Peace, Love and a FULL MOON

February Part 2

For Valentine’s Day this year I was lucky enough to spend it with a handful of teachers and about another thousand handfuls of partying tourists. Koh Phangan was one spot I actually didn’t see myself visiting, but with a long weekend and a full moon that fell on a Saturday night, what better way to celebrate Valentine’s. It was also planned to be a huge teacher trip, and if I didn't go, well I knew I would have been missin’ out. So, we bought our tickets, boarded the bus, hopped on the day boat, and headed to Haad Rin beach for a weekend full of neon shirts, face paint, special balloons, crazy boat rides, Eden, and lots of LOVE!! <3

We stayed in BT Hostel, which is right in the middle of all the action. It’s not a good spot if you want peace and quiet, but it’s a great spot if you want a quick drunk walk home at night and a safe place to stay. Teacher Emily’s friend owned the hostel and gave us a nice deal, and her restaurant was right across the street from the hostel and they had the most amazing breakfast food and yogurt smoothies!! My favorite was the strawberry-banana one! :) 

We arrived Friday afternoon, on Valentine’s Day, and had the best breakfast by the pier at Nira's Bakery. After hailing a taxi, we made it to BT Hostel, dropped our stuff and went straight to the beach for lying out and sunset. We had a nice Valentine’s Dinner at an Italian joint. The food was great and HUGE might I add. I ate a calzone that was the size of my right leg. Emily’s boyfriend was our suga-daddy for the night and treated all of us girls to dinner. Thanks Tam!!

On Saturday, Maggie and I had one h-e-double hockey sticks of an adventure. Literally, we thought we weren’t going to make it at one point and another. Our mission was to take a taxi boat two beaches over and then hike back through a trail we should have easily found. It was nothing like this. We were literally traveling vertical in the taxi boats to the other beach. The waves were so huge we had to put on life vests and hold on for our dear lives. At one point I just shut my eyes because I couldn’t watch. I was mentally preparing how to escape when the waves flipped the boat over and we were trapped underneath. It was terrifying. We couldn’t pull into the beach where the trail started because the shore break was too knarly. Luckily a traveling hippie/sex instructor from South Africa knew the way to go. After visiting her commune for a half a second we ventured on.

To make a long story short, we basically spent two hours looking for the trail, another two hours hiking with two other adventurers we meet who were looking for a trail that led to a lookout point (which we thought would probably be the same trail we were looking for), and then another hour figuring out we were lost and deciding whether to put our lives in the hands of crazy truck taxi drivers or crazy taxi boat drivers with against 10 foot high waves (we were really hoping there was another option).

The taxi boat driver ended up winning and, actually, the ride back was just as terrifying, but I really enjoyed it. The Thai driver knew what he was doing and we ended up “surfing” the whole way back to Haad Rin Beach. *On a side note we saw the biggest Komodo Dragon I’ve ever seen on our “hike”. It looked like a dinosaur. It was unreal and scared the shit out of us.

After an amazing two hour nap; we put on our neon gear, painted our faces, had an amazing Mediterranean dinner (I tried falafels for the first time = DELICIOUS) and meet up with the other teachers to begin our Full Moon Partying extravaganza. I’m not really sure about the rest of the night but, I know it included hula-hooping, balloons, and lots of drinks. Surprisingly, when I woke up in the morning I didn't feel too horrible. So, cheers to our Full Moon experience, it will defiantly be a once in a lifetime kinda thang. :S

XoXo