Monday 26 december
Today it was finally time for Nicole and me to meet again. I arranged a bungalow on the beach and decorated it a bit as a nice welcome to her. I was a hour to early at the pier and chilled around there. I actually had a bit of a nervous feeling in my stomach.
When she arrived in Koh Phangan it was so good to see eachother again, but also a bit strange, because we haven't seen eachother for such a long time. We hwaded off to our bungalow on the new 150cc motorbike I rented. Nicole really liked the bungalow and in the evening we went out for dinner at "mama's" restaurant. It's owned by a old lady and is very basic, but the food was very good!
After dinner we decided to go to the Shiva Moon party. It's a small party in the jungle where psytrance is being played. We staxed untill 2:00 and then headed home.

Tuesday 27 december
The next morning we went for a healthy breakfast at the Orion healing centre. Here you can do yoga,detox or meditation retreats. We were booth quite interested in this and decided to do a hatha yoga session in the afternoon. The session was pretty intense and got our body really into it's limits. After that we felt tired, but good! The teacher was very good and I think yoga is extremely good for your body and mind. I noticed exactly where my body limits are and what I have to work on. Maybe I want to do something like a yoga course later, because if you know all the movements and see in which position people are having difficulties with, then maybe you can relate it to their problems. This, for me as a physiotherapist is very interesting.

In the evening we went to a local market where I bought sunglasses and Parfum for 7 euro total. Trust me it's real 🤓
After playing some games at the market we headed off to the food section, because Nicole wanted to try... INSECTS! Yes you can buy fried insects here. She ate one and then it was enough.. It just tastes fried, but the way it looks is just disgusting😅 After that we got some real food like Pad Thai and rice. Nicole really likes the food so far. It's cheap, freshly cooked and tastes delicous!

Wednesday 28 december
This morning we got up early to do a yoga morning session. This time the yoga was not so intense and was combined with a little bit of meditation, resulting in the fact that Nicole and me booth fell asleep during the session 😂 oops... Okay. After that we went for a healthy breakfast again at orion's, where we had a salat. Because we were booth quite tired, we wanted to chill a bit on the beach. I didnt just want to stay at the beach in front of the bungalow and I read something about "bottle beach" a few days ago it should be very nice. So we decided to go there but you can not drive all the way there with the motorbike. So we went as far as we could and then realised that it was still a 2km walk. We were tired and on flipflops but decided to go anyway.. We quickly found out that it was not a standard 2km walk. The 2km was just calculates straight, directly. We were facing a mountain in front of us 😂 So.. We ended up hiking for 2 hours through the jungle and rocks. Finally we made it to the beach where coincidentally I meet Lisanne. (Girl I met in hostel before). I asked how she got here, by boat!? No she said you could drive here by scooter.... ahhh !!!!😶 oh well we had a nice adventure. We ate something at a restaurant and then headed back... by boat! 😃
In the evening we ate Thai food and had a cocktail at the Amsterdam Bar.

Thursday 29 december
Today we switched to another location. We could only rent the bungalow for 3 days. We are staying at O.K. Bungalows now, settled at the beach and runned by a friendly Australian man: Michael. He lives here for 5 years now and just takes life day by day. He is so relaxed
After everything was settled, we headed off for some water fun. We went to the Slip'n Fly party where you can go off slides, play volleyball and drink/party. The size of the slides where pretty big and it was a real adrenaline rush when we did it. It was alot of fun together. We filmed some of it with the GoPro, I love this camera.

In the evening we ate spare ribs for dinner and went to the Half Moon Party. We got ourselves painted with neon paint and went inside. It was not as busy as last week and it took a while to get the party started. Later I met up with Raymond. A Dutch guy who I met in Pai in the beginning of november. It was nice to see him again and all together we were partying the night away. Nicole and me shared some "buckets" off cola rum which were not so cheap. Around 20 euro each. They drink quite easily and around 03.00 we had enough and got back home.

Friday 30 december
Today is do nothing to mucg day. We were in bed untill midday and after that I went to town to get some breakfast for us. I bought a meal with vegetables, Indian coconut samosa's and Pad Thai. We ate it like tapas on our balcony. We really like the bungalow we have now. It's basic, but has all we need.
In the afternoon I went for a jog. I notice I really want to get back in shape again after new year. My sports level is so low at the moment and the food here is to damn delicious 😅

In the evening we went to the far south eastern part of the island "Haad Rin". This is were the famous full moon party is being held and it has a lot of tourists. We walked on the beach and had dinner at a Indian restaurant. The food here was amazing and really worth the long ride. After dinner we had a cocktail on the beach and headed back home to play some cards. I teached Nicole the Dutch card game: "pesten", which means bullying in English.

Saturday 31 december
Today is the last day of the year. When I still lived in Holland 31th of december was MY day, because I love fireworks... Last year wad already different since I live in Switzerland. Now I'm on Koh Phangan, zero new years feeling at all.. I kind of miss that exciting feeling but I think I won't ever get that again.

Anyway, today we started by brunching at the food market. We had soup, rice, garlic chicken and a curry chicken for €7 total☺ After that we headed of for a long journey (15km) to the other side of the island: Thong Nai Phan Noi. We walked around there and visited a viewpoint. We made a few crazy pictures and then headed off to Paul's viewpoint. It's the Thai guy who speaks a bit Swiss. I visited hin last week already but now with Nicole. The atmosphere is so relaxed there... After chilling for a bit we drove back again to the main city Thong Sala to buy some fruit and neon paint. Tonight is the new years full moon party!

Back at the bungalow we drank some cola rum and prepared for the party. Nicole showed her skills by neon painting us and I must say she's really good at it! We took a taxi for 4 euro each to go to the place to be: Haad Rin. We first ate some Indian food and then headed off to the beach. It was total madness up there. Yesterday we were also there but it was not so crowded. Today the streets and the beach where completely flooded with party people. We visited the psytrance stage and a techno party and at 0:00 we celebrated new year on the beach. There was not so many fireworks but the atmosphere was good.
After that we decided to go to another "exclusive" party. You can only reach it by boat which costed us 60 euro for the while trip. It was not a normal boat trip. It was just a small boat from local guys. The ride was ridiculous, with such big waves. We were com-plete-ly soaked when we arrived at the beach. We spended the night in the "guys bar" and "Garden of Eden". There was techno music being played and we had a great time, we came home at 08.00 in the morning🙂

We didn't do much during the day. We had dinner at a very unknown local restaurant which is one of my favourites. After eating some last Pad Thai and noodle soup in Koh Phangan, we headed back to our bungalow whereally we played card games and went to bed early.

I'm leaving Koh Phangan after 2 weeks and I must say I really enjoyed it here. It has something to offer for everyone. I did all kinds of stuff but the main things I liked were exploring the island by motorbike, hiking and the exclusive party's on Koh Phangan. On top of that Nicole joined me the last week which made everything even more better.

Monday 2 Januar
Today we headed off to the Khao Sok National Park. We bought our tickets for 500TBH each and they said it will take us about 7 hours to get to the national park with boat and bus. It ended up in 10 hours with a lot of rain.. Anyway we got there and have our own private bungalow close to the jungle where we are going to do some hiking the next days!!☺

Geschreven door FrankArends