Full Moon Party

This entry is from Siavosh illustrated by yours truly:

clouds over Ko Samui as we leave for the party

We would have left Ko Samui earlier, but we had to wait for the Full Moon Party. The guide book referred to it as "Apocalypse Now without the war" - we didn't find an overweight Marlin Brando on the beach but we did find something just as grand.

The air is electric and I'm not just talking about the dangerously low hanging electrical wires or the coming lightning storm. After we disembark from our jaw-breaking speed boat ride from Ko Samui to it's smaller sister island of Ko Phangang, we wander through a maze of liquor vendors, bars, restaurants, and ominously, first aid clinics. We're among fellow foreigners here, or farang as the Thai call us. People from every stripe: Danish backpackers, Australian partiers, and even a handful of misplaced families with kids - no parenting awards handed out here tonight.


It's only early evening so the party hasn't started yet. Supposedly it all began as a birthday party thrown on the beach for a group of backpackers in the eighties. It grew quickly by word of mouth to a party that draws ten to twenty thousand hedonistic revelers and spectators from all around the world each month. The hype has been building since we first read about it back home, but we've been to enough over hyped parties to be skeptical.

Walking through the cramped damp alleys, everyone is unusually well behaved and pensive, quietly waiting for this unknown spectacle to begin. No one knowing what to expect of the party and more importantly, of themselves.

What's amazing is there's no security of any kind in sight. None of the bars, let alone the beach, has anyone resembling a bouncer or security guard. This seems to fit with the general mellow aspect of Thai culture but considering what is about to happen it seems like gross negligence. Or it's a testament that this international party really might be a Shangri-La of harmony and brotherly love, but I doubt it.

The dark clouds from earlier begin to drizzle just as the sun sets, but it does little to spoil the mood. If anything, it encourages greater consumption of the liquor buckets - literally buckets filled with a full bottle of your favorite liquor, cola, and strong Thai red bull.

Soon the beach begins to fill with the world's backpackers. The fire ropes are lit and the revelry begins to accelerate to the sand shaking thumps of electronic beats.

Within an hour, the relatively short stretch of beach fills with what I can only guess to be ten to fifteen thousand dancers and wallflowers soon to be joining in. The vibe is much akin to what you'd see in a rave, and the small army of Thai fire performers dance with spears and chains of fire as if they were glow sticks. To watch the motions of the fire is hypnotizing and makes you forget the thousands around you and the intensifying rain. The entire scene is best described as surreal.

By midnight the party is in full swing. Bumping into friends made earlier, we're told of a special shake being dispensed at the various stalls - and by special you can use your imagination. At this point the revelers fill the width of the beach, from dancing at the bar to standing knee high in the water relieving themselves. Among the fire dancers, we see a drunk fat British kid having no business swinging a chain of fire do just that, to the applause of his compatriots and the drunken stares of others. As the chain swings dangerously close to some unbeknownst skulls, we step back anticipating the worst.

And as expected, by around two o'clock, the vibe of certain parts of the party begin to morph into things more dark. Some drunken arguments can be overheard,crying girlfriends, and in the darker recesses of the beach, shady locals offering drugs or blatantly patting down the pockets of the most drunk-looking farang. And yet none of this slows down the pace of the party, too many vows have been made between friends to see the party through dawn or its end, whichever comes later.

As for us, I can only say we left earlier than we'd anticipated, four in the morning, just the peak we later learn. We were too sober to see the party through its stumbling end, and even a bit too weary.

The Full Moon Party, by design and circumstance is a party that unlocks every constraint of logistics, inhibition, intoxicants, size, control, and mob mentality. Isolated on a remote beach far away from home, it gives free license to one's imaginations. For one long night the wild can be themselves and the buttoned up can dance with fire. It's a party that makes anything you've seen in Las Vegas look like Disneyland. For some it whets the appetite for more, for others, it closes a door. It allows them to leave confident that they have experienced the end of the road of what any party can possibly be, and hence the pursuit ends. I think we were happily the latter.