When someone first mentioned the Full Moon Parties to me a few years ago I envisaged an opening to the jungle that would only be exposed once the vegetation was brushed aside from your path. This opening would lead right to the water's edge with the only illumination falling from the moon and the billion stars ahead glistening above. I imagined that there would be an overwhelming sense of being a part of something, and everyone would seem to coalesce as the music drenched them. As the years went by and I received more and more reports from people who had actually been, my dream was viciously mutilated with every succeding statement, and I no longer was sure I wanted to view the tattered remains.
Within 20 yards of the pier, it feels as though you are on a Spanish island. The streets are littered with pissed & tarted up Westerers stumbling in between bars showing TV shows like Friends. If you ignored the weather it would seem like a night out in Essex ;)
The party itself takes place on the beach. Each of the bars that back onto the sand competes for business with different styles (& volumes) of music and daring fire displays performed mainly by local kids. This blatant competition destroys any essense of unity which may have once occurred here and the only surving defining feature is the consumption of alcohol to a backdrop of noise. The current bucket favoured by the masses is 50clof whisky, a can of coke, and a Thai redbull (loaded with enough Taurine to revive Elvis and enough amphetimines to get him dancing.
From 9pm onwards there were people passed out on the beach and others pissing into the sea wherever you looked. We got into full swing of things by buying a bucket and a beers and moving around until we found a bar playing favourable music. We kept ourselves amused by taking photos of people that were passed out and asking the prices for stupidly random tattoos like an full grown african elephant playing basketball with a coconut - the whiskey had begin to kick in at this point. This extreme approach to things coupled with the occasional spasm of tripping the light fantastic got us through the night until about 4am when tiredness was weighing too heavily on the eyelids. So, with no place to sleep we did what anyone would do (if they'd thought of it), and went to a massage parlour. No, not a dodgy Bangkok back alley massage parlour, but a proper one. Now, knowing the excrutiating pain that a Thai girl can exert in a massage, I decided to opt for the one that would inolve the least amount of sleep disturbance - a foot massage. Calculating that a massage would take one hour and cost 250 baht, we decided that 500 baht was well worth it, to pass the time until our boat would return save our souls.
The homeward bound trip was significantly less energetic and only consisted of about 5% of the people who caught the boat on the way there - evidently some of the 'gentlemen in high spirits' lying face down in the sand were indended passengers of our boat. The journey passed by to the struggled sounds of conversation and a general lacking of enthusiam to anything the world offered except a place to sleep. Why is it that when you feel absolutely tired, hungover and ill, you always crave death and not simply to feel well again?
The full moon party was nothing more than an opiate enhanced echo of it's former self. People paid for a bucket of liver damage and expected a piece of distant hedonism. They received a Magaluf dose of catatonic familiarity.
Or maybe not. Maybe this was the true essence of a full moon party and it was only my fantasy that was wildly wrong and I was simply upset as an illusion had been shattered. Or, maybe I am just hungover, tired, and feeling extremely bitter about everything in the world from the air that surrounds me to the people that breathe it. You gotta love those beautiful notions of self-righteousness that feel justified when submerged in the depths of a hangover.
No comments:
Post a Comment