lost under UV lamps.  We headed to the beach about 9:30 and to my surprise it was already in full swing.  I thought last night was good…WOW, the beach was littered with people dancing to the many different sound stages ( I would guess about 10 different areas along the beach).  We each started with a bucket, which I took ages to drink as it was a looong night ahead.  We found a good sound stage and stopped and had a boogie…I danced so hard I think I may of turned the sand in to glass.

Everyone was having a blast, the beach was absolutely packed, it was insane.

The night wore on into the early morning where most of the team were still intact except Nicky who retured early.

After my prolonged first bucket, I stuck to water, I was way to busy getting my groove on and needed to keep hydrated.

They had heaps of fire twirling displays as well as a massive ‘Welcome to Thailand’  sign on the beach that was lit up in flames.

As the night wore on, there were more and more bodies asleep/comatose along the beach, you had to keep stepping over them.  There would of been hundreds of them.  I’m not sure how many people there would of been on the beach, I guess close to 10,000, I didnt get a chance to count them all.

One disturbing thing I did see was a thai man trying to pick pocket a sleeping man, but luckily he woke up.  I also saw a gang of 4 thai men pick pocket another drunk guy.  This was a little daunting and certianly reinforced the fact that you need to keep your wits about you.

I lost the group about 4am, but banged into some english girls that we met that day at the resort hanging at the pool.  I hung with them for the rest of the night, dancing and chatting, and we all saw the sun rise and I walked them home about 7am.

Its now time to get some sleep!.

(13th September)

I managed to get about 3 hours sleep and caught up with the guys in the resturant.

Dave was a no show and he didnt come home last night either, everyone was getting a little concerned…he finally turns up late in the afternoon looking a little worse for wear….he retires to his room for some much needed sleep.

*Back story :
In Bangkok, I met Aileen at a 24hr bar one night when I couldnt sleep, she was travelling around Thailand.  I told her about the Full Moon Party, which she hadnt heard of before.  I told her she should come on over if she is around that way.

So, Aileen arrived about 2:30, which was cool, so I was the hounorary tour guide for a while.

The group caught up for dinner at the resturant and after dinner a few of us : Matt, Angela, Jeremy, Nicky, Stephan, Emma, Bevan, Aileen and I went to a Muay Thai tournament.  This was awesome, I had always wanted to see a real Thai fight in Thailand…its like a dream come true!

They started with 6 year old boys who were incredible, they certianly start them young, but I guess Muay Thai to them is like Rugby to us.

They also had 6 year old girls fight, which apparently was the firt time this had occured, I didnt really like this, but luckily it was stopped pretty early on.

The main fights were very cool, the guys were impressive with their kicks, knees and elbows.  I didnt see any jumping knees, but was pretty happy none the less.

We left about 12:30 and a few of us went down to the beach and checked it out.  There are even more people around, there are huge spot lights set up….this is UNBELIEVABLE.

I forced myself home at 2am.

We all meet at 5:30 for drinks and then head out for dinner.  We find a place to go, which is very accomodating as it has no other guests.  We have dinner, which was nice but the timing of the food was crap.

So after dinner a group decide to head back and a few of us hard core party goers : Me, Matt, Steve, Dave, Jeremy, Cliff and Amanda are not ready to go (its only about 8:30).

We stop at a bar and order a bucket each (everyone got to choose the bucket stand for someone else from which they had to buy their bucket from).  I manage to finish mine after a prolonged effort, by which stage, the group had narrowed to only me, Dave and Jeremy.

The music is getting louder and we start to get our groove on.

I ordered another bucket of which I didnt fully finish as I’m having way too much fun getting down to some awesome dance music.  Dave headed off around 3am ish with some company, who ironically was from Auckland, so its just Jeremy and I.

I lost sight of Jeremy about 6am and I headed home myself just after 7am.  I was dead sober and covered in sweat after hours of dancing. 

Sitting ont eh beach watching the sunrise over the ocean was nothing short of spectacular.

My mission was to party till sunrise, mission accomplished!.

Needless to say, I need to get some sleep.

(12th September)

Todays plan was to just spend some chill time by myself, so after breakfast, I headed back to the to the unit to have a shower and pack my day bag.

I headed into town to get some bits and peices as well as to have a good look around again.  Once I got board of this I headed to the beach where I plonked myself down in a spare spot and worked on my tan while listening to my iPod.

The beach was packed now that the sun has come out, OMG it is soooo hot, I’m meltinnggggg.

After a few good hours of bikink inspections on the beach I returned to HQ to catch up with the  gang, who were mostly lazing around the pool.

The plan was to meet at 5:30 for drinks before heading out for dinner.

I grabbed a cheese burger and a beer and sat on the ‘comfy’ seats outside the resturant listening to my iPod eating my late lunch and watching the world go by.

(12th September)

I woke up just before 6am (everyones body clocksames t be doing the same), so instead of dozing, I got up and went down to Sunrise beach. 

OMFG…….there is a party still going on, there are 2 bars still open on the beach with huge ass stereo systems cranked to the max pumping out dance music.

