to Koh Phangan

I'm not a Full Moon Party kind of girl, at least not these days, but I went to Koh Phangan to see what all the talk about islands in Thailand is all about. Well, it was nothing less than paradise.

To get there was a bit of a bitch though. Many people take a bus or the over night train, then a boat. However, as a so called "flash tracker" I'm absolutely not interested in long bus rides, so I flew to Surat Thani. I figured it would be a nice short little flight and a quick boat ride. I could have flown to Koh Samui, but Bangkok Airways has a monopoly on it, and I thought that was rather cheeky of them so I decided I wouldn't support that. When I got to Surat Thani there was one company (the only one there) with a booth set up just outside the baggage pickup that sold me a bus and ferry combination ticket for 550 baht. I jumped on the bus and I thought we were on our way to the pier, but we went to the company's office in town instead. I had to get off the bus and wait 30 minutes for another bus to come and take me to the pier. And that's when the fun started.

The second bus was ridiculous. First of all, the deep pink and blue decor on the inside made it look like a cheap motel in Ocean City, New Jersey. The second and most irritating part of this bus was that they had the TV on with the volume cranked up. They were showing this awful gag comedy show where they broke up the acts with musical numbers. This one skit featuring a guy with his butt crack hanging out of a track suit several sizes too small for him went on and on. He'd sing rubbing his hand in a circular motion down the back of his pants, and then he'd stop, and everyone in the audience would laugh. Then he'd do it again. The woman large Thai woman sitting next to me really got a kick out of it. She wiggled and wobbled in the seat joyfully, completely unable to control her wild giggling fits. Third (yes, there's more), there were more people on the bus than there were seats, so a few were standing in the aisle next to me. The giggler seemed to suggest that I scoot over and let another woman join us in the already cramped space of our two seats. I acted in a completely unsympathetic manner and covered up my bad impression of a person having no idea what she was trying to communicate by focusing my attention back up at the awful comedy show as if I understood and truly enjoyed it. I stayed his way for about an hour until we got to Don Sak Pier.

The ferry was huge. It was not the tourist's boat. Oh no, no, no. There were people with trucks, full of this and that, two floors of people, TVs that played a loop of short videos of the King and his recently deceased sister, and quite possibly the nastiest bathrooms of all time. It took 2 and half hours to get to Thong Sala Pier on Koh Phangan.

From there I hopped in the back of a pickup truck taxi that drove me over to Haad Rin, home of the Full Moon Party, for 150 baht. The driver (who was quite nice) told me I would have to catch a boat to to Haad Thien because there was no road to the sanctuary. I rolled up on the pier near Haad Rin and met a very shady looking shoeless character, named Lee, who said he'd drive me there, for a mere 200 baht, after a few more people showed up. The only reason that I was able to convince myself to go with this somewhat questionable man was the woman there with him who worked at The Sanctuary's spa. I had told myself he was a decent fellow, but that faded pretty quickly when I climbed into the back seat of this guy's 4-wheel drive pickup truck, next to his shotgun, which he referred to as his "friend". OOOOOkay.

After a couple stops to pick up more passengers, and a chicken, we went on a dirt "road" over the hills and through the jungle, past grandma's house, and finally to Haad Thien. Quite a journey! It was all worth it though. I immediately felt like I had come to the right place. I got there just at the right moment, and got the last bungalow, and even somehow got myself on the list for the family dinner--and pizza was on the menu!