FMP, yo

By the time I got back to Singapore from Chiang Mai, Mom was on a plane flying over the Pacific, I had an exam in two days and I had to move out of my apartment and be ready to go back to Thailand in four days. The time constraints were really pushing it, plus, (if you've ever met me you'll know) I tend to get pretty emotional and nostalgic so my vocabulary in my last two days in Singapore was limited to little more than, "Oh my God."

My exam was okay, the studying I managed to do ended up being really helpful and Mom helped me pack a little (more like spread all my things around the apartment in little piles - luckily, I have understanding roommates) and she took me and Karlijn on a nice boat dinner that cruised up and down the (or I should say "one of the") coast(s) of Singapore.

I managed to get all my stuff packed in a semi-orderly fashion (what needs to go to KL, Borneo, home, Thailand...), check out of my apartment, say goodbye to the area and have my first meal of laksa as my last meal. Laksa is kind of a curry soup with noodles and beancurd and chicken or prawns or both and Singapore is supposed to have very good laksa, I just never tried it until my last lunch at the Commonwealth hawker center. It was an appropriate (and delicious) last meal.

My friends and I flew to Phuket in southern Thailand, stayed a night there, and then traveled by bus and ferry to Ko Phangon (an island) for the Full Moon Party. This is a party that - you guessed it - happens every full moon. Ko Phangon also has the Half-Moon party, the Dark-Moon party, etc. etc (you can imagine how the island is built around tourism) but the FMP is the most famous. I had several people tell me that if I went to SE Asia, I had to go to this, so my friends and I decided to make it our last adventure together before parting ways.

I had a good time because I was with good people, but it's not really my scene. Literally, it's just a massive beach party of thousands of Westerners who have all been told that they HAVE to go to this party and then they do, discover that really, it's just a party like any other on any other beach (except the massive amounts of glowing body paint), but then leave and go spread the word across the globe to thousands of more Westerners that they HAVE to go to this party. The thing is, most of the time you lose all your friends and your shoes (I wore cheap flip-flops and on the ferry back, I saw a guy wearing one of mine and a different one on his other foot. He looked like he really needed it, though, so I didn't try to get it back) and then you're just kind of there by yourself surrounded by thousands of people. I was lucky I hung on to my two close friends and we had a good night (besides the part where one of them fell on a rock and cut up his foot and elbow - but he's okay!).

On Monday (the party was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), I had to head back to Singapore to meet up with Mom (who, during this time, was getting SCUBA certified on Tioman) and begin our adventuring in Borneo while my friends were continuing to travel north. It was really hard to say goodbye to everyone, especially Karlijn and Gerrit who were my family over here. I remember before I left the states, I told my friend Katie that I hoped I would meet good people over here and she had assured me I would. Lucky for me, she was right.