You Saw the Whole of the Moon

Tuesday 14 October
Ko Pha Ngan

So after the previous night's Red Bull I hardly sleep well and end up getting up at about 2. I grab breakfast, go to the internet place to book my flight back to Bangkok and update the blog and relax on the beach and in the water. Ben is worse for wear this morning, as are a few others. The sunset it awesome. At this time of year as there is still weather, there are still clouds in the sky and the skyscape and atmospherics look amazing. You can be in hot sunshine while you watch a large thunderstorm dump its load on Ko Samui over the channel. Or see whisps of high-level cloud surround the moon in pale grey-blue at night. And the sunsets create burning boulders of cloud across the sky.

There is a free barbeque at the resort before carriages to the party. The moon is up and bright. There are no clouds in the sky but there is still a wide, pale halo around the moon that covers about a fifth of the heavens. Everyone applies some body paint - I get an Adam Ant stripe on my face (only the 40-something report manager gets the reference) and I draw the Vietnamese symbol for longevity on my arm which receives a lot of love. the stripe is a bit wonky though and I end up washing it off later anyway, as I keep on rubbing it off accidentally.

I kick off with a gin and tonic and then eat and drink (albeit responsibly) until its time to leave. We arrive back at the main beach I get stuck in. There is much dancing and drinking. There are more people but it's essentially the same as before. We find a collapsed man and check he's OK - turns out he's staying on Ko Samui and didn't know that he was on the wrong island! We've all been there...

We take a taxi and a chicken schnitzel back to the resort and meet up with the whole group back on the beach. There's some random silliness and as the sun comes up I start to pass out so I hit the sack.