Tag 332 - New Years Eve 2023 @ Koh Phangan

A beautiful new year to all of you!

Today we had a lot on our agenda, because we planned to celebrate New Year on the island of Koh Phangan, which is why we had a change of accommodation including a change of islands on the program.

We had a lot planned for today, but we could still take the morning quite comfortably. Breakfast was delivered to our room and at 11:30 a.m. we returned the accommodation to the hostess.

There are several ports on Koh Samui, so it wasn't quite clear which one was suitable for us. Since we wanted to go to Koh Phangan with the scooters to make it easier for us the next day, we couldn't just go to any port. We drove to the "Bangrak" port in the north and found a corresponding ferry. Now there was a small planning mistake... Since these ferries are mainly used by locals, they do not run regularly and the next departure was at 5 p.m. Well, what could we do? We bought the tickets and sat down in a cute beach restaurant. We drank various fruit juices, ate something, then we bought one or two things for the party in the evening and went back to the port as agreed at 4:30 p.m. To our surprise, the port was already crowded with other party guests and the two of us, along with another tourist, were the only ones with scooters. The boat was not a usual transport ship either, so we asked where we should wait with the scooters. Now we were supposed to drive to the front of the pier, which we did. We pushed our way through the crowds of people to finally wait in the middle ☺️

Normally you drive your scooter onto the boat yourself, but since this one had to be improvised a bit, we gratefully handed our vehicles over to the Thai staff. The scooters drove on the deck as usual, tied to a mast and a railing ☺️

The crossing took a little more than the planned 45 minutes and was quite rough. We had relatively heavy swells and sometimes the ride was almost like a white-water roller coaster, including getting splashed ☺️

Once we arrived on the island, we drove a bit and took a break in a Mexican restaurant, where we ate something again.

Many areas of the island were beautifully decorated, with lights everywhere and all the colors shining wonderfully bright thanks to the distributed black light!

We reached our hotel at 8:15 p.m. and ordered a taxi for 9:30 p.m.

The room was beautiful again, which we did not expect at all with this accommodation, because this time we could not be choosy. When we booked, there were only four hotel rooms available on the entire island!

We got ready, shared our taxi with three other guests and around 10:30 p.m. we reached the port again, where the party took place.

There were stands with food on both sides of the road and you could get buckets to drink - just like in Ballermann in Mallorca.

In addition, you could have yourself painted with neon colors there - yes, of course I had to do that ☺️

We bought our entrance tickets, grabbed one of those buckets to share and threw ourselves into the wild hustle and bustle.

The location was the beach and loud music was coming from all the bars, restaurants and various shops, and people were celebrating.

The evening was quieter for us than expected, but no less great ☺️ After the New Year's countdown, we walked around the stands for a while (when we arrived, there were many stands with really delicious sweets! But when we went searching, we couldn't find any... They were probably replaced by burger stalls or drink stalls for the late evening), and sat down on a slightly secluded beach. We chatted for a while longer and laughed about various things we had seen today.

The search for a taxi also took a good hour, because we didn't want to take a shared van that stops at every hotel along the way. We even sat in one because we thought they would take us directly. So we sat in the front, turned around, saw that the whole back of the van was filled and jumped right out again. Eventually we found a Thai woman who took both of us back to the hotel on her scooter. The ride was incredibly funny and definitely one we won't forget anytime soon ☺️ But the Thai woman drove unbelievably safely and considerately - much more pleasant than expected.

In the hotel, we sat briefly on the balcony again and our day came to an end around 6 a.m.

We wish you all a dream start into the new year and say:

See you tomorroooooooow 😉