Thailand, part 3 - New Years Eve in Ao Nang

So, after very little sleep at the Muslim homestay, we were trucked back into town and left our things at the hotel where we would be staying. After a proper shower that felt like pure heaven, we got ready for a day of island hopping, beach-bumming, sightseeing and skin-diving aboard the hotel's private yacht. The picture you see is of the beaches at Ao Nang, and they were spectacular. The waters offshore are dotted with literally hundreds of small islands, and at the risk of sounding like a trave brochure, each is more beautiful than the last. Those are the longboats I keep mentioning, incidentally. We first went to the lagoon where they filmed "The Beach", then saw a pirates cove, and did some work on our tans. Then, they took us out into the middle of the ocean, and threw us off the boat. To go diving, ha.
Now, I should note here that while I am a capable swimmer, I am not a big fan of swimming in the ocean. Perhaps due to seeing Jaws or Open Water one too many times, I was immensely reluctant to join this activity, but after some prodding (and chicken noises) from my friends, I finally went in. I was actually paddling around and enjoying myself for all of three minutes when it happened. It seems that rather than worrying about sharks, I should have been worried about fat German tourists jumping on my head. A group of them had come on the boat with us, and after nearly being drowned by this ignorant piece of human flotsam, I was pretty much done with diving for the day.
After that, and slightly sunburned, we went back to dry land and began our New Years festivities. First came a banquet dinner, after which I hazily remember a great deal of bar-hopping. Everyone wanted to do something different, so in the end we tried to do everything; Irish bar, Sports bar (yuck), and finally the Luna Bar, a beach-front dance bar. This is where Lee, Vic, Mark, Angela and I ended up ringing in the New Year, and it turned out to be great - fireworks, a live DJ, fire dancers and people from every corner of the world, just wanting to have a good time. We stayed there for a while, but the night was still young, and the music we had heard coming from the jungle the night before was calling us back, infectious and irresistible.
So, all of us ended up piling into tuk-tuks (motorcycle taxis) and we just followed the music. The party turned out to be massive, a rave right smack in the heart of darkness to end all raves. Banners flew everywhere, lights lit up the night and throngs of us danced in the red Thai mud to a fantastic mix of house, jungle and techno. We stayed for hours, lost in the music, and made our way back just before dawn, completely exhausted. I went to sleep with a smile on my face, my only regret that I hadn't been able to share the experience with my friends from Ottawa and Kingston. That, and we somehow lost Victoria, but she found her way back...she's like a cat that way.
The next day was, thankfully, pretty low-key. From Ao Nang we packed ourselves into a longboat and made our way to an island resort in the Andaman Sea. This was all, incidentally, the same area that had been hit by the tsunami in 2005, but you could hardly tell. Thailand depends so much on its tourism industry that everything had been repaired in record time, and only a few bent trees told the tale. Our next resort was on a rubber plantation (lots of those around) which had great beaches, a fantastic outdoor restaurant, and little huts where they did Thai massage right beside the beach. I thought they did great work, award-worthy even, but Bob didn't agree. Remember Bob? Well, he thought his massage was below his exacting standards, so like the bitter old fart that he was, he yelled at the girl, and paid her half before storming away. See why we liked him so much?
Anyway, we basically just sat on the beach all of that day and recovered from the night before. At night, we sat on the beach some more, chatting with the Aussies in our group - Paul and Brie, Stu and Kim, Josh and Laura - while listening to the waves rolling gently onto the shore. Luckily for us there were no more tsunami - with the amount of time we spent on the beach during that week, we would have been screwed.
Next time - camping with giant lizards! Don't miss that one.