Culture clash

We used to have this game in our family, back when my brother Bill was early in his journalism career, I'd say something like 'Mexico', and he'd come out with the lead line of an article... "Mexico, land of contrasts where modern skyscrapers dwarf the ancient relics of a once proud civilization" or something like that. Any country I would name, like Burma for instance, Bill would say, 'Burma, land of contrasts, where...' That was the point, that every place is a 'land of contrasts' and therefore the lead could always be the same. It still gives me a chuckle.

That was in my mind last evening as I was in and among the throngs heading to the beach for the famous Full Moon Party. The town was totally buzzing, as the international brood of twenty somethings was making their way toward the shore. They were painted up, dressed up, many sporting their new 'Full Moon Party' shirts they had just bought. Lots of tattoos, accents, languages buzz buzz buzz, excitement in the air.

Meanwhile, the November full moon is the traditional holiday of Loy Krathong in Thailand; it comes once a year and it's a celebration of the gift and spirit of water. People create (or buy) a little floating altar, usually made from banana leaves, and it contains fresh flowers, a few sticks of incense and a candle. They go with their family to the shore and send the offering into the water with a prayer for the continued gifts that the water provides, as well as an apology for any damage that they had done to the sea.

So there I was on the main drag of town, watching hordes of revelers head toward the party beach, when I noticed a trickle of locals heading the other way with their soon to be floating altars. The contrast couldn't have been more pronounced; partiers outnumbered prayers by at least a hundred to one, and they were heading in opposite directions. Naturally I followed the latter group to where they gathered to launch their offerings. Many came with small children and they walked to the edge of the floating pier, sat and lit the incense and candles, put their hands in prayer pose and sent the light onto the water. It was a lovely scene.

At this point, you'd expect me to change gears and talk about how tacky and drunken the revelers were, but you'd be wrong, just like I was. Leading up to the party, I was convinced that it was to be yet another 'sign of the apocalypse' (I seem to be fond of those), but in fact, I found it to be pretty special. The vibe was largely positive, people getting together to party, dressing up, drinking a lot yeah, but lots of smiles, much camaraderie and good vibes. I chose a perch about a block from the beach to watch the participants arrive. I can't believe how many Israelis are here. I thought to myself, there haven't been this many Israelis in a foreign country since Lebanon 1982, but that would be a cheap laugh. (and yeah, I laughed when I thought it).

I saw Croations, Brits, Aussies (pronounced Ozzies btw, they don't like it when Americans call them aw sees, now ya know). Americans, French, Italians and surprisingly many more Thais than I had expected. It's their party too and they were well represented. Tons of different countries represented, quite the melange of voices, now starting to get louder as the alcohol was kicking in. On the beach you could travel thirty yards and be in a different groove, here's Shakira, there's Jay Z, here's some techno, there's some house, and each sound system had a bunch of people moving, dancing, and yeah, updating their facebook (damn, that's weird, but it's the way of the world at the moment)

I thought I heard a saxophone playing and I followed the sound, wondering if someone had his horn out on the beach and was blowing along. As I got closer to it I saw that it was a guy onstage and he was crazy good, laying down some ripping solos over top of a percussive mix that the DJ was offering. This stage also had a few percussionists going at it on congas and timbales, and what's this? Glauber starts dancing. My body was into this groove. There were about ten or so folks dancing up on the stage to the side of the musicians, and before too long I got up there myself (easier to dance on a platform rather than in the sand). Took my shirt off and was gettin' jiggy wid it, first dancing since I've been here, and the music was great. This really great dancer comes over and wants to partner with me, but I told him no thanks:-) true dat. What can I say, I was getting down with the music...

I stuck around the party until about 1:30, before a lot of the human car crashes started falling by the wayside, so my impression was that it was a pretty positive gathering. Yeah, it's ironic that on the day to offer thanks to the spirit of the water, thousands of partiers were pissing in the ocean, but why quibble? Well OK, it's worth a quibble, but I guess my main vibe was that it was much better than I would have thought. I went home to sleep for a few hours, but woke up at 5:30 and decided to head back over there to watch the sunrise (and see a few car wrecks, truth be told). There were still thousands of people partying and it was still a pretty good scene. It was as though they had come through some type of twenty-something rite of passage, and they looked a lot better than say, the folks leaving the country fair after that shindig. That's likely because there is very little drug use at this gig, just alcohol, loud music and young people. My kid would have dug it. Hell, I even dug it.

And the takeaway is likely that all of my judgment about drunks and over-tourism and Facebook is more about me than about objective reality. Open mind, good time, closed mind, just more judgment. (note to self). Now I should probably post something on Facebook, (he thought with a grin)