We woke up the next morning in considerably better moods than we’d gone to bed with and were pleasantly surprised by our surroundings. The darkness of the hour we’d arrived had hidden the delights of the place we’d chosen to stay, and our bungalow even had a nice beach view.
After a breakfast of eggs and peanut butter on toast (a luxury in Thailand, for all their peanut sauces and peanut toppings, Thais haven’t gotten on the Peanut Butter bandwagon) we wandered along the length of the beach, which was a cove of sorts. There was a small reef just off the beach in shallow water that was perfect for snorkeling. We had gotten spoiled diving in the Similan Islands but there were still plenty of fish to keep our interest. There was a slight panic on my part when I wasn’t paying attention and let my mask and snorkel float off, but Greg somehow managed to hunt it down by following the currents under water (or so he claims, it may have just been luck).
We basically just bummed around on the beach all day, making friends with the resident dogs, reading, and working on our tans. Three of our friends from the Muay Thai camp were due to meet us that evening and we inaccurately assumed that they would be as tired as we had been the night before. We realized our mistake when we received a text message that they were making a stop at seven-eleven on their way over to get beer. They arrived twenty minutes or so later with Mikey half pissed and Steve and Marko shaking their heads. After a short discussion, we decided that evening should be a reconnaissance mission in preparation for full moon the next night. With that we set out as two Canadians, an Aussie, a Kiwi, and an Estonian.
T
he general attempt was to take it a bit easy and make sure we would be in good form for the next night, easier said than done. We got dropped off in Hat Rin and chose a random bar to grab snacks and a beer. We quickly discovered that unlike most guys, when Mikey is drunk he prefers to chat up men (not in a sexual way, more of a bromance type of deal) and we eventually had to drag him away from a table of guys he was bonding with. Just outside the bar we ran into two more Aussie guys from Tiger (they had started as five, two of them got wasted the night before in Patong and never made it on the bus and a third they’d lost in Hat Rin ten minutes into the night) and they convinced us to come along to some pool party they’d heard about.
As soon as we arrived at the party, Mikey had the brilliant idea to smack a random girl on the ass, had a moment of clarity, went back to apologize and got slapped in the face. Just to clarify, Mikey is a twenty year old Uni student from New Zealand lacking both a good tolerance of alcohol and perspective, not justifying anything, just providing background. The pool party, it turned out, was just an excuse for a bunch of half naked twenty year olds to check each other out and make out in a pool next to a whole bunch of other people making out. Occasionally you’d see one lonely person off on their own but it usually wasn’t long before they found themselves a companion. We bopped around to the music for a while, wandered down the beach and had a couple drinks. There was one older guy gyrating in the smallest bathing suit possible and Marko convinced a girl he’d met to smack him on the ass. After that he seemed to come to his senses and replaced his shorts fairly quickly.
At around 1am the boys started feeling the effects of their long travel day and we decided to head back to our part of the island. We herded Mikey towards the tuk tuks and managed to hire ourselves a ride home in the back of a pick up truck. With Mikey blockaded in the middle, and an entire Thai family in the cab, we rode the way home dropping off random people along the way and making a stop at someone’s house to get gas and water for Mikey. Eventually we arrived with everyone, surprisingly, in one piece.