Into the New Year, 2007 already!
Landed at the flash new Bangkok airport around 2am after a 2 hour flight. Took awhile to trek through the place to get out but eventually found immigration and waited and waited…A group of 8 Kazakstanis pushed in front of me talking too loud and being generally annoying, I mean who is actually from that country? I thought about asking them about Borat but wasn’t sure it would be a good idea. After finally making it through, extreamly exhausted I settled down on hard plastic chairs for a 3 hour nap. So not the best sleep but needed to wait until a decent time to get going. So around 6am I caught a taxi into the bus station and jumped on a 10 hour bus heading down south where I could get over to the islands I would spend the next week on. Big comfy and air con bus meant I slept most of the way down bar the few hours where they blasted out some Thai movie. The plan was to get a ferry over that evening but arrived a bit too late so headed to a nondescript hotel in a nondescript town for the night. Managed to order food that spicy beyond belief and asleep early from pretty crazy last 24 hours.
Early next morning I was packed off on a bus with loads of other backpackers to the pier where there were even more backpackers, arriving by the bus load. Literally hundreds of us all hanging around with packs over chairs, in the mud, all pushing forward trying to get on a boat. It was all very crazy, never seen so many tourists together! After an hour or so of trying to organize who was going where we made it on to a ferry overflowing with packs and bodies for a 2 hour journey across to Ko Samui. Pretty much these islands are one of the biggest tourist destinations and New Years is the height of the high season so there were people every where and accommodation was booked out weeks in advance.
Being the organized person I am I’d booked into a nice place for the first 3 nights in a relaxed sounding beach. Shambala was run by an English couple and really really cool. Had a cute bungalow right on the beach, amazing food and lots of chill out areas with cushions. White sand and coconut palms 5 meters away topped it off. So spent that afternoon and the next day lying Around in the sun, swimming, eating….tough.
My second night there was new years eve, and the reason I was down here was to head over to the famous Full Moon Party on the island close to us. I meet a really cool Canadian chick and we headed over on a speed boat later that evening to join around 60,000 others to see in the new year. Definitely one if the craziest parties I’ve ever been to, the whole place was packed with people and we joined in the flow down to the beach where bars lined the seafront blasting out every type of music you could want. We brought a few glow in the dark items to be cool off the hundreds of people selling everything on the beach. I’m guessing that they make a fair bit of cash out of these parties. There were fireworks, fire sticks and poi so got a chance to have a play with some ones I brought in India. Danced the night away until the last ferry at 7am. So many cool people, all really friendly and lots going on. No countdown to New Years was a bit of a shame as didn’t really realized it was 2007 until about 2am. But all good! Colapsed into bed and slept the whole day only getting up for a swim and a bit more lying around.
I had an amazing dinner sitting by the beach with Vaneet (the Canadian). Prawn curry inside a coconut, yum! Thailand is definitely winning the best food award, especially this place I stayed at. So nice to be able to sit by the beach and eat in the warm weather. So my last night in Shambala ended well as I moving in with Vaneet for my last 2 nights on the main beach Chawang.
Tags: Thailand, Travel
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