Koh Samui and Koh Phangan (The Best New Years Party of my life)

The trip to Koh Samui was long and trying - practically 24 hours to get from Bangkok to the island including all forms of transportation from train, to bus, to boat. Exhausting! It was nice to finally get in and be able to laze on the beach. Although our hostel was HORRIBLE and the worst I've ever been in. Sketch area, water that usually ran cold if it even ran at all, and a lazy landlord guy that never did anything. Most of Koh Samui was spent relaxing on a beach. We met up with a couple CUHK kids while there. It was a nice, relaxing way to pass a few days. I know this whole trip has been a vacation, but traveling at break neck speed to see anything and everything in the areas we travelled to can get exhausting. So this was a true vacation - nothing to see, nothing to do, but laze about and relax. It was nice.

After a couple days on the beach, we caught an afternoon ferry to Koh Phagnan for the craziest New Years Eve party, possibly ever. The crowd of around 50,000 people was filled with mostly Aussies, some Americans/Canadians, and all ranging from late teens to late twenties. There were a few older people there, and you could tell they live a verryyy different lifestyle than I could ever imagine. For example, we talked with this guy "Dr. Price" who bought a medical license, many happy endings, and pills while on vacation in Thailand. There were a number of these shadier characters, but the majority were Aussie college kids on xmas holiday. Perfect crowd for an amazing NYE party that raged all through the night.

There was a row of booths, each selling their own version of a bucket with soda, red bull, and alcohol. The creator of Red Bull (an original Thai product apparently) is one of the richest men in the country and I think it's because of this night alone. The beach had

bars, which were barely more than huts with music at times, spanned the entire length of the beach. They each had their own style, music, and crowd. We ended up spending most of the night in a beach bar that played everything from rock staples to modern hits. Up and down the beach they also had people doing body paint and fire dancers and fire jump rope and just many other things that could lead to lots of bodily harm. It's no wonder the town is filled with an emergency health clinics. The night was spent bar hopping and watching other people do stupid things. An awesome party. At midnight, there wasn't much of an indicator that it was the new year, just a few fireworks spread out here and there. I think by that point, everyone was too far gone to really care. At some point in the night, we went to crash on a quieter side of the island since the next ferry out was in the morning and we didn't want to waste our money on a room we would hardly use. It was not a very restful sleep, but it worked well enough in a pinch. The next morning around 8am, we decided to head back to the party to see the damage. There were still a couple bars full of people raging! It was madness. There's no way those people were going on just those buckets, Red Bull is not that strong. Left the next afternoon to get back to Koh Samui and that was a miserable, choppy trip. We came back to our crappy room to find that the water had been running the entire time so the whole place smelled damp. Not a great place to return to after such an unbelievable night.

Really, no words can fully sum up that experience. And there aren't even photos to help since I didn't want to risk my camera.

The last night in Koh Samui was spent with the few Aussie guys we had befriended on the island. We also met up with Mark from CUHK. Spent the night drinking and the guys bought a ton of fireworks. It was a lot fun and fitting farewell for the island. We stayed up til our early morning flight to our last major destination - LAOS!