photos and ramblings documenting my trip around the world and other stuff
Monday, May 21, 2012
Thailand - Ko Tao & Full Moon Party
My apologies for being slack and getting so far behind. I'll try to keep this more up to date, but no promises.
When I finally got to Ko Tao on Friday afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the water was much clearer there than it had been at Ko Samui. And I was also excited to hear that they were seeing whale sharks at a couple of the dive sites at least a few times a week. So I signed up to do some diving at 7am the next morning. I figured an early morning dive would work out well for staying up until sunrise at the Full Moon Party ("FMP"), because I'd be back from the dive at 11 or 12 and probably quite exhausted and could take like a 4-hour nap until I was picked up at 5pm for the ferry over to Ko Pha-Ngan, home of the FMP. I was also happy to see that unlike the dive industry in Phuket, Phi Phi and Khao Lak, there did not seem to be any sort of agreement between the dive shops on Ko Tao to fix prices, and as a result, the cost of diving was more reasonable - capitalism to the rescue.
Day 104 - Saturday, May 5 - Full Moon Party
I went diving with Phoenix Divers, home of the big pink boat (actually they have a few big pink boats).
We did 2 dives - the first was a site called Chumpon, which is probably the #1 site around Ko Tao and was where we were hoping to see a whale shark. No such luck, but the reef was really cool, lots of fish, visibility was quite good. Definitely a good fun dive, but hard not to be disappointed, when we had like a 50/50 chance of seeing a whale shark. The second dive site was called twins, named after the two twin peaks that make up the island of Nangyuan. A view of the twins from a bit of an angle:
As planned, I headed back to the room to take a nap, but found it hard to fall asleep, so the nap wasn't as successful as I had hoped. Normally, the last ferry from Ko Tao to Ko Pha-Ngan leaves in the early afternoon and the first one to come back the next day isn't until about midday, but they run a special FMP ferry that is scheduled to leave Ko Tao at 530pm, get to Ko Pha-Ngan at 7, and then return at 8am the next morning. So I opted for that. I got picked up at 5 and rode over to the ferry with some very friendly folks, who I ended up hanging out with for most of the night. Unfortunately, because of the wind and rough seas our boat was 2 hours late arriving, so we ended up just hanging out at the docks drinking beers for 2 hours while we waited:
When we finally got on the boat, the sea was really rough, which lead to a lot of intoxicated people falling over anytime they tried to stand up or walk around and others puking off the side. It was a bit of a spectacle. But eventually we made it. Like Samui, Ko Pha-Ngan is quite a large island. The beach that hosts the FMP is Haad Rin Beach, which is quite far from the pier (but minibus transfer to the party was included with the ferry ride). When we got there, we found that we were way too devoid of bright colors and that body paint was almost a must have. So we met some friendly folks on the street that were doing some painting and joined their painting party. The full crew from the painting party:
As far as drinks go, just about everyone drinks buckets of booze. Basically there are tables set up everywhere selling little plastic buckets with a bottle of liquor, a can of mixer and a small bottle of red bull and ice for like $6-10 depending on your liquor of choice. I made the mistake of drinking multiple buckets on the evening:
Once it was clear that I needed body paint, I wasn't really sure what to do with my shirt because I didn't bring any sort of bag; leaving it somewhere seemed like a bad idea; and I didn't want to relive the 80's by tying it around my waist, so I went with a bit of a pirate look and tied it around my head. The pirate look was significantly added to by the face paint provided by Kat (thanks Kat!) who was in high demand due to her artistic talent. Lacking any artistic talent, I didn't do much painting myself, but when Marc adamantly requested that I paint something on him, I opted for a good ol' orange tiger paw. Evidence of my pirate motif, my incredible painting skills and my inability to dance can be seen in the photos below (most of which are stolen from Emily Fletcher, a fellow American that I hung out with a good bit while on Ko Tao - Thanks for the photos Emily!).
I TRIED to take photos of my own, but as you'll recall the LCD screen on my camera doesn't work, so when I accidentally switched it to movie mode (after the painting session) without realizing it, instead of taking pictures, I ended up with about 20 3-second video clips, none of which are good. Here is an example:
And we hauled our exhausted selves back to the pier, where I slept on a bench while waiting on the ferry (fitting I guess seeing as how I am currently homeless - in a sense). Thankfully it was on time this time and the sea was quite calm for the ferry ride back.
It rained most of the afternoon, which was just fine by me, because I spent most of the day in bed, and a little rain is always a nice backdrop for an afternoon nap.
Day 106 - Monday, May 7
On Monday, the weather was nice, so I went down to Sairee beach (the West coast of Ko Tao, where my guest house was) and checked it out for a bit.
Then in the afternoon, I rented a moped (they didn't even offer me a helmet, which seems a little odd given my ticket on Ko Samui), and a few of my new friends rented an ATV and we set out to explore the island. We grabbed a beer at Chalok Baan Kao Bay
The ATV proved to be a bit of a death trap, so they returned it (and a yelling match ensued when no amount of refund was given - I was only a spectator) and I was left on my own to explore a bit more and checked a few other viewpoints on the northwest side of the island. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a sunset in Ko Tao that day or really any of the others (maybe because it's on the Eastern Coast of Thailand?).
After really enjoying the full day snorkel trip in Phi Phi supplemented by a cooler of beer, I decided I wanted to do a similar trip in Ko Tao. So I got on a different pink boat, with a cool bag full of ice cold Chang, and we made our way all the way around the Island, stopping in various bays to do some snorkeling. The snorkeling at some of the stops was great, and the shoreline along the way was pretty cool, with lots of rocks and cliffs and such.
The snorkel trip ended at Nangyuan island, which you may recall from above is the island made of two twin hills connected by a strip of beach. The view from the top of the south hill:
[I was hoping to stitch the two photos above together to create a panorama, but I have yet to find a decent ipad app that does photo stitching or a web-based tool. Anyone know of any?]
After the day on the boat, a group of us went out and got some drinks, checked out the beach bars, some fire shows, and once again a bucket of liquor got the best of me.
Day 108 - Wednesday May 9
Wednesday it felt even hotter than usual. I was a little sunburned after the day on the boat and a little hungover after the night out, so I did a whole lot of nothing.
Day 109 - Thursday, May 10
Thursday I left Ko Tao. I had to be out of the country by the 11th because I was only allowed to be in the country for 30 days without a visa. So I took the ferry across to the mainland in the early afternoon and waited around for a few hours for an overnight train to Malaysia. I outdid myself this time and ate 4 different main courses over the course of about 5 hours at this restaurant by the train station. The old lady that ran the place kept poking me in the belly and looking in my bag and asking me where all the food went. The train finally showed up at about 11pm, about 40 minutes late, but at this point, I'm pretty amazed when any transportation vessel shows up on time. As it was the last time I was going to be in Thailand for a while and I wasn't sure the situation in Malaysia, I went ahead and bought 4 loaves of Taro Bread and a chocolate-filled banana cake (they only had 1) at the nearby 7-11. A few photos of Ko Tao from the boat as we left:
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