I'm sitting in the dining area on a Raja Co. Ltd. ferry that's due to depart any minute now to go from here in Thong Sala on Koh Phang Ngan back to Suratthani on the mainland. I just thought I'd write a bit more about Koh Phang Ngan, and Hat Rin.

Koh Phang Ngan is quite underdeveloped relative to the rest of Thailand. The only paved roads (which are concrete) go from Thong Sala to Hat Rin, and from Thong Sala to a village in the north called Ban Mae Hat. The concrete surface is a couple of years old, and in many places it's cracked and holed, but I think concrete probably does better here than bitumen would, because when it's raining hundreds of little creeks form all over the roads and next to them that would wash the dirt out from under bitumen.

Yay, my ferry's just taking off now.

The Hat Rin area is a strange mixture of heavily runnelled dirt roads, stray cats and dogs, minimarts, bungalows, nightclubs with banana leaf thatched rooves, centpedes, and restaurants with home theater systems. The density of travel agents, Internet cafes and bungalows is actually seems to be greater than anywhere I saw on Koh Samui or Koh Phuket. With all the 20-somethings wandering the streets, being in Hat Rin at FMP time is more like being at the Big Day Out than being in a Thai fishing village.

As in most other tourism focused places, most of the restaurants in Hat Rin have home theater systems installed, and they list out the movies that they'll be playing for the evening on whiteboards outside. The movies are almost always on VCD's from Bangkok. While in Hat Rin, I saw The Mummy Returns, A.I. (a handicam-in-the-cinema bootleg job), Gladiator, Blow (handicam edition) and the last 20 minutes of Shrek (handicam edition). Before I went to Hat Rin, I wouldn't have thought I'd be spending so much time watching videos, but when they put Gladiator on halfway through a plate of curry and rice, it's pretty tempting to hang around. Walking down the main (dirt) street at Hat Rin Nai, you can often hear two or three movies playing from the restaurants around you.

A little way down the road from the place where I stayed there's a marshy, reed-filled depression, and every night a frog chorus get's going late at night and stops at about 5 am. These don't sound like normal frogs. They make more of a groan than a croak. If you can imagine makig a recording of about a hundred cows mooing, and then playing that recording back at a higher speed so that the sounds were faster and higher pitched, then that's kind of the sound these frogs make. There's other frogs to that make a more standard croak.

I mentioned before that my accomodation in Hat Rin was basic, and I've now attached some pictures to attempt to demonstrate how basic it was. The room I had was one of 8 2x2x2 cement sheeting cubes above a minimart / laundry / travel agent. It had a fan, but somehow it had been wired up wrong so span the wrong way and blew the air up instead of down. The floor was bare cheap timber sheeting, and I had to sweep the room out several times because of all the dirt and sand that came in on my shoes. The "mattress" on the bed was timber boards covered with a layer of padding about 2 cm thick. There was no sheets, and I'm pretty sure the bed itself is rarely cleaned. The bathroom was a typical Thai design, with the toilet and shower together in one tiled room, but the whole thing was pretty grotty. The price of 150 baht per night was actually a little on the high side for this place, but at FMP time on Hat Rin, you don't get much choice.

This ferry is going to take me to Don Sak, which is the main port near Suratthani. From here I've got a bus ticket that will take me to Suratthani, but I'm going to ask to be let off at Phun Phin, which is where the train station is. There I'll try to get a ticket on tonights train north. I'm going as far as Hua Hin, which is about 8 hours from here, and 4 hours from Bangkok. I may not be able to get a ticket today though, because there are so many Full Moon Party goers leavig Koh Phang Ngan today to go to Bangkok. Once I get to Hua Hin, I'll stop there for a couple of days before I go onto Bangkok.