Koh Pha Ngan – the island in between Koh Tao and Koh Samui – is the promised land of the party people. For one reason or another the island is filled with Hebrew-talking folk, Israelian people. At first I thought it must be because the daily parties down at Haad Rin beach always have the psy-trance section, and many good psy-trance artists are, after all, Israelian. I was asking a lot of Israelian people whether or not they liked psy-trance and the result was unanimous – no. So I guess the reasons must lie elsewhere. Haad Rin is filled with Hebrew signs and actually there is this good restaurant called Paprika, which offers (to my taste) good Israelian food (falafel, chicken schawarma, hummus, tahini, mashed potatoes).
I arrived to Koh Pha Ngan on Sunday at noon and no sooner than when I arrived to the pier, I got a liberating message from my Israelian friend Noa (from Vietnam Halong Bay), who so kindly had already reserved a very fine room from a hostel called Sun Cliff in Haad Rin. Although the taxi drive from Thong Sala (pier) to Haad Rin was very expensive, I had a place to stay now. We shared the 600 baht costs and the room was very neat and good with the exception of no A/C. Fan is OK though for me. Haad Rin is a good place to stay in Koh Pha Ngan as the famous full-moon party is situated as well in Haad Rin. The full-moon party was held here on the 1st of March. It was…BIG. I’m now in a 300 baht very simple room and will leave tomorrow for my last destination on this trip, Koh Samui. I will at least want to do bungee jumping there!
So, the people that I have met here have been just fabulous! In addition to Noa I got to know another Noa from Israel (veery relaxed person) with a sweet smile, Marco from Holland – he was very interesting person and secretive about his age, we guessed him to be something like 35-40, but the man was a traveler kind of man but back home an art painter. We got along well and did all kinds of stuff in the parties together. Last night we celebrated Einat’s birthday – she turned 22. There was cake, beer, full-moon, stars and a beach with party-people (further away luckily). Israelian people, also Daniel and a girl whose name I do not remember, they were all so nice. I’d like to go to Israel some day… I learned yesterday that Negev is the south-part of Israel and I also understood that they eat a lot of schnitzels in Israel, and these combined one gets a song by a group called Shpongle – Schnitzl’d In The Negev.
I’m just now sitting in an internet café and eating a huge chocolate-chip cookie with a pineapple shake, listening to calm music and enjoying the general atmosphere..I feel like some humanist sipping latte in a café now….
The parties have been awesome, just great! Both on Sunday and Monday I partied until 6.00 a.m. with Marco and the Noas (mainly). The beach has been packed with people waving cheesily neon-decorations, painted bellies and faces, drinking themselves silly with the cheap buckets of Thai whiskey, red bull and lemonade. I settled for the cheap stuff.. 150 baht for this kind of bucket, maybe four of these (they always poured maybe 3-5 dl of alcohol to each one of them and the Thai whiskey was “80%” so it was quite..good. I must say it definitely was not 80% stuff, but I would not complain if it was even half of it) on the full-moon party. The attractions in the parties have been something like playing with fire (skipping rope on fire, people rolling flaming stick, doing the limbo, and yes lot of burnt people), being the dj, a slide, behaving blatantly, dancing to amazing music (the psy-trance area was pure magic), watching rockets and stuff go up to the sky… Whatever. People eating chicken sandwiches, buying all kinds of clothing and things to remember the event by. Lot of things going on. It was not as bad as I feared, the atmosphere was good even though people were on the move in masses (estimations of 10 000 – 30 000 people on the beach). Maybe it was the fact it was outside and the moon was glooming on the sky brightly at its fullest extent.
Today I wanted to see the island a bit more so I went on a safari trip. Today’s company consisted of few Israelian people and a bunch of Irish always-so-nice-and-open-to-people-from-other-cultures guys and gals. I only know Fiona and Paul by name but everyone were nice. Few of them spoke the South-Irish accent (from Cork) which was at times quite incomprehensible for me :). The trip consisted of seeing all the stuff there is to see basically in Koh Pha Ngan: some elephants (we got to feed them and they did all sorts of tricks for us, I just hope they are not maltreated [how silly of me to think they ever would be happy being captive]) – they were fun to touch and see. A monkey show as well was on display, the monkey was collecting coconuts from the trees and jumping from tree to tree. Then we got to see some Chinese Buddhist temple, finally reaching to the long-tail boat, which carried us around the island. Snorkling was not nearly as good as in Koh Tao, because of lack of fish and plants to see and the visibility was crap. We were served a very good lunch at a very nice beach (the Bottle Beach) and the nicest part of the trip definitely was an excursion to the Than Sadet waterfalls. We trekked there through potentially hazardous route going upstream until reaching the falls. The falls were not big (nothing as Kuang Si in Luang Prabang) but were refreshingly chill and had kind of pools there where you could just chillax and get some falling water on your head.
This night I’ll have a few with the Irish lot but I think I’ll go relatively early to bed because the taxi towards pier leaves at 10 a.m.
If I had to choose to live in either of the islands that I have been here into, I would choose Koh Tao because it is in a way more relaxed. It can be relaxed here in Pha Ngan as well, but not in the same way.. Hard to describe, you have to experience it yourself. The parties here are just great but one can get bored of partying quite quickly. Or then I’m getting old.
There's the other Noa with a nice Indian lady selling the buckets.
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