FULL MOON PARTY

woke up in usual fashion, not really knowing where I was and wondering how I got here. That all quickly passed, and I filled Andy in on what happened to Jared (as i later found out that's how to spell his name).

Matt and some of the girls were going into town on motorbikes, me and Andy decided that walking would probably be a safer option, after what happened to jared last night. So we set off for town along the beach. It was quite a nice walk, for about 20 minutes, then 2 hours later we got there. I was happy to stump up the 100 bt for a cab back.

We walked around the town in daylight, it was so much like Newquay it was scary. everyone here was English or Irish (the majority being Irish). I've nothing against Newquay, I had a really good weekend when I was there last, which was ironically with Andy. Is that irony or just co-incidence? I've been spending too much time with American's I can't tell anymore.

We went shopping for plasters to patch up my ripped feet on the rocks from the sea yesterday, and bought some t-shirts and spent a bit of time on the net. we got a cab back to the bungalows at about 5. There were a couple of english girls in the cab with us, one of them was studying media, took me all of 45 seconds to bring up Bo Selecta, media whore that I am. They seemed suitably impressed, so that was the main thing.

After a power nap and something to eat, a shower, another power nap and a couple of beers we were ready for this famed Full Moon Party. Everyone had been building it up so much it was only going to disappoint, which I should have known about, and is the precise reason why I won't watch The Big Lebowski.

As usual Andy was preening himself in the mirror for far too long and Matt, Jared, the Icelandic girls, the canadians and Paulo the brazillian left before us, we arranged to meet in about 30 minutes at a bar on the beach. about 45 minutes later we got on to the beach. To call it rammed would be an understatement, it was shoulder to shoulder. really crammed. It was about midnight by the time we got down there so everyone had been on it for a few hours and really hammered, we looked out for everyone else but couldn't see them all night. I had a couple of buckets which I knew from Bangkok were a bad idea, bumped into Tammy the girl from New Orleans that we went tubing with in Laos, then I lost andy, Tammy disappeared, so I was on my own. I wandered around for an hour or so, got really annoyed and went home at about 5am, got into a fight with a taxi driver (not something that I've ever done before, but he was refusing to take me to my hotel even though it was about 100 yards away, and was driving past it. I said why don't you just drop me off outside the door as it's on your way, and he shoved me off the back of his wagon! we had a slight wrestle and he drove off. It seems taxi drivers are the same the world over.) I couldn't get into the room as andy had the Key so I slept on the beach for an hour until the sun came up and Jared came home.

All in all it was possibly the most over rated waste of time I've ever had. I feel a bit stupid that I'd planned the latter part of my trip around it, in hindsight I wish I would have spent more time in some other part of Thailand, or maybe a few days more in Laos, and Cambodia of course.