the last week in ko phangan passed in a sort of daze.

the full moon party was a bit crap really. the days before though were lots of fun. that is to say, what i recall of them i would class as a fun of sorts. getting drinks at a bar had now become a bizzare practice, only to be done as a last resort. no, it was the buckets for us. lucy had opted out of the communal bucket sessions prefering beer, so that left Carson and me. not that we were complaining. sangsom had become quite seductive at this point. when properly mixed you could bearly taste the alchohol. we would sit, of and evening, and get roucusly sloshed in the privicy of our room, then, at a precisely timed moment we would unleash ourselves onto the beach.
the beach was a nice stretch of white sand, with glistening water during the day, at night it was lit up by the countless bars along the beachfront and the fire staff/poi blokes who were every where. the bars poured out a solid wall of music, the sands became the massive dancefloor of the biggest club in the world. thousands of people drifted to and fro in various states of intoxication. sometimes we would sit on our balcony of our guesthouse complex, which overlooked the beach, and people watch. picking out the more ludercrous from the crowds of humanity for our amusement.

on the night of the fullmoon we discovered that some enterprising street vender had upgraded the buckets from pidly two pint sized ones to massive ones you would use in some sort of floor mopping operation. it was the work of a moment for us to purchase this monstrocity and pour in a bottle and a half of the good stuff. retiring to the balcony, the night progressed in a faverable fashion. some of our fellow guesthouse users had bought dayglo paint and were painting each other. somehow we got hold of it, and in a trice we had doubed ouselves in garish paint, being somewhat drunk, our artistic ability was slightly impared, and the results were less that pretty. with that it was a matter of moments before i had got a cowboyhat from a minion on the street and Carson, against my advice, had got a police womans hat. thus aquipped we made for the beach. despite all this preperation it was a bit of an anticlimax. non of us had that great a night. there were just too many people. tens of thousands all fried to the tonsils.

plenty of mad stuff going on though.
on a previous evening i recall finding Carson at a perticualy large crowd of people. burrowing through we came to an open circle of sand in front of a bar. across this the barstaff had strung a large flaming hoop. the rules to this game were simple. picking your moment carefully you take a run up position, sip some of your drink, then sprint up to the 4 foot wide hoop and leap, headfirst through the inferno. the barstaff would raise or lower the hoop seemingly at random, and many a fool collided with the hoop sending sparks and flaming debrie cascading onto the sands. we watched the petrol soaked chunks as they continued to burn merrily.

“thats pretty dangerous.” i remarked as i kicked out the nearest flames. Carson took a contamplative sip from his bucket.
“yeah.”
i didn’t have a drink at this point. i vaugly recall hurling my half full bucket from me in a fit of passion earlier in the evening. i was begining to feel this was a mistake.
the staff had taken down the hoop and were squirting it with petrol from washing up liquid bottles. thus refueled it rose again, a majestic burning wheel. billows of heat washed over us.
there was a moment of stillness. visions of my hair flairing alight filled my head. with one hand i took hold of my locks.
“lets go!” i said, charging for the hoop.
no doubt to onlookers, i described a perfect parrabolic curve as i sailed though the air, intersecting with the exact center of the wheel. the flames licked at me but didn’t catch hold. pure serenity, then i landed with a soft thud on the other side. i looked up to see Carson bursting out of the fiery gateway. impossibly he had jumped through with his bucket and not spilled a drop. we rose to general applause. we did it again and again just for the hell of it, and laughed wildly as others took the spills that we avoided. here and there someones foot or a flailing arm would mash into the side of the hoop, their screams drowned out by the happy laughter of the crowd. two fools mistimed their approuch to such an extent that they jumped from both sides of the hoop at the same time, meeting at the hoop in a bone dislocating crunch and a shower of sparks.

good times. good times.

leaving ko phangan, we parted ways with Carson. quite a shame really. he had acompanied us on and off since malaysia. he was heading back to ko lanta and us to bangkok. bangkok was a lot nicer than i thought it would be, but incredibly hot. we spent a few forgetable days there and got a bus to combodia. we had been warned many times not to get a bus to combodia, but for some reason we got a bus. no idea why. it just seemed easy. anyway the road from the border to siem reap is an absurd bit of madness. if you wanted to design the worst, most pot holed, dust bathed road in existance then you would be wise to take the bus to siem reap, and jot down a few notes. hellish.
people told us that cambodia was not that great, but in fact it isn’t too bad. ankor wat, was sutably impressive. and the people seem nice and friendly.

anyhow, next stop vietnam.

juliio