Day 131 - Try Again

We had to move out of our lovely bungalow this morning, having been awoken by scratching chickens and a woman relentlessly performing topiary outside form about half seven in the morning. We were, I'll admit, still a little drunk when all this occurred, making it all that little bit harder. We headed out and located the others, all except Arkansas Sara, who met a French gentleman last night and didn't return to her bungalow by checkout time... The other girls had to pack up all her stuff for her, and we were all pretty worried when she hadn't turned up by 1, but then she turned up on the back of David (the frenchman)'s bike, all smiles. I believe there was a telling off, but it was kept until the ferry.

We got the 3 o'clock Catamaran to Phangan, where they showed Underdog, a terrible movie which we couldn't escape for the entire journey. On arrival at Thongsala we haggled for ages to get a cheap taxi to Haad Rin - this happened last night as well, these guys really are keen on bargains, and persist well beyond where I would give up. The Finns and Marta left on the 9 am boat, and had got us all some rooms - room for 6 on Haad Rin, and room for the rest of us over on Leela Beach, in the very Bungalows that I saw and refused on Thursday. I realised this, and managed to get Marie and I a bungalow at Paradise bungalows just at the south end of Haad Rin, the main party beach. We headed over to Leela anyway, as I knew where it was and could show the others - it turned out that the room Marta had got us was 73, the very one I had turned down, so I'm glad we decided not to stay there.

After dinner, we all convened for drinks (I had a whole deep fried White Snapper with garlic and pepper, it was absolutely delicious), watched a fire show on the beach, and found ourselves party to a strange phenomenon - due to the elections again, none of the bars were allowed to have music; there were occasional 30 second bursts, then the police who were touring the beach would come along and stop it. Bucket sales were stopped too, apparently until noon tomorrow, although buckets could be found without too much trouble. Despite the lack of music, the beach was pretty full, and glow paint abounded as well - dragons, suns and flowers were painted on Sandy, Ivan and Marie respectively. Also, I learnt the meaning of a type of tattoo I see here a lot - Thai characters below sort of swirly spires, often on the back of the neck, or drawn on the roof of Taxis & buses. They vary enormously, but often are good luck, or a protective charm (for want of a better word) and are done by, or under the instruction of, a Buddhist Monk, and also come with sets of rules concerning what you are forbidden from doing if you want it to work, although ones without rules (like Sandy's) exist as well. They are an ancient Thai Warrior thing, apparently. Anyway, I reckon there were maybe 1000 people on the beach, even without any music, so I'm sure tomorrow will be massive.