NOVEMBER RAIN

We arrived at night on Ko Phagnan, after a full day's journey from Ko Lanta, via mini-bus & ferry to Krabi, then coach & a very choppy ferry trip over to the island. We stayed in the main town on the first night and could see the aftermath of the recently passed Full Moon Party (the beach was covered in rubbish), not to mention several bucket casualties wandering the streets. There had been over 10,000 people at the latest party, but we planned to go to the more 'intimate' Half Moon Party in the jungle, with a mere 2000+ people.

We weren't too impressed with the town, so we headed for the north east of the island, where we'd heard the beaches were lovely. The only problem was that, due to the unusually high tide, there was no beach... and there wasn't much sun either! We took it easy for a few days, reading & playing cards (there was little else to do), then headed back down south, but further west of the main town, in search of a beach. There wasn't one there either! We only had a week left on the islands and we really needed some beach action, so after a couple more days we made our way up to the north west coast and at Haad Yao... we found a beach! It was a beautiful bay and we found a perfectly located bungalow right on the beach, only a few metres from the sea.

Unfortunately for us, from that day on the storm clouds rolled in and the heavens opened - we had booming thunder (like we've never heard before), lightning and constant rain for the whole 8 days we were there. It rained so hard that we couldn't even get to the Half Moon Party, if there was one. Pretty disappointing for the last part of our 9 month trip, especially as we were in such a lovely part of the world. However, we made the most of our 'down' time - we read, read some more and did some more reading, played backgammon & cards, watched pirate DVDs, Ben got lots of work done on the latest T-shirt range and we slowly emptied our fridge of Samsong & coke and Singha beer. 'Every cloud' as they say...

It was on our last day, whilst waiting to leave for Bangkok, that we heard the airport had been taken over by anti-government protestors. Little did we know, at that point, quite how much it was going to affect our journey home!