Koh Samui

Hanging out at Backpackers

The boat to Koh Samui was so freakin exciting! Everyone was chillin on the decks in the sun just lovin’ life. Dolphins were water galloping with great majesties right beside our boat; but I missed it. When we got to Samui, we grabbed some Thai soup, then cabbed to some backpackers dorm thing. Such a piece. Four crappy bunk beds and a fan. We paid for four nights but got our money back for two of them because we knew we could find better. Backpackers did help meet a bunch of friends though.

Firespinners on the beach

Scooters were definitely a great idea here. We cruised around tons. Our new little bungalow was really nice. It was further away from the “tourist strip” but approximately the same price with a major increase in quality. It didn’t take more than a day there to understand the routine:

Beaches in the day time, Arkbar from sunset to 2am, then to Green Mango Club for the end of the night. Arkbar is a big bar on the beach with fire spinners (mostly kids, not super skilled), Green Mango Club is five minutes away. Pretty bumpin’ every night (also due to the time of year [March]).

Sunset Bungalow was gorgeous. Paradise at the beach. Rush got a lung infection and Ryker had some minor internal bleeding. They went to the hospital, they got meds, and they got better. I won’t go into any more detail than that. We met a sweet Australian guy here named Joey. He taught us that where he’s from, it’s totally okay to refer to your friend as a ‘mad cunt’. He also taught us that ‘flippin a bitch’ meant doing a U-turn while driving. We sure had a lot of important information to learn from this gem of a character.

Once we left our bungalow, we needed walk only thirty yards before arriving at the ferry pier. We didn’t realize this when we booked the bungalow, but it sure was convenient. Next stop: Koh Phangan.

Koh Phangan

I spent the majority of the boat ride meditating, only stopping briefly to help this lady walk from one side to the other. We arrived at night and walked five minutes before we found Jaya Hostel. It was right in Haad Rin, two minutes from the beach, so we booked it for 6 nights. It was an 8-10 bed dorm

Front flip on the beach

with good air conditioning (air con = important). After one day, we realized we could’ve gotten a little bungalow on the beach, which would have been way sweeter but we couldn’t get our money back from those jerks.

Haad Rin is just one big square with a thousand shops. Even after a week, I still didn’t know my way around perfectly. The beach was smaller than I had expected but still big enough to fit 20-30 thousand people. It takes about 20 minutes to walk from Rock Bar (south) to Mellow Mountain (north). Right beside Mellow Mountain is Kangaroo Bar.

Kangaroo Bar

This was our favourite place to hangout. We went daily. It’s slightly on the side of a mountain so you have to take a few stairs up to it, but once you’re there, there’s a really great deck that overlooks the entire beach. You basically grab a table and some cushions and hangout with friends and strangers. The bartenders are really cool and there’s lots to choose from. The thing that struck me as odd, however, was that they openly sell doobs and mushroom shakes. We’d heard all sorts or horror stories about tourists getting busted by the police for smoking a joint so we didn’t really know why it seemed to be acceptable here. Every night had at least a little party on the beach, so we drank a lot. On day three I decided it was time to go to mushroomland…

Mushroomland

So having spoken to a few people about the mushroom shakes and being that I was surrounded by friends all the time, I summoned up the courage to go get one. Another friend we were with didn’t end up drinking much of his, so I had almost two shakes in one sitting. It was fine for the first 15-20 minutes. Then it hit me. Hard. A wave of increased brightness and light exposure slapped me right in the eyes, so I closed them. My whole world started melting from my brain. I was able to make clear conversation, but simply engaging in conversation with somebody was causing me a weird discomfort and strain on my mind. I just needed to zone out and veg by myself for a while. No idea how much time passed, but soon enough it started to get to the point where I think my body is trying to reject the mushrooms and make me vomit. So with rapidly increasing queasiness in my stomach, I decide to get up and trek to the bathroom. As weird as this may sound… easier said than done. The second I stood up, I got a savage head rush and as I started walking, I almost fell over. I stumbled into one of the support beams and hugged it for a few seconds. Then I took a few more wobbly steps to the next beam, then the next. My vision was running at 80% efficiency and my motor skills down to a whopping 65%. I made it to the last support beam and clung to it for a while, trying to regain my composure. Trying not to puke. I realized I must have looked ridiculous standing by myself, hugging a pole in the corner of the bar. I could also hear and feel Ryker and the gang watching me. Laughing, he asked me how I was doing. I gave him the thumbs up. I took one more deep breath, regained my composure, and opened my eyes (which I just realized had been closed for the last several minutes). Then I started up the rock steps toward the bathroom.

I reached the bathroom with no troubles. I went pee first, thinking it might help flush some of the excess toxins out and make me feel a bit better, then I went over to the sink. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was pale. I splashed a bunch of water on my face and just chilled there for a bit. Eventually the queasiness subsided, and I returned to the table with Ryker and a couple others. I’d passed the stage where I might have puked, but don’t get me wrong, I was still trippin balls! After X amount of time, we left Kangaroo Bar and I decided that a massage was in order. So Ryker walked me to the massage place near our dorm and I went in. The language barrier was tough with this lady, but what do we really need to talk about? I’d like a massage please. The room we were in was just like my mom’s energy healing room. Same style of decorations, peaceful ohm music… it was cool. Also, every time I closed my eyes, I started seeing little insects and lizards running across “my screen”, and snakes slowly coiling their way around pirate ship styled pillars.  Weird friggin experience that’s for sure, but great massage! I chilled for the rest of the day and even in bed that night, I could still see bugs and lizards when I closed my eyes.

The party is epic

Full Moon Party

The Full Moon Party itself was so sick, but really wasn’t all that different from the four days leading up to it. Just more people and more body paint… that’s about it. So we chilled all day and once it got dark, we started with the buckets and the body paint. We painted for a couple of hours, there were loads of people everywhere doing it. It’s like the 20,000 person pre-drink was also a body painting session. The rest of the night definitely had some blurry spots, those buckets really get to you after a few. Pretty early

Getting painted

in the night, it started raining heavily, and all those hours of body painting were short lasted.  But as quickly as the rain started, it stopped. Eventually, I ran into some other friends and we went up to Kangaroo Bar. We had slowed down a lot on drinking but I definitely remember dancing a lot there. I must have left after a while cause I remember running into Russia near sunrise, and we went back to Kangaroo Bar and ran into Ryker. It was awesome that we all reunited at sunrise. We chilled for a couple more hours then went home. I went to bed at about 11:00am. We stuck around for two more days then left for Koh Tao.