Koh Pha-Ngan & the Full Moon Party

Koh Pha-Ngan is famous for its Full Moon parties. Supposedly it started out as a small beach party for someones birthday, which they then repeated the next month, and it simply grew from there. Now 5-10,000 people show up for the monthly event. Is your timing bad? No worries, try the quarter moon…half moon..no moon party, its all good

We got to Koh Pha-Ngan on the 6th, full moon being on the 9th, and started looking for accommodation. Haad Rin is the place to be, with the main party on Sunrise beach and just behind it the quieter Sunset beach, where we wanted to stay. Various people tried to lure us and then Joy showed us a pamphlet for Drop In Resort. We were skeptical because the photo looked too good to be truue, especially for the price! We ended up getting 3 beds into a 2 bed room for 900 Baht/night with a TV, hot shower, free bottled water each day and balcony over an awesome pool! The building was new (unfinished actually) and a missing panel in our roof let an odd smell in, and I ended up bedless the first night after repeat requests for the 3rd bed, bu they didn’t charge me in the end so I saved some Baht and over all was a great deal. They even had a foam party!

There is a street with a bunch of restaurants just behind the beach, 7 Eleven clones galore, a few fallafel shops etc. Then stepping onto the main beach was crazy. Fire twirlers, bars cranking music, loads of stands on the beach fighting for your business selling the famous Buckets like Sangsom, Vodka Redbull etc & advertising by shouting and bright funny signs delcaring “Fu*king good buckets”, “Cheap bucket”, “Love You” etc haha. I stood there with my arms out smiling and went to the guys who shouted the loudest! haha. Returning to the same one pays off if also they remember you as you’ll get a cheaper, stronger drink next time round.

In the lead up, there were 2 main hangouts, Drop in Bar and Cactus, playing mostly dance music, with podiums etc. They covered a rope in friggin’ gasoline and set it on fire, getting people to play jump (fire) rope! Then even if they went well they just sped it up until they tripped and got mild burns, or others would try to join mid jump and screw it up haha, but they were so drunk they didn’t care. Go Thailand. In-fact you could pretty much always smell gasoline as there were loads of fire lights, signs, twirlers etc.

So basically we spent the nights on the beach partying and the days sleeping and hanging in and by the pool. (you really don’t want to swim in Sunrise beach). With loads and loads of crazy banter.

On the 3rd night on the beach I noticed something in the sand under my feet, and realised it was a mobile phone. Then a few Baht and and some makeup with it. As I started picking it up a Dutch girl helped me and questioned/stated “its not yours is it?”, not sure if she thought I was going to keep it or not! But we tried to find the owner, and the phone rang and we tried to talk but it was messed up with sand and wouldn’t work properly. I went to find a Thai guy we had met to try and talk to them and lost the dutch girl in the process, but again couldn’t here and we couldn’t get the number cause the buttons were jammed. Eventually we got the number that was calling us, called back from another phone and found the Thai Girl who owned the phone! Then went off & managed to find the Dutch girl carrying the rest of the stuff and so everything went back to the owners. They were very happy and thankfull and took a photo with us haha. Good deed for the day done

I’d been told by others the lead up is actually better and that’s probably true, as the warm up parties are in the same spirit but with much less people. The majority of people come on the day and leave the next, so the population shift over night is crazy.

They also added a load of security, random road blocks, and a bogus ticket stop blocking the main bridge access from sunset Beach side. We had to pay 100 Baht for our “ticket” and wrist band, but if we had walked another way we would have gone straight through so it was total BS. I tried to ignore them but they blocked us and there were (fake?) millitary guys there. Oh well it’s a souvenier.

Everyone got painted up on the night, with various neon stands on the beach, so we bought some paints and did our own.

We managed to bump into just about everyone I’d met in Thailand that night, including Rob and Tommy’s mate Andy just about every night, Sinead who was with Andy’s friends by coincidence, and the guys I met at Koh Tao. Most tourists in Thailand were all making the journey for Full Moon, but still to find them in over 8000 people is crazy.

The night after Full Moon we went to Sunset Beach and had dinner at a really cool place right on the beach & chilled out after 4 nights of madness.

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