Thursday, March 19

I arrived in Koh Samui on Tuesday after an overnight trip on an air conditioned bus. Pretty much the entire bus was full of backpackers, with the exception of a pretty Thai prostitute who sat near the front and kept to herself. I sat next to an English bloke who had come to Thailand for the "Full Moon Party," a monthly bash on the island of Phangan. "It's like a British Rave party. Lots of dancing and drugs," he said. "I need to find some Ecstasy; there's supposed to be a lot here." 

For our entertainment, the tour operator showed a Thai version of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. And since the closest thing to a common language for a bus full of Brits, Germans, Australians, French, Italians, and a lone American would have been English, naturally the film was dubbed into Thai with Chinese subtitles. 

Labor seems to be the cheapest part of any Thai business. There were five people working on the bus: a driver, ticket collector, baggage handler (who stayed in the cargo hold under the bus), a lady who served us drinks and snacks, and another guy whose sole job seemed to be to turn on the VCR and put a tape into it. 

After arriving at the port, we boarded a boat that took us to Koh Samui. On the boat, I met a German woman named Petra who knew where some decent bungalows were on the island, called Lamai Villa. For 50 baht (about $1.50) a night, I had my own bungalow on the beach. I went out to the water to relax and got a massage on the beach which was totally relaxing. Or it would have been totally relaxing if I wasn't already totally relaxed. Stress has become a distant memory. As I faded in and out of sleep, I watched some fishermen working a net just past the breakers. 

That evening, we went to a famous bar called Bauhaus Pub but there wasn't much going on. There were a lot of employees standing around, a few dancing, and some very attentive service, but very few patrons. 

There were a lot of hippies in Bangkok in the Khao San Road area, buying bracelets, Grateful Dead tapes, and drugs. But since I never saw them at any of the sights in Bangkok, like the Royal Palace or any of the temples, I had been wondering what they did, and now I know. They were waiting for the Full Moon Party. The boat to Koh Phangan was packed with party animals from around the world, all dressed in about the same thing. Joints were passed around as we baked under the afternoon sun. People compared notes on the places they had been and the bracelets they had bought. 

After we landed, Petra and I found a place to eat while we waited for the sun to go down. The restaurant we ate at had all the usual traveler's food, plus one extra item catering to the party crowd, "Magic Mushrooms." They could be eaten plain or in an omelet. 

The party cranked up around 10pm as a thousand people gathered on Haad Rin beach. The full moon glowed above us in the crystal clear night sky. There was a DJ on the beach who cranked dance tracks until 9am the next morning. We partied until we fell asleep on the beach, only to awake to a glorious sunrise. 

I ran into the British guy again the morning after the Full Moon Party. "I thought there was going to be more people," he said. "I never got any E. What a bloody disappointment." (Note to myself: Don't travel halfway around the world to go to a party. It might suck.)

Editor's Note: Since 1992, when I went to the Full Moon Party, it has become even bigger and more polished. When I was there, there was maybe 1-2K people, a single DJ and one stereo system, now there are 10K people and six soundstages!

History of the Full Moon Party: There is some disagreement over the history, but this is the tale that was told to me.

In 1987, Koh Phangan was very quiet and very remote. There were a few backpackers on the island from time to time, but the island was mostly unknown outside of Thailand. A small group of travellers including an American, an Italian, and an Brit were staying on the island, enjoying the beauty of the beaches. To use a phone or send mail, they would take a fishing boat over to neighboring Koh Samui. Each full moon, the friends would walk to the sunset side of the island to light a fire, play an acoustic guitar, and listen to music powered by a car battery. Now the folks running Paradise Bungalows on the sunrise side decided to move the party to their side of the island, and as many of the travellers were staying with them, eventually the party was moved. If anyone can be credited with starting the party, It is the Kursakul family who run Paradise Bungalows. Still the party was really just a gathering of friends at this point. It would be some time before it grew into the beach rave it is today.

It's quite impressive that the Full Moon Party has not only continued to be popular all this time, but that it has actually grown. Perhaps because of the party's popularity, this web page is the most popular on my site.

Please let me know what you think by sending comments to me at jason_james_97 at yahoobang dot com (remove the bang).

For more information about the party that it has become, see these links:

http://www.kohphangan.com/travel/fullmoon.html

http://www.kohsamui.org/party.html

After returning to Samui, I slept and finished reading M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled, which I had picked up from a French guy who said, "It changed my life." It certainly raised a lot of interesting issues about love and what makes a relationship work, particularly in the long term. With all the time spent on buses, trains, and planes, I've been doing a lot of reading on this trip. There are a lot of used bookstores around, so it's easy to buy and sell books as you go. The English selection seems to fall into three broad categories: pop fiction like Danielle Steele or John Grisham, heavy stuff like Carl Jung or Lesbian Imagery in the Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or a wide selection of the best in fiction from around the world. Recently I've read some Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Tom Robbins. 
 

Friday, March 20

We bought our bus tickets to take us into Malaysia. Stay tuned as the journey continues in the next installment.