There would of been a few of hundred people in various stages of intoxication still dancing and a few people just sitting on the beach watchg the sunrise.

Paradise just got better!.

I sat on the beach taking it all in and chatted to a few people and headed home just after 7am.

All this before breakfast!…I am so going to the beach party tonight….my mission…to see the sunrise.

(11th September) 

I awoke about 7am, which was a nice sleep in.  I didnt wake up as many times through the night either, which was a good thing.

The wind has picked up and its still overcast, a bit of a shame, but what can you do.  The wind has been persistent since we arrived.

A few of of met for breakfast at 9 and had a catchup and went our own ways.  Amanda, Cliff, Grat, Ruth and Steve went to check out the elephant trek.  Angela was going to hang around and have a massage and Bevan and I went for a walk.

We went along the beach where the FMP is to be held (Sunrise beach) and checked out all the ‘bucket’ stands….the stands have some very amusing names to say the least.

We had a nosey around a few shops and came across Jeremy comming out of the bike hire place.  He wasnt very happy, they were trying to charge him 8500TB ($320) because the front bar on the bike had been scratched ad slightly bent where Matt had reversed into him (at speed).  Luckily it was negotiated down to 500TB which was paid so Jeremy could get his passport back.  He was a little stressed.

Bevan and I went back to HQ where we met Steve, who gave me my passport back as I had lent him my quad and he returned it.

We all congregated for a bit and eventually the entire group turned up.  We decided to all head to a place called Magic Mountain, which was at the far end of Sunrise beach.  It was up the cliff that overlooked the beach.  It contained a lot of old very cheep bungalos and a few home made looking bars that were ‘quaint’.  This place looked like an amusement park at night when lit up.  We stopped at one of the bars for a drink and headed back to the beach.

We found a resort called the Sunrise Resort which had a very cool swimming pool which happened to also have a bar right next to it…I think a pattern is forming.  We decided to stop in for the afternoon which cost us 100TB to use the pool since we were not staying there.  The nice thing about being a big group is that your welcomed everywhere.

We swam, listened to music and chilled for the afternoon, it was bliss.

I was dumb enough to do a backflip in the water and came up without my glasses.   As it turns out, glasses are quite hard to find underwater when you cant see because you havent got your glasses on.

We had 5 of us looking for them and thankfully Emma found them and to my relielf, I could see again.

So after about 4 hrs poolside, we moved to the front of the resort on the beach.  They had just set up mats, with tables and ‘futons’ with head rests.  It was very very cool, you could just lie down, have a drink, listen to the music and relax.

We all hung around till about 8ish then headed back to camp.  The smell of kerosene form the lamps was a little overpowering.  We went back to Grant and Ruths place for a bit and I retired about 9:30.

This was a great way to spend Grant and Ruths last day with us.

CraigieeA signing off  nanoo….nanoo

(10th Sepember)

I beleive the plan is to jump on the bikes and do another tour of the island before the bikes are due back at 11am.

The plan was for everyone to meet at 9am so we could leave prompty.  The phrase ‘like hearding cats’ will be used quite frequently throughout the blog.

We finally got on the road about 12, once everyone had sorted out ther bikes (getting new ones, extending hire periods), theior wives, girlfriends etc.

*funny story interlude : Nicky had told us that they had been awoken by their noisy neighbours at some stupid hours of the morning by loud music comming from somewhere, so like the pired piper, he followed the music.  Nicky woke up and found him not there so she followed the music because she knew thats where he would be.  She found jeremy down on the beach amongst a beach party in the midst of finishing a bucket and ready for another one….I guess a bucket can be a breakfast ‘food’ aswell.

So anyway, instead of going up the coast like we did yesterday, we went across the island to a beach that Jeremy and Stephan had been to before.

We rode for just over an hour over some pretty dogey terrain that was the main road.  Some concrete, a lot of dirt and some gravel, lots of pothold and trenches and oncomming vehicles to avoid.  Some of the downhills were pretty exciting to say the least!

The quad bikes ROCK!

We finally arrive at the beach, which is absolutely stunning, blue water, white sand, very picturesque.

We all headed to the water to take a swaim, then headed up to a resturant  for some lunch.

Just as we are finishing up it starts to spit nd there are some pretty ominus dark clouds in the sky.  We were anticipating a trecherous trip back, but the rain held off.

So the team today was : Me, Dave, Bevan, Jeremy, Nucky, Matt, Matt (Kates wife), Kate.

Matt and Kate chose not to come the full distance due to ‘stress’ that Matt was causing Kate by being her passenger.

After the ride, I had another massage which was SENSATIONAL, while the others caught u for more drinks.

After a massage, I jumped on my hamock with my iPod and had a snooze for about an hour.

We all met for dinner about 7pm and wondered down to the local for some food and more drink.

Everyone was a bit jadded today so we called it an night about 9pm.

I got to my room and had a lizard on the wall, which was pretty exciting, it was about 10cm long and was pretty quick on its feet.

CraigieeA signing off  nanoo…nanoo