Alone at last

I am officially the last man standing. Kirsten and Shannon fled the room this morning at five minutes to seven after having overslept by half an hour and subsequently nearly missing their connecting boat to Surathani to catch their connecting plane to Bangkok.

I don't have an alarm clock, except for on my iPod, but I have no way to re-charge it, which means I can't listen to the iPod at all now and save it only for alarm times. That's like having a large tub of ice-cream but only being allowed to use it to keep your fingers cold. Assuming you had an important reason to keep your fingers cold. Or perhaps if you're in Ko Pangang and someone cuts their foot open on a rock and you have to pour your entire bucket of joy over his feet (or hers as it so happened) in order to disinfect it before someone else wrapped it up in a bandage. A bucket of joy is an alcoholic beverage shared between people drunken from a bucket with several straws and not whatever else it might sound like.

Ko Pangang grew on me, sort of like an infectious disease, or perhaps some kind of fungi or lichen. Every night there is a massive party, every morning people leave and more people arrive, and every night there is a massive party. The full moon party was especially massive and I managed to lose everyone I knew within 45 minutes and spent the rest of the evening talking to strangers and dancing and wondering about and looking at the sea until a not very attractive Hungarian girl came and sat next to me and complained for about half an hour about how this island is full of perverts trying to hook up with anyone, and then she put her hand on my leg. At that moment I saw Shannon running past and promptly ran after him, leaving the Hungarian Hypocrit behind. He had also lost everyone, but had found two people we had met in Pai.

Although I now like Ko Pangang I'm still going to bitch about one last thing. In the North when anyone has rubbish, the streets are so clean, that you are willing to spend 20 minutes looking for a bin, so as to maintain the natural beauty of the... well, the city, but in the South which are infested with lice-tourists, in the most beautiful areas imaginable, people don't give even the slightest shit and just dump and throw and leave their rubbish everywhere and anywhere. What's annoying is you start to find yourself doing that as well, because it's what everyone is doing, which just goes to show people are sheep, and act like animals around animals and angels around angels. The question of course, is how do they act like when there are no influences at all? No that's not the question. That's an impossibility, even hermits are influenced by their environments.

And Ko Pangang is obsessed with schnitzel for some reason. Every place sells it and it's actually damn good, and so far is the only thing that's made me venture away from Thai Food.

Anyway the partying was fun, but I am way partied out and last night I spent most of the night just chilling on a quiet beach with a bunch of friends and then this morning hopped on a boat and have gone to Ko Tao.

I am staying right on the sea (not the beach) but on a tiny stilted bungalow that is on the edge of rocks that tumble into the sea. It's insanely beautiful but extremely rustic, but much cheaper then anywhere else. It's also a ten minute walk from any form of civilization, which perhaps doesn't seem so bad, except that it's been monsooning all day. On top of that to get from there to town you have to walk up a hill that makes the driveway at my parents house in durban look tame. For those of you who have not perceived that driveway, it's one step short of needing mountain climbing equipment, or a hoist for a car. So you have to walk up a hill that steep, and then you have to walk down one equally steep, which means coming or going, you're going to run out of breath and possibly asphyxiate.

And tomorrow... I snorkel.