We planned to spend Vietnamese New Year dancing the night away at a Black Moon Party on the island of Ko Phangan, a twenty minute ferry ride from Ko Samui. It seemed as a perfect day to leave because the weather became cloudy and rainy.
We decided to stay on the southern side of the island, on the other side of the peninsula from where the famous Full Moon Parties take place. This side of the island turned out to be very quiet, almost to the point of desolate. There were no restaurants and we had to make due with dinners consisting of raman noodle cups and soda from the convenient store up the road.
This tropical fruit soda was delicious!
The so-called resort we stayed at was just as desolate, we were the only people there the whole time and the resort owners were less than cordial, on top of that we were given a bungalow on the road and not facing the beach, it was strange.
In between the rain and twiddling our thumbs we would walk up to the nearest cluster of business which consisted of travel agencies, a 7-11 and a few food stalls, where we would buy banana pancakes and make arrangements to get off this island.
After two days of painfully not having much to do, the weather didn’t warrant sitting by the pool and the beach had this huge hard pipe that laid the length of beach which would become swamped during high tide.
Soon it was Lunar New Years and we made our way over the a small beach where the Black Moon Party was being held. It was your typical several thousand people dance party on the beach.
We were disappointed that there wasn’t anything significant to Lunar New Year, but we were finally able to eat some real food. There were several food vendors set up right outfront of the party and they had a great selection of snacks.
We opted for thick slices of foccacia bread style pizzas, grilled corn rolled in butter and chilis and pork skewers, all prepared and sold by this woman:
A little after midnight we took the scariest taxi ride home. The taxis on the island consisted of dodge trucks suited with bench seats and a cover. They looked like this:
On our last day the sun came out and we decided to rent a scooter and see the rest of the island, which was gorgeous.
Even though the southern side of the island where we stayed didn’t have a great beach or anything great, however the sunsets were great.
Maya Bay lies in between Phuket and the mainland Thailand and surrounded by limestone islands. Our trip consisted of a speedboat out into the ocean towards the calm waters of the beautiful bay.
True to the waters and beaches of Southern Thailand the sand and sea was the best we encountered.
Maya Bay is a sandy beach nestled in between limestone islands.
But due to the popularity of the movie the Beach it was crowded!
Luckily we weren’t at the beach area for long and headed out to the limestone islands to snorkel and see the abundant sea life created by the limestone reefs.
We then had lunch on the famous Phi Phi Islands. The islands were still recovering from the Tsunami of 2004, but we enjoyed our fairly average lunch and headed out to an elephant safari.
We would have loved to spend more time in the bay and thought about possibly seeing another island on the bay, but after several weeks of beaches we were ready to head out to see something different.
