Today I arrived on Koh Pangan island. Unfortunatly islands mean ferry crossings and ferry crossing mean I’m useless as a human for the duration. Despite this, I found myself sitting next to a very cool looking Russian dude who didn’t speak a word of English. And I don’t speak any Russian, thanks for asking. Yet we employed some international sign language of pointing and grunting and managed to have a rudimentary conversation. We also managed to play a card game, which was good as it occupied my mind and prevented me from puking – yet.
On land I instantly got my appetite back and nailed a gigantic sandwich in this cute coffee shop. I was getting some strange looks as I tucked in. I realised later that 1pm is when most people get up and start the hangover remedies. They must have been struggling to keep down their ice water and bread slices watching me destroy my lunch.
The day passed rather slowly until people drifted in and the beer started to flow. I spent some time with a group of Austrians playing games of Uno, they were really cool guys. We ended up getting dinner together at Momma Shnitzle, can you guess what I had?
The warm up party at the hostel grew, UV paints appeared and we all daubed multi colours all over our faces. Even in my increasingly intoxicated state I got quite artistic with the patterns i was giving people. One girl wanted it down the side of her face which was great cos she had amazing eyes, very distracting.
From here we jumped in a terrifying taxi to THE JUNGLE. A clearing about the size of a football field with a muddy stream running through it. UV paint artists with demonstrative murals behind them put my swirls to shame. There were Avatar like giant plants made of of some sort of wire and paper that glowed magical colours in the UV. It was such an awesome visual onslaught of colours and lights!
There must have been 20,000 people there, all surrounding a huge floral painted stage where the DJ’s pumped out the music. Everyone was covered in UV and wobbling in and out of time with the music. I found a cool group of people who accepted my wobbling and we just ended for hours. It was amazing. In the UK, every club I have ever been to is full of self conscious nob jockeys who just stand there and look cool bobbing their head in time to the beat. No one in the UK actually dances and let’s themselves really go for it freely. The Jungle was the first place I’ve seen people just going crazy with whatever their bodies wanted to do. It was a huge melting pot of writhing UV limbs throwing shapes all night.
Un/fortunately I heeded the advice of the hostel manager and didn’t take any valuables with me so there are no photos. I suspect his advise was meant for people who like to get truely fucked up, unlike me. However saying this, I thing the alcohol here is not as refined as europe. I had spent most of the night on bottles of beer until I had a fabled bucket. In here the waitress must have poured in a whole litre of liquor because it tasted REALLY strong. This was the drink that pushed me over the edge. Realising this, I scarpered back to the hostel in a blurry high speed taxi to curl up in bed. I was so knackered by this point that I fell asleep instantly to endure the worst of the drunkness.