The weather is hot, sun is out, I'm tending to hide in the shade and rest up for the famous Full Moon Party, which draws western folks to Ko Phangan every month around the full moon. I hear there will be around 20,000 in attendance for thumping techno music, fire dancers, drunk girls and a humongous decadent 'party' atmosphere. I suppose one man's party is another man's (or woman's) vision of hell, or at least the Golden Calf scene in The Ten Commandments by Cecil B DeMille, when Charlton Heston (Moses) came down from Mount Sinai to see the Israelites going wild in his absence. For this gig, I'll likely play the part of Heston (minus the guns and the dementia, hopefully:-)
Apparently the full moon party started in the mid 80s when one of the well connected visitors was leaving town, they decided to have a bash in her or his honor. It grew from there and now is an enormous engine for this island. People flock to it and there is huge money being made, so I guess it's a good thing for the economy. I'm actually kind of looking forward to it, mainly due to the coincidence that put me in this part of Thailand 2 and 1/2 days before the full moon, so what the hell, let's check it out. It's likely as close as I'll ever again get to something like this, and for that reason alone, I'll head over there tonight. It's about a 10 minute walk from where I'm staying, and the closer you get to it, the more thump in the atmosphere. I know this because I've been by there parts of the last two nights and it's quite a scene. For starters, the streets are filled with vendors selling buckets of alcohol and mixers. There is stall after stall of plastic buckets filled with say vodka and some mixer. You buy the bucket and they empty the contents into it, add ice and voila, off you go to get wasted on the beach. There must be at least a hundred vendors with tables full of booze buckets.
On the beach there is high volume thumping techno blaring out from various PA systems; here is the trance music, there's the techno, there's the house etc and I don't care enough to be able to distinguish one from another. They all seem to have that insistent bass drum banging away at about 130 beats a minute, so subtlety is in short supply. Many of the tunes will have a quiet section of kinda cheesy orchestration which inevitably leads back to the bang bang bang bass drum and the kids jumping and shaking and occasionally stopping to snap a picture of themselves for their next Facebook posting. Quite a scene, and that was just for the warm up bacchanal. Oh, and there's the puking and staggering and passing out on many fronts. If you like drunk girls, international edition, this is definitely the place to be.
I've been keeping a low profile, but am making a great connection with Prem, who is the owner of the place I'm staying at. We've been talking a lot, sharing some music on guitar, he's filling me in on a lot of the geographical and other knowledge which will come in very handy, especially when I leave this town of Haadrin. He invited me to have dinner this evening; he's making some food for himself, his sister, the workers and me, and it sounds great. He's a 45 year old guy, skinny, super mellow, he's married but his wife has a big tourism job in Suwathani (on the mainland), so they only get together every other weekend or so. Must be tough, but then again, maybe it's easier somehow (he thought in a Rich Glauber sort of way). But finding this spot to land in was a total blessing, quiet part of town, cheap rent ($8.50/day)
and a perfect place to get grounded after a long trip. I'm starting to feel like myself, and it's a good thing. My guitar is now holding its tune, and I've been playing a lot, working on a few things, just digging the camaraderie. It would suck to not have an instrument with me. I always have something to plug myself into. Whew!
Happy full moon from southern Thailand!
