Koh Phangan – day 376

I feel that today’s blog should begin with a lighthearted poem. Not much else happened and it is a bit of a filler, but once you read it, I’m hoping it will lift your spirits. 

‘Come to the beach

Where the sea is blue 

And little white waves 

Come running at you. 
A wave comes splashing 

Over your toes. 

You just stand still

And away it goes. 
We’ll build a castle

Down by the sea

And look for shells

If you’ll come with me.’
Fruit, muesli, yoghurt and honey is calling to our fruit & veg deprived bodies and it’s filling us up happily until lunch. But, getting up at a leisurely hour, sitting on our ass and flicking through a mag, swiping candies on an iPad, reading posts and news articles on social media and such… isn’t very taxing. So we easily arrive at lunchtime for Pad Thai noodles. 

So, today is the day of the Full Moon party. My spidey senses think the full moon was actually the night before, but yesterday was a holy Buddhist day and the sale of alcohol was forbidden in shops. Maybe it was respectfully moved to the next night. Thus, with respect in mind, the full moon party itself was cancelled. The death of the Thai king, His Highness Bhumibol Adulyadej, has meant the country is in mourning. All organised festivities have been cancelled, with concerts organising refunds, bars and business shutting up shop for the foreseeable future, etc. There is a 100 day of mourning period and everyone needs to be on their best behaviour – articles even cite a local being forced to their knees to show respect to the king’s portrait. Hemming and hawing about whether or not to join the party has been decided for us. We don’t want to be present at an event (which everyone seems to be getting ready to go to), out of respect for the Thai people and when there’s a chance of people getting arrested. Everything we had read on the internet has said that the full moon party had been cancelled but we’d overheard several tourists stating they were going to ‘go there anyway and get something started’… Slightly disappointed by the lack of cultural insensitivity displayed by some people. But, we have unfortunately met our fair share of ‘tourists’ like this during our travels. 

Showing our respect, avoiding the potentially difficult situation, we stayed at the resort. We were rewarded/vindicated when the heavens opened for several hours, downpours of torrential rain that was deafening and flattened the footprints in the sand. Knowing that the staff weren’t overloaded with food orders and run off their feet, we ordered chilli cheese fries and tacos. 

We had seen them being prepared several times in the kitchen and we envied the platters being served to others. Tonight we feasted and it was fantastic. Waddling back to our hut, we had had a perfect day. 

Monday 17th October 2016