Ko Phangan

After leaving the jungle, Mel and I dicussed what to do with our remaining time. Our original plan was to head to Ko Pi Pi, the island where "The Beach" was filmed. However, this was pretty far out of the way and after already spending a couple of our days in transit we decided to skip the highly touristy island and head straight to larger island - Ko Phangan. After just one night there, we prioritized our remaining time in Thailand and decided to stay and enjoy the island for an entire week rather than hop around to various places. There was plenty to do on this big island: beautiful beaches, great food, loads of entertainment and best of all it was fun and easy to get around on our moped that we rented for $5/day. We stayed at a nice family run resort called the Feild Paradise Resort. We loved it and were much happier to be there than one of the more commercialized resorts on the island.

The pictures sum up the basics of how we spent our time - besides Mel getting massagges and me taking a Thai boxing lesson - which I quite enjoyed but also found very exhausting! On our last night we went to the full moon party which is a huge beach party that happens every full moon. I don't have any pictures from that night but I heard there were 30,000 people and probably 95% of them were completely wasted. We took it more easy on the indulging than most people - a couple drinks and one bucket - and we had an interesting experience watching the craziness that unfolded.

Overall Ko Phangan was an absolutely fantastic week with Mel; breakfast on the beach every morning, exploring different beaches and attractions on the moped, trying new food places, chatting with other travelers, chilling out on hammocks, and most of all enjoying life together!

Catching the ferry to Ko Phangan

Breakfast on the beach at our resort


Looking at our resort from the ocean

Mel's first time driving the moped. She did great and rented her own for 1 of the days Chilling out on the deck of our hut

One of our favourite places to eat

View from the Amsterdam bar

Chilling out at Amsterdam bar

Making use of the underwater feature of my new camera

The boat we went snorkeling from

We had lunch that day at the island on the right

At the top of the viewpoint

Mel really liked the blue fish

The free scuba diving lesson that came with our snorkeling trip

The afternoon it rained we played some chess

The bussiest beach on the island - Haad Rin beach

Sunset dinner near the end of our stay