Full Moon

My original plan was to travel to Koh Phanang to properly experience the full moon festival, but the closer the date came to the festival, the less I wanted to go. Instead, I chose to stay in the Tonsai area and enjoy the full moon and coming Thai new year (Songkran), in a home-like environment surrounded by friends. The plan for the night was to head over to Phra Nang beach for sunset, then make a campfire in one of the caves. Shortly after the sun set beautifully behind the Andaman Sea and our eyes adapted to the increasing darkness, the flickering lights of hundreds of lightning bugs became visible as they wove their way in and around the trees at the back of the beach. We stared at this spectacle for a few minutes before packing our stuff and moving on. 

While checking Maps.me, I had noticed mention of a shrine in Phra Nang Cave... I wasn't expecting to see a cave full of phallic objects and a shrine dedicated to fertility! The south of Thailand is so vastly different than the north, and I never cease to be surprised by it! We setup camp, and hung the hammock between tufas and stalactites before playing around on the naturally featured climbing wall protected from the light sprinkle that had started. We prepared a small fire close to the hammock and hung out for a couple hours prior to finding our way back to Tonsai in the dark. With tide near its highest, we decided to try a new path back, one which took us much higher on the hillside, but avoided all contact with the encroaching water. We made it back to Tonsai late, and found a few others 'celebrating' the full moon.

Songkran

5 minutes after waking, I left my dorm and said hello to my local friends 'A' and 'B' (I'm not shitting you, those are their nicknames!). 'A' asked me if I had smokes, I looked at him confused and said no. 'B' asked me if he could do something on my phone, so I passed it over, and he began doing something on it. While I was looking at 'B', 'A' dumped a bucket of water on my head, and so began Songkran (Thai New Year), the worlds largest water festival/fight. Sadly, not many pictures were taken of this event, for fear of ruining a perfectly good phone which should have been kept in a waterproof sealed bag. At the street front of Chill Out, the boys had brought out two very large containers which they filled with water, and for the next few hours everyone flocked to the water with buckets, squirt guns, water bottles with holes poked in them, or any other means of transporting water from the container to the people, and especially to the people who looked dry. Tourists and locals, motorbikes and golf carts, big backpacks small backpacks or nothing at all, nobody was safe from the water. If someone held up a phone as 'safety', someone else would sneak up behind and douse their back. Though I didn't catch Songkran in Chiang Mai, or one of the larger cities, I really felt the togetherness of this holiday with the locals and travelers I am lucky enough to have befriended in the 2 weeks of my stay here. All the children were out participating with laughter and shrieks of surprise, some of them stayed put in the buckets of water so that they were never too far from the ammunition of this wet day. Of all my days in Tonsai, I think this is the only one where heat was not an issue, and for that I am very thankful. Evening came, and the water fight slowed (but never died completely so long as I was around), and the boys brought out a large barbecue, and began preparing a large meal for whomever wanted to join. The following days of the festival, I noticed a closer bond between everyone who participated. All the kids now stop me and say hello, or ask if I want to go on the slackline with them, and of course I oblige. Sadly, at some point on the first day of Songkran, I pulled out a 3cm long thorn out of my big toe, and am worried that a piece may be stuck somewhere deep inside. 

After the first day of Songkran, the water fighting mostly subsided in Tonsai, unlike cities such as Bangkok and Chiang Mai which continue for the full duration of the holiday. Excitement, however, never seems to be lacking in Tonsai. Though Chris had taken down his 60m longline over the bay, he fathered a new line 22 meters long which hung 10 meters off the ground above Sunset Pirate Bar. In order to get to this line, one must climb a ladder located beside the permanent Sunset slackline to reach a tiny highline 4 meter long, which bridges the gap between the ladder and the tree anchoring the longer highline. On top of now having 3 slacklines, a rope swing was also setup, allowing someone with no slackline skill to climb to the top of the ladder and take an 8 meter freefall with the safety of rope and harness.