Well, I left off on the 27th after arriving on Koh Pha Ngan. The following day I had a fierce fever and felt quite ill, so rather than lounging on the beach as I had planned I went into town to see a doctor. This meant another one of those longtail boat rides! Nauseating! The doctor said I had tonsilitus, which shocked me because I didn't have any of the symptoms. I passed out on a bed in the clinic for a few hours and once the worst of if was over I questioned the doctor (politely) but he maintained his diagnosis. Whatever. I took my medicine and left. Expensive.
Everyone else that came into town with me was still wandering around shopping or eating, so i caught up with some of them and watched a film while I ate a hefty hamburger from an aussie restaurant. Around 3pm we all headed back to the pier and met with our boat driver. In the few minutes that we waited at the pier our friend from SFU, Keira, appeared. She was pretty happy to find us (we had expected her to come today). The ride back was better. I had a nap that afternoon and felt really quite good after that.
The full moon party was that night, on the 28th, and despite all my better judgement I decided to go. Missing it would be a terrible shame. At around 8pm all of the people we've been visiting with (about 15 or 17 in total) went into town (Haad Rin). We had hoped to go later, as we knew we would be up all night, but the boats didn't like to go too much after dark. We all went back to the same restaurant we had lunch in and lounged about eating appetizers and drinking fruit shakes or Singhas. Around 10pm Keira, Julia and I went down to the beach that the party was going to be at, our curiousity having gotten the best of us. What an incredible scene. Despite the early hour there were already thousands of people there, and the clubs lining the beach were already pounding music. Their speaker systems were as big as most rock concerts would have. Christmas lights, laser lights, spotlights. Was nuts. Almost anywhere you looked there were vendors selling buckets (Sand pails filled with ice, 375mL of whisky, a can of red bull, and a can of coke). we went back to the restaurant and, after a few red bulls and a whisky/coke, we all wandered down to the party.
Finding a foothold in a bar near the main entrance to the beach, the large group of people I was with broke off into little fragments and we explored the beach. Allegedly the parties in September and October are small, due to the low season, while they reach capacity in December. Well, it seemed pretty busy to me. Had to be in the 5-7 thousand range, I'm sure. Despite the large size I did manage to find my three swedish friends that I had met with on Ko Tao, though later in the night I somehow lost everyone. The music went on, while I searched out a place to sleep. I found a restaurant that had closed and curled up on one of their benches, wrapped myself in a tablecloth, and went to sleep.
I woke up for the first longtail boat back to our beach, Haad Yuan, at 5am, finding only two of my friends waiting there also. We paid a ridiculour rate, but were happy to get a ride back so early - unfortunately it dropped us off about 100m from shore and we had to swim back...
The next day was spent sleeping.