New Year on a Beach....... Well that's new

It's New Year, hello 2011 and 2554.

 For New Year all of the volunteers in Thailand went down to an Island call 'Koh Chang'. Clem and myself took a night bus to Bangkok and then got a mini-van down to Trat to get the ferry. It was a long journey but we made it to the ferry port and got a quick 20 minute ferry over to the island. When we got to the hotel that we were staying at we were a bit confused as when we arrived in Trat, other volunteers where on the ferry but about 2 hours later when we arrived, they were still on the ferry! We realised that they must have got a different ferry to us as ours only took about 20 minutes.
Whilst waiting for them, the two of us went to the beach. First of all we went to the sea right by the hotel we were staying in. Unfortunately, when we got there, all we saw was a very uninviting rock beach. So, instead we decided to paddle in the sea and walk in a direction in hope of finding a nice sand beach. Reminder to self: do not wear flip-flops when walking through water as it gets tough. It was hilarious though as we kept on losing our shoes and my trousers got wet and we had to find ways around the deep bits but it was a laugh and we found a beach! After that little adventure, we had a dip in the sea. It was weird to think that it's winter in England and minus numbers and here I am, boiling hot and cooling down in the sea. Eventually, people started to arrive and we all had a laugh in the water and on the beach catching up. We stayed until the evening as we wanted to watch the sunset which was beautiful. 

 Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and got ready for New Year! We all had dinner and then back to the beach. Most of the volunteers sat down, drank and chatted away while Clem, Billie, Jelley and myself sat and watched the fire people dance with fire. It was all quite pleasant until they set up this massive hoop and started telling the drunk public on the beach that they could just jump through! When watching it, I was scared for the people although they were drunk and stupid enough to do it. One persons jacket caught on fire and at one point, someone jumped through and it landed on him! I actually thought that he was was going to go up in flames. Thank fully he didn't though. After a bit we went to the other end of the beach for the countdown with all of the other volunteers. We then danced for a bit before Clem and myself went to star gaze as there was no light pollution so we could see loads of stars which made me happy. Afterwards we went back to the hotel. A pretty awesome New Year.