Long Day

View from our beach bungalow in Koh Phanang

When we arrived in Thailand we didn't have any plans of where to go or what to do. We realized that the full moon party in Koh Phanang was scheduled for July 3rd, and I thought it would be a lot of fun, so we used that to drive our plans.

To get from Khao Sok to Koh Phanang we could either take a tourist mini bus for 650 BHT or try and organise the journey ourselves. We decided to organise the trip ourselves and got packed up and to the local bus stop for the 9am bus to Surat Thani. The bus only comes every two hours and I had heard that the bus can be less than reliable so we got to the bus stop at 8:30 in case it was early. I didn't want to miss the bus by a minute and have to wait around until 11am. 9am came and went, then 9:15, 9:30, 9:45 and still no bus.
Janelle waiting patiently for the local bus

A mini bus that was headed to Surat Thani came by and for marginally more than the local bus they agreed to take us to a ferry office in Surat Thani, where we could continue our journey.

The mini bus driver started to drive but was only going around 50km (30 miles) / hour. We were getting passed by everyone. Then the driver started to pick up local people to fill the bus. Finally when the bus was so full that people were sitting on each others laps the driver started to drive like a bat out of hell to get to Surat Thani. The bus dropped us right in front of the ticket office for a ferry company where we bought a ticket and ran to catch another bus to take us to the ferry port, another hour away, where we got on a boat for two and a half hours to Koh Phangan where we arrived at 4:30pm.

People loading onto the ferry

At our hotel in Koh Phangan, there were finally some other people around and we made some friends and went to a jungle party.

Here is a video of a guy twirling fire in the jungle:

To see all of the pictures from today click on the link below:

Koh Phanang