First Night, Full Moon
Trip Start
Mar 02, 2004
1
19
34
Trip End
Apr 02, 2005
Ko Samui,
Thailand
Sunday, January 2, 2005
At the end of the road the scene opens out like you're Coppola with a viewfinder. Between two throbbing clubs that stand like sentinels--last chance to turn back--the horde spills out onto the beach, where 20,000 people writhe, lurch, dance. It's the Full Moon party on Hat Rin, Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand. And it is madness.
There may be a few people here over 40, but they're either partying the hardest or keeping out of the way
Booze Bucket
. Down the beach stretching out into the distance, dozens of glowing irregular orbits are fire-spinners showing the folks from home a light show. Down by the water guys are pissing into the lukewarm surf. At the far end of Hat Rin a day-glo neon palace sits atop a rocky hill, a perverted beacon on the outer rim of darkness. And above it all the moon is casting a cool white glow.
How did I get here? What's to come of all this? What's next?
It was my coworker Tonia who told me about this twisted masterpiece. That was six months ago. She likes to claim that she convinced me to go to Thailand and perhaps she did. It's hard to imagine now that I needed any convincing, but then, hedonistic travel was never my thing. Yet she's not even here now, and somewhere on the boat ride over, along the road from the pier to the heart of this chaos, I have lost all inhibition.
* * *
There were four of us on tour; Tonia, her friend Selena, and another co-worker, Jay
Fire, Had Rin Beach
. When we hit Bangkok, the three of them went into the city while I waited a mind-numbing 6 hours for a 45-minute flight to Koh Samui, the biggest, most touristy island in a chain that reaches out into the Gulf of Thailand. Only a dozen kilometres or so off the mainland, Samui's major beaches are packed with resorts and monied tourists. Not many shoestring travellers here.
Just north of Samui is Koh Pha Ngan, the place where people "in the know" prefer to ride. There's no airport and the roads are treacherous at best. It's a lot more of an adventure than Samui, though it is becoming more of a hot spot. As Lonely Planet puts it, "Perhaps it's time to see Koh Pha Ngan before things change even more." For once they're absolutely bang on.
The plan was for the four of us to meet up in Samui when the girls were finished shopping in Bangkok and when Jay had exhausted himself partying with a buddy who lives in the city. I was heading straight for the beach with no hotel reservations and little idea of where I'd stay on one of the most crowded tourist destinations in South East Asia. It'll all work out, I say to myself, and it does.
* * *
The boat over to Koh Pha Ngan is fast and grinding, with a bright, though not actually "full" moon high above. In deference to Buddhist practises the party is held a few days before the full moon. I'm riding with Sally and Nikki, sisters from England whom I meet on the way. When we reach the pier, Nikki isn't sure where we are. Things have changed so much in the seven years since she was here last that she's sure we're in the wrong place. But we're not, and some things haven't changed.
While they may not be a Thai invention, the booze/bucket combination is something to be experienced. Or not. For 150 baht (about $5 Cdn) you get a mickey of rum, a can of Coke, and a small bottle of Red Bull, packed into a beach bucket like the ones little kids use to make sand castles. These things are everywhere, and the hawkers will even fill it with ice and mix it up for you on site. They do a brisk business.
Sometime later, on the beach and well into the bucket, I take a lead from Nikki and crash on the sand. Something about rum and Coke and Red Bull. Christ, Red Bull. I'll never touch the stuff again. Sally, a pharmaceutical specialist in London, describes the pros and cons of one of its active ingredient, theophylline, which is used to treat people asthma and other ailments, and not recommended for recreational use. The bucket knocks me flat for a good 20 minutes while I pass the time in my own little world, staring up in to the bright night sky.
"People are starting to stare," says Sally. "They're looking at me like I've killed you." It's oddly peaceful though, the blasting music, the crowd of legs and torso coursing over us somehow finding their way without tripping. When the second wind blows through we're ready to get deeper into the madness. The bars and restaurants along the beach are pulsing with music and moving bodies, each playing a different styles of music that blends into a happy cacophony in between.
We take our pick of a number of places before finding a sandblasted joint with a second-floor patio over looking the frenzy below. Through the haze I'm reminded of Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. The scene stretches out below us, 180 degrees of excess and debauchery, absolutely brilliant for how remote and immediate it is.
But regardless, we've had enough, intent on catching the first boat back to Samui at 3 a.m. The walk back to the pier is slow and rich with the eye candy of such a depraved event. The pier itself is a rough concrete affair, but the speedboat launch is off to the side in the sandy crags and beaten rocks of the harbour. This is where we had been let off hours before, the bow of the boat having been beached to allow us to leap a good four feet to the ground.
Now, with hundreds of people in various degrees of distress crowded onto an unlit space the size of a decent dance floor, it's like the the US Embassy during the fall of Saigon; a half-dozen boats trying to beach while the operators try to differentiate the various tags that we all have dangling from our necks like backstage passes to a rock concert. The commotion and frustration leads more than a few people to try and climb aboard which ever craft is nearest, only to be pushed off for having the wrong ticket.
For our part, we hold back and wait for whatever boat was bound to take us. Among all the pushing and shoving and swearing there is the inescapable, simple fact that we're all going in the same direction, and that, one way or another, we'll get there. We look on and wait.
* * *
The girls and I were blessed to have experienced the party with little more concern than finding a bathroom or not losing our sandals. Later I meet an Irishman with a freshly stitched scar running diagonally from above his right eye to left cheekbone. He'd taken a bottle in the face trying to stop a fight at the party. He was on a boat to the hospital on Samui with a guy who'd had half his ear bitten off, and a girl who was dying from a severe asthma attack. But as lucky as we were to have partied unscathed, for me the night wasn't quite over yet.
On the ride home, after dropping off the girls at their hotel, I was the last one on the bus, riding shotgun. On a dark stretch of highway the driver slowed down ahead of some commotion on the side of the road. He switched on his high beams to reveal a middle-aged Thai man lying peacefully still and bloodied on the road. Two men stood over him, his motorcycle off to the side. A car with hazard lights on idled by the shoulder, off in the middle darkness. "Motorbike, motorbike, finish," said my driver, drawing his thumb across his throat. I put away the notion of renting a scooter.
[Nov 2009: I've noticed that this travelogue gets more visitors
than any of my others including my recent India blog. Wow! It's amazing
that you're reading it, but who are you? I'm very curious to know and
would appreciate if you left comments so I know what you think. Thanks
again for reading! Dave/darkstar.]
