It's raining sun - Hallelujah!!

After posting Wednesday i go up to see some of the town but it's all sandbags and long faces, so i get out some cash, hit up a 7-11 for some beers and taytos (or the equivalent, lays, which are actually pretty nice) and head back to my porch to listen to music and read my book. After a while this slightly dodgy looking trio check into the corner room, so i head over to say hello. They turn out to be Swiss, and within about a minute and a half are asking where they can get some drugs. I make my excuses and head back to my porch. This big tattooed dude walks past a few times and i make a little conversation with him. Eventually he joins me and we sink some beers. His name is Alex, turns out he's German, in Thailand for a month, been over on the south western islands for two weeks and only seen two days of sun. We get fairly hammered and head for some dinner around five, where we meet up with two couples, one from New Zealand (Anna and Mike) and one from Australia (Sally and Mick). We invite them to join us and we all sit on one of the porches drinking for the night. Around eight the rain gets silly and the place starts to flood. After wading through the water at one point, i get a pain in my toe, but think nothing of it. I head back to my room to find it under two inches of water, so i move all my stuff to another bungalow. At some stage we go to the nearby shop to get more beers, where it turns out a can of heinekin is about fifty euro cent. Score!! At some stage, i crash.

The next morning we all meet up for breakfast. At some point during the night, my toe has turned 100% purple, which is a bit worrying, but being the good sensible chap i am, i decide to let it be and see if it spreads to the rest of my food. I check into my room for one more night (ten euro - score) and the kiwis tell me that the girl from the swiss apartment came up to them three times that morning asking to borrow money (first e400, then 4000 thai baht (around e80), then 100 baht (about e2)I get talking to some english girls who say she did the same to them. It becomes pretty clear soon enough that she's a bit of a junkie, as she's pale and, eh, looks like a junkie. Sure enough, about a half an hour after asking the lads for money, she's sauntering around drinking a bottle of tiger beer. We get back to the kiwis porch to find the leftover bottles of tiger are gone. Hmmm....

Anyways, for e16 we rent a jeep, split it four ways between me, alex and the two kiwis, and head off to drive round the island. Sure enough, we get out of the resort and onto the road, and find the crossing under about four feet or water. We elect to drive through it nice and slow, but sure enough as it's starting to get shallower, some prick in a large SUV comes barreling towards us, hits us with a huge wave which floods the engine, and the jeeps cuts out. Prick. The two lads push the jeep out of the water (joined by about five thais - sound!) and we head off to figure out what to do. Luckily we meet the guy who rented the jeep to us and he gets it going. We head off for a while, see the airport (awesome) and get some food in this little market (i get these delicious fried chicken/veg/herb balls on a stick for twenty euro cent. Nice). We go see the big buddah, from where you can see Ko Pha Ngan, and island about ten kilometers to the north of us, and then head for the waterfalls in the south of the island, which are amazing but necessitate driving through huge floods of four foot water again - all one way traffic, luckily, but we do get stuck in a few traffic jams, while in water, which freaks me out no end. When it gets dark, we head back for our resort. It's still raining so i try to avoid the floods, only getting into deep water on the last stretch before our resort (where we cut out earlier). And guess what. Some fucker does the exact same thing, ploughing through in some bastard SUV flooding the engine again. While i maintain my composure (see: punching the roof while shouting "PRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK") the lads push us home, just in time for dinner and drinks (in the bar we spot the three swiss, sitting at a table full of food, eyes rolling back in their heads). Later me, alex and mike head to this nightclub as reccomended by alex, where me and mike play some of the worst pool of all time, before heading for home.

Friday my toe is a mixture of red and purple, but it's not spreading, so i decide to leave it. It's a little sore but not sore enough to be broken. Job. We decide, if we're going to be in the rain anyways, why not be in the rain on another island? So we pack up our stuff and make for Ko Pha Ngan. Mercifully, it's not raining yet, so we get a dry and smooth crossing on the ferry. We land into an area called Haad Rin where the famous Full Moon Parties are, to be told there's a Black Moon party the next day. What this is i have no idea, but it sounds fun. We get food, hawk with a rake of taxi dudes, and eventually settle on one taxi to take us to this beach that Alex is mad to visit, Thong Nai Pan. The beach is on the north east of the island, and is fairly inaccessable at the best of times as the road isn't paved and goes over mountains, so with the rain, it's a bit.... Eehhh... We set off with this mad samoan looking dude in some mad party van covered in lights and speakers. What follows is about the scariest 45 minutes of my life as we go up and down sixty degree slopes with abrupt four hundred foot drops on either side into blank jungle. Did i mention there's no barriers at the side of thai roads? Dad would have loved it. When things go offroad i start staring at the ground (highlight: sliding backwards down a hill of about 80 degrees while the driver tries to get some traction going). We eventually get to our destination and i just about hug the driver.

One of the happiest moments of my life quickly turns sour when it becomes evident we're the only tourists for about ten miles. Grand and all, except that there's no damn guesthouses open. We check out a few places on the deserted north beach before getting a taxi to the south beach where we check into this place called Star Huts, and i get a bungalow on the beach for about eight euro. Dinner and drinks ensue, before we head for an auld schroll down the beach, over some rocks, and onto a neighboring private beach, where an super swanky resort is built into the rocks, with four levels of infinity pools, and all mad swanky decking and marble walkways. Someone shows up and we start to leg it before he points out the way to the main restaurant area and we head for a schonz (aka, a look around). To say this place is plush is an understatement. Some serious richie rich shit, each chalet with it's own outside jacuzzi, staff everywhere bowing despite our obviously being out of place, we leave before we're kicked out and i crash.

Despite it not raining at all on saturday, it's still a huge surprise when sunday is actually a nice day. Feeling good beacuse my toes about 50% back to normal, I negotiate three nights for my bungalow for e20. Score! We get breakfast and have a walk around town, hang out on the beach, eat some more, walk to this awesome bar on stilts called Rasta Bby Bar (pumping raggae, cushons instead of seats, bob marley posters everywhere) where i get the best food i've had in thailand, "Rasta Bruschetta" (italian flat bread, tomato, garlic, basil, cheese and olive oil. Amazing and only about e1.20). We head back to the huts and hang out for a while drinking on the porch before heading back to that rasta bar for more food and drinks. They have a load of new kittens so we play with them, take some pictures, and i show everyone how to bust out a gang sign with their hands for their respective hometowns (i've been rocking WC (west cork) in photos all weekend so when someone asks, everyone wants their own). As we pour out at around 1am, me and mick start busting some mad snoop dog pimp talk (basically taking the first one or two letters of a word and replacing the rest with either "izzy" or "izzle" - "this weather is very hot" becoming "this wizzle is mad hizzy". Yeah, i know, pretty stupid eh?) which confuses our german buddy Alex so much he decides he's had enough and crashes, poor bastard. We head to a bar on the beach to play some pool and crash around two after some amazing burgers at "Mr Handsome's".

So today is Sunday and the sun is absolutely splitting the stones. As anyone who's ever seen my skin will know, me and the sun are mortal enemies, so i've been keeping to the shade live the Lestat i am. I did make one attempt at walking down the beach with my tshirt off, but when the coastgards helicoptered in only to shout "that's not a whale, that's an irish dude. Hey fatty, get off the fuckin beach, you're scaring the tourists" i put back on my shirt and hit the bar. Good move methinks!