Dec. 6, 2012
And it was back to Bangkok. This city really was shaping up
to be my own personal crossroads for Asia. Unfortunately I am always passing
through this city, only having enough time to take care of the things that need
to be done before moving to the next place. My fifth time in Bangkok, and I
still wasn’t going to give it the attention it deserves. I had more important
plans, though. I was about to meet up with Harley, who I hadn’t seen since he
left our house in Arizona over two years earlier. He had just finished his
service in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, and was now coming to travel Southeast
Asia with a few of his friends that he had served with. Meeting up with Harley
was particularly significant since I still felt bad for not visiting him when I
had been in West Africa. This was now a chance to partially redeem myself.
It was fun to see what this group of guys were like after 27
months in Cameroon, especially as they arrived in a place as completely
different as Bangkok. Their eyes were wide and mouths agape at the futuristic
transportation, skyscrapers, women in short shorts and skirts, bright lights
and great street food. It was quite the contrast for me too, coming from India,
but I had just been here a couple months earlier. One thing that they were used
to, though, was lots of beer drinking. Cameroon drinks more beer per capita
than anywhere in Africa, so what I was seeing in their thirst was not relief
from being done with the Peace Corps, but instead business as usual.
Our first night we found ourselves having dinner and beers
at a makeshift restaurant with a dirty old Aussie bloke. He was a perfect
stereotype of the old man expat in Thailand. He had a Thai wife, who was not
around for whatever reason, but he spoke Thai well. He was a good source of
information, and an entertaining character. However, he was still a dirty old
man who served as a good warning to anyone wanting to spend too much time in
Thailand. Do you really want to end up like him?
Most of our couple days in Bangkok was filled with running
errands, chasing down street food and playing cards, with all the gaps in
between filled with beer. Although we were not staying in Khao San Road, we
started to border on that level of obnoxiousness that comes from the frat boy tourists
in that part of town. Luckily we would be heading down to an island soon where
we would feel a little more free.
The night before we left Bangkok, a couple of Peace Corps
Volunteers serving in Thailand came to meet up with us. One of them was going
to take us to an island that she liked. Then, in the morning, something came up
and she was not able to go. Now we were on our own to figure out our plans. She
had been planning to take us to Koh Chang, an island I had already been to, but
instead we decided to head farther south. We went to the train station to find
the next train that would be heading that direction. An overnight train would
be leaving that evening, so we had the whole day to hang out at the train
station.
We had been too cheap to spring for the sleeper car, so it
was a pleasant surprise when we found that our third class car was not too
packed. A couple of us even had room to stretch out. We had decided to go to Ko
Pha-Ngan, one of Thailand’s most popular islands. We had chosen it because it
was accessible, had a lot to do and was not as developed for tourism as places
like Ko Samui. As I looked through the guidebook, I discovered that Ko Pha-Ngan
was the island where Thailand’s notorious full moon parties originated. I knew
that we all had mixed feeling about something like that. I asked Patrick if he
could see the moon out the window. He said yes. I asked how it looked. “Pretty
close to full,” he said. Unless it was full the day before, we would be there
in time for the world’s biggest beach party. I think the prospect of this made
us all nervous, especially since we were just stumbling into it. Everything I
read about it made me question if it was even a good idea to go. The amount of
people, the drugs, the abundance of police (corrupt or otherwise), thieves,
spring breakers, occasional deaths due to undertows or drugs, are all things
that made the Full Mood Party a little intimidating. We just had to wait and
see if it was actually in the cards.
None of us got much sleep on the train. I hadn’t gotten the
best sleep the previous nights either as I had volunteered to take the floor of
our double room. When we arrived at the train station at Phun Phin around 7 AM,
we were starving. We found the nearest basic restaurant and ordered a round of
noodle soups and beers. Then we grabbed a bus going to Surat Thani, the nearest
town to the ferry terminal. When we arrived there, we got into a sawngthaew
(pickup truck with bench seats) to take us to a ferry terminal. We agreed on
the price of thirty Baht each beforehand. When we got there, though, the driver
seemed to be unhappy with the money we gave him. He now said the price was 90
Baht per person. I told him he was trying to cheat us, and that we wouldn’t pay
any more. I knew that the other Thai passengers had not paid 90. I also assumed
that he usually dealt with tourists that wouldn’t question him. We argued
further until he threatened to call the police. I told him to go ahead. He
walked to the nearby ferry ticket office. Everyone else said they didn’t want
to deal with police and wanted to just pay. It was a difference of two dollars
each. I just didn’t want to make it that easy for him to rip people off. I
wasn’t going to drag them into my stubbornness so we paid up.
As soon as we got to the ferry, we realized we would indeed
be there for a full moon party. People boarding the boat were already sporting
shirts that read “Full Moon Party Dec. 9, 2012”. Then I remembered that some
hippy in India had mentioned there would be an eclipse on the 9th.
So we were heading straight into a Full Moon Party in Thailand’s highest
tourist season with an eclipse in the forecast. Plus we were on a very limited
amount of sleep. So what did we do on the ferry ride? Well, we had a few rounds
of strong beers to see what would happen. Then there were some Thai guys
sitting outside that kept inviting us to rounds of Mekong whiskey. It was
already getting scary.
