heading to Oz

Our time in Thailand is nearly up as we head to Sydney this evening. We've had a great time here and really enjoyed our time on the islands. Bangkok is an experience and I'm glad we've seen it but it's just so busy here, you don't really want to spend much time here. We would love to come back to Thailand and see more of the islands one day.

After we completed our diving course on Koh Tao, we headed to Koh Phangan for the Full Moon Party. The Full Moon Party is a monthly event held on Haad Rin beach and goes for about 3 days straight. It was mental!!! We got to the island on Friday the 23rd and had an hour long "taxi" ride out to our bungalow where we were staying. The roads were horrendous - probably the worst I've seen in my life. The erosion is horrible b/c of all the rain they got this year. The roads are dirt to begin with and then they are filled with potholes and huge crevasses where the water has washed away the dirt. It was a very bumpy and uncomfortable ride with 10 of us packed into the back of a pickup truck w/ all of our bags loaded on the roof.

We met up with some of our diving friends at the bungalow and had just enough time for a quick shower before heading back into town (via the same long drive) for a night of pre-Full Moon partying. Side note about the shower... Chuck thought you had to turn the handle really hard to get the water to turn on and ended up unscrewing the handle from the wall. Water was shooting out everywhere at very high pressure. It was a minor mishap in our plan to shower quickly that night. Luckily it was easily fixed and the problem was sorted by the time we got home the following morning.

Saturday night was the "official" party but we managed to stay up until around 9am Friday and Saturday night making the most of it. It was definitely the craziest party we've both experienced!!! There were about 15,000 people at the party and the beach was absolutely trashed each morning with beer bottles and buckets.... oh the buckets! They served drinks in little buckets with a handful of straws so you could share your concoction with all your friends. It was an interesting experience and one we're glad we did but are now done with!!! We were so thankful to meet up with our diving buddies as that made the experience even more enjoyable.

We headed to another beach, Haad Yao, for our last night on Koh Phangan to relax and recover from all the partying. Our bungalow was right on the beach, literally about 50 feet from the edge of the water, and we could hear the waves crashing in all night. It was very relaxing and we wish we could have stayed another couple of days. But, it was time to head back to Bangkok so we can fly on to Australia. The trip back didn't seem nearly as long as the trip to Koh Tao. The sea was very rough though so there were some pretty seasick people on our ferry - not too pleasant. We were both okay - Chuck has pretty good sea legs, I took an anti-seasick pill otherwise I probably would have been hanging off the side with the others.

So, one last night in Bangkok and we decided to spoil ourselves with an air-con room (our first) and boy did it feel great! We slept like babies and now we're just hanging out waiting for our bus to the airport. We're having some issues with downloading our pictures so I apologize once again for not posting any pictures but we're hoping to get our problems sorted out in Sydney and then I'll post some, I promise!!!

We hope everyone at home (both homes - States and Ireland) is doing well and getting ready for the holidays. It doesn't seem like the holiday season to us at all - a bit weird to hear our families talking about buying Christmas trees... :) We miss you all and would love to hear from you either on the blog or by email (yes, we are still checking email).

Talk to you all again soon - from Oz! And be sure to check out the map, I've updated it so you can see where all we've been!

Renee & Chuck
xoxoxoxo