Full Moon Party

The full moon parties that are held on our island draw thousands of western tourists every month, attracted to the drug and alcohol soaked atmosphere of other tourists (travellers) going nuts on a beach for 24 hours.

We didn't go to the last one, as we had recently arrived and preferred to chill out with our new friends Sophi and Dan from Germany in a quiet bar here on our beach paradise.

The next month though we decided to go, as did everyone else at the camp. So we all met up in the common area about 10pm on the full moon night, sipping coffee shakes, redbull to someones dance CD's, before squeezing into a worryingly narrow, wooden long-tail boat for the trip to Haad Rin.

The moon was out and full this time (last "full moon" party was postponed a couple of days due to elections), and indeed looked magical reflected off the gently rippling water as we sailed around the beach head and rocks. The moonlight seemed strong enough to read by, it was so bright. Our coxswain knocked off his solitary running light as we hummed through the flat water, the moonlight illuminating in silver our path through the rocks.

When we reached Haad Rin, the sight on the beach reminded me of the scene from Apocalypse Now- Music boomed from multiple piles of bass speakers, thrown together haphazardly. Lights flashed different colours, fireworks went off flashing and banging over the lights. The beach was a writhing mass of bodies, all dancing, staggering, falling, and boats like ours carried yet more people onto the beach, threading their way past each other, avoiding the fully clothed people dancing, or maybe swimming in the water.

They say up to 30,000 people can attend on any full moon, and being there, I can quite believe it. The bars were little more than trestle tables laid out on the beach in single line, selling small plastic buckets with a bottle of whiskey or rum, a can of cola and a redbull sitting in. For between 300 and 450 Baht (depending on your spirit of choice), the "bar" tenders will fill the buckets with ice and pour in the booze and 2 mixers.
A couple of straws and your good to go!
All the way down the beach, speakers pumped out different types of music- in front of one "bar", Timberlake's bassy tunes were making our kidneys vibrate, but with just a few paces down the line the music changed to Jungle music, with a London MC chatting like a machine gun to a pleasingly multicultural, but very British, crowd.

Our group split for a bit, as the single lads went off looking for company, and us married/quieter types found a bar where we could shoot pool and talk.

Eventually, after many beers and much amusement at the drug addled antics of the gap-year travelers, everyone from the camp met up again on the beach. One of our guys, a kickboxing instructor from Birmingham, had a nice American girl clamped onto his arm so decided to stay. However, the rest of us were too drunk or tired to go on, so we squeezed again into a narrow boat, and chugged slowly off the beach.

The beach was wrecked. Bottles, rubbish, and crap from the sea (brought by the boats) was floating in the shallows, which were also full of people swimming/falling about in the filthy brown water. As we chugged past the drunk and the wasted, I noticed a young couple bumping uglies, I mean really going at it, like rabbits on Viagra, just meters away from the boat. The water was so dirty, they will surely catch a nasty infection! (And probably blame each other for it....)

Mrs G and I got to bed about 5.30am after a nightcap in the camps restaurant area, a little drunk, but nothing near the state the "Full Moon Party" seems to induce in most people.

The following day we returned to Haad Rin, on a bank and shopping trip. The mess was still there; farangs off their faces and struggling to remain upright after 24 hours drug and alcohol abuse, beer bottles smashed into the soft white sand, cigarette boxes bobbing in the filth of the sea, and everyone mumbling about how many have died "this time".

But now the beach is clean, the majority of tourists have gone, and its back to normal.

For a few weeks at least.