When we got off the ferry we past the hordes of taxi drivers
and sawngthaews offering rides to various parts of the island. The fares looked
exorbitant and we were sure we could find something better. During our search,
I ran into a dread-locked Korean guy named Chris that I had volunteered with in
Kolkata. Back in India he was a kind and charming character. In Thailand, he
was a sloshed party animal. It was an amazing coincidence, but at the same
time, it further proves that Thailand is the crossroads of my universe.
As it turned out, waiting around wasn’t the best idea. We
had figured that there might be some sort of public transport around the island
that would take us close to our destination. This turned out to be a terribly
wrong assumption. As it turned out, though, hiring an entire sawngthaew to
ourselves was about the same price as if we had taken the shared ones for
tourists to begin with.
Half an hour of driving through jungle covered hills and we
were eventually delivered to what turned out to be pretty close to paradise, in
the cliché sense of the word. There was a beach (a bit small and rocky) plenty
of palm trees, dramatic emerald peaks rising behind us, and a mysterious little
island a few hundred meters offshore. We checked into our little wooden
bungalows. Paul, Harley and I shared a double, while Henry and Patrick shared
the other double. We had a hammock on our little deck, but I ripped straight
through it within the first few hours. There were thoughts of napping, but who
were we kidding? There was a beach and a beer store nearby.
That evening, we caught a sawngthaew that was leaving our
area around 9. There were also some German and French girls riding with us.
They all seemed either reserved, unfriendly, or perhaps avoiding a group of
obnoxious American guys. By the end of the ride, though, they were at least a
little more friendly. We had gone through miles of dark, quiet, and almost
empty roads to reach the chaos that was going down at Hat Rin, the beach that
hosts the full moon parties. The streets were packed with foreigners heading
toward the beach. The proper attire seemed to be some sort of white tank top
with lots of glow paint on the shirt, face or body. I felt overdressed in my
Kolkata t-shirt. After getting out of the truck, the German girls wandered off
somewhere, but the French girls stuck around with us. We grabbed a couple of
whiskey bucket kits on the way in, which included a bucket, a medium bottle of
Mekong whiskey, and Red Bull. Thailand is the only place I’ve been other than
Coeur d’Alene, ID where buckets of booze are standard.
Within thirty minutes of getting to the party, I got
separated from Harley, Paul and the French girls. So it was just Henry and I
for a while. Getting separated and then searching for each other would be a
common theme of the night. But with half a mile of beach, endless clubs and
tens of thousands of people, it was almost impossible to find each other. It
didn’t matter much anyway. Sometimes we were all together; sometimes I was with
Paul and sometimes with Henry. Either way, though, it was always a good time.
The crowd was exceptionally Euro-trashy. It was far more of a Scandanavian
spring break crowd than the fire-spinning hippie crowd one might expect at this
party. Beyond the music and dancing, there were plenty of things to keep us
entertained. There was a giant inflatable water slide, food stalls, a flaming
jump rope, an ocean, a flaming limbo stick and probably other things that I
have forgotten about. As expected, I was killing it on the limbo stick, but
didn’t get proper recognition as a limbo master since nobody else had respect
for the limbo rules.
Henry and I were the last two standing when the sun started
to come up. At that point, people started to really get into the idea of
swimming. I couldn’t resist. I set my things on a wooden platform and asked
Henry to watch them while I took a dip. When I got out, I didn’t see Henry, or
my blue scarf that I had left on the platform. I saw that my scarf had been
knocked off and was rolling around in the water. Then I saw Henry dancing off
to the side, not paying attention. Then I noticed my zipper pouch that I had
had my money in was gone. I looked around and suddenly saw a Thai guy walking
away with it. I approached him and said it was mine, and he just handed it
back, apologized and scurried off.
Not long after, Henry and I decided to make our way back
home. It was surprisingly easy to find a Sangthaew going in our direction. In
the chaos of the night, almost all the people around us had been strangers. Now
we were back in a more social context, meeting the people that we had been partying
alongside the whole night. It was almost awkward, especially since I did not
want to be the same kind of person as those we were riding with. Either way, we
could all partake in the camaraderie of having been through a full moon party
together.
I woke around 1 PM the next day, which is incredibly late
for me no matter the circumstances. I was amazed to find the whole crew already
at a table on the beach getting into their first (or third for some) beers. I
didn’t want to have anything to do with that, but the peer pressure and the
desire to kick around stories from the night before got the better of me. Of
course I felt great after a bit. It turned out that three of the four of us
that went (forgot to mention that Patrick didn’t want to go to the party) had
had thieves try to work their magic on us. Harley, who had left the earliest of
all of us, had his phone picked from his pocket. Paul, however, had the best
story. At some point in the night, in a crowded area where everyone was
dancing, a Thai woman approached Paul. She began to dance with him closely.
After a few moments, he realized she was a lady boy. Before he knew it, she had
smiled and left. Paul immediately checked his pockets, and realized his wallet
was missing. He ran after her and grabbed her shoulder. She turned around,
pulled out his wallet, handed it back, smiled, and said, “sorry!”
