New Years in Thailand

For New Years Eve, there are two choices... stay in manila and watch some nice fireworks and drunken filipinos or go to Koh Pha-Ngan and party every night until 5am with 40,000 backpackers from all over the world!! 

Koh Pha-Ngan is a small island in the southern part of Thailand that I traveled to at the end of December.  The main attraction for this island is partying for sure.  Every night they party like it is New Years!!

There are fire dancers everywhere, fireworks exploding left and right, tons of drink stalls lining the beach, huge 6 foot speakers blasting out eclectic house music until 8 or 9 in the morning and of course, thousands of people. 

It is a really amazing experience that anyone who is in south east Asia needs to take up.  

There are a few funny things that needs to be noted.  1)  The lack of toilets is made up for with the thousands of people just pissing into the sea.  2) Fireworks are cheap.  Not only in price but in their manufacturing.  Lots of them are just exploding on the beach or only 10 meters above the beach making quite a show as drunk people dive for cover. 3) Thai guys really dress up well to look like girls... its frightening!!  4) One of the funniest displays is the fire jump rope where most of the people are just getting hit in the face with this rope thats on fire. 5) Taking the boat over to the island can be sickening!  half the people were puking because the boat rocked so much.  one of the worst experiences of the trip but I didn't puke... but listening to people puke for 4 hours is not fun.  

In Bangkok for my last day, I only had about 5 hours to tour around the city, eat and get a world famous thai massage.  So I power walked around to see about 5 wats... once you see two or three, you've seen them all.  I stopped taking pictures after awhile since it was all the same.  But below you can see a cool picture of some of the buildings in the Grand Palace.

The 350 Baht entrance fee is sort of a rip off but its still worth it to go in and see.  Tons of nice buildings, murals and buddha's to photograph.  The McDonalds in Thailand was not so impressive.  Quite slow service.  But the Thai food was unbelievable.  I definitely would rate that a 5 out of 5.  The red curry, green curry, whatever curry!! all extremely tasty.