full moon party

Our neighbours - CJ, Paula, Corrie and Charley
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Ko Phangan is the venue to the infamous 'full moon party', basically a beach in which upto 20,000 people dance the night away in a very debauched and drunken stupor - sounded perfect!!

We arrived in Hatrin 5 days before the party to ensure somewhere to stay.  The bast way to describe this town is Magaluf in Thailand - not good.  But we thought we would stay anyway as so close to the beach.  We lasted 2 nights before leaving for the more subdued north of the island.  But the night before we left, we walked along the beach at about 6pm and they where setting all these tables up, loaded with buckets with bottles of Redpoll and Whisky sticking out of them.  But no one was on the beach, so we left and was very boring and played chess at our hotel awaiting an early night.  At 11pm just before bed, curiosity over came us, and as we did not have a cat we thought it would be safe to have a quick look at the beach - only for 5 mins and max one drink.  On the walk down we could hear this very antisocial drone of what I think is called 'house music', so we quickened our pace to find the whole beach going off, at least 2000-3000 people dancing in front of 3 large bars.  Still wanting an early night we said we would stay for just that one.  10 minutes later we found some of our friends who handed us one of these buckets and no talk of sand castles cops we started to drink.  The next thing we know it is light and we are still dancing on the beach.  It was a very cool night, and laid the foundations for what I knew would be a wicked full moon party. 

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The next day we traveled north to find our friends who where living on a quiet, gorgeous beach, our hut was no more than 20m from pure blue sea - fantastic, if a little quiet.  We chilled through the day, come the evening our mates said they were going to the Pirates bar.  I thought ok but it is going to be real quiet.  We walked along the beach, still very quiet, till we reached near the end and then I heard it, pure tunes been blasted out to sea making even the fish dance, but still no visual sign.  We climbed around these rocks only to sea what I have to say is one of the coolest bars I have ever frequented.  DJ nest high above this tiny cove in the rocks, 100ft rocks on all sides apart from the small beach and sea.  Lazars shooting out and people dancing to funky tunes and chilling out, fantastic we danced till the early hrs - what a bar.  I am putting it up in my top five bars/clubs, (Pacha/DC10's in Ibiza. Moosevert in St Anton. Austria and the Railway in Dorridge, UK)

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Anyway 3 days later we are heading by taxi to the party in high spirits, after resting all day.  Upon arrival instead of 3 sound systems there was about 8 and a lot more people.  People had been drafted in from all surrounding islands.  This had the setting to be one hell of a party, but in short it was not to be.  Basically the cool atmosphere had changed to a pure pissed up, attitude ridden mess.  People pissing in the sea - I admit I sometimes have a piss not always in the loo if caught short, but not on a beach half way up so to piss on peoples legs - not nice, anyway I did not want to block the moon out.  When we got back at 7ish we found our mates we had lost and the consensus was the same as ours. 

The view from our beach hut
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