The full moon party at Haad Rin

Wednesday 29th September, 1.30pm
Location: Thong Naay Paan Yai beach

After nights like last night, after 2-3 hours sleep, I wake up tired and hungover, my chest complaining because of the cigarette abuse, and I can't go back to sleep. This is a frequent problem, familiar to Sunday mornings in Bristol after a night out with Jake and Ed. Spending the afternoon in bed, sweating and feeling rough just isn't my style. So, despite the 10am conclusion to my full moon party I find myself sitting once again in the Nice Beach Resort restaurant, writing and waiting for my lunch. Ye gods, it really is DEAD around here. I wonder what the quality of the cuisine tends to be on Kho Pha-ngan the day after a full moon party? Suddenly my order of a tuna burger and fries somehow seems a bit adventurous.

So yes, it was quite a night at Haad Rin, for all sorts of fun and unusual reasons, but I will come to that shortly. My lunch has now come and gone, and so has my energy and with it the desire to describe these events to you right now. Later then, I promise. now I climb back into my hammock.


Friday 1st October, 2pm
Location: Somewhere between Kho Pha-ngan and Kho Samui

I'm writing this as I sit in freezing air con on the boat back to Surat Thani. I'm surrounded by travellers of all shapes and sizes: seemingly a mass exodus from Kho Pha-ngan after everyone has recovered from the full moon party. So far the day has been a little tiresome, the sky overcast. [Later it started really pissing with rain. It was grim. Ed] My belly does an occasional loop the loop, despite the Immodium: the food on Kho Pha-ngan has not really agreed with me. Or perhaps it was the Samsung buckets. In my experience thus far, Thailand has been tougher than Malaysia. This is mostly because of the people - visitors and locals - who seem colder and more closed up, rather than warm and open.

The full moon party, in its own way, was different - all in all an experience I wouldn't have wanted to miss, and one that I would be tempted to repeat next month.

So. Evening came on Tuesday, the night of the full moon party, and we gathered, lethargic, at Bamboo. We played cards, we ate, we drank Singha beers, we swung in hammocks. Presently, Steve, Phil and I decided to have a Samsung bucket. For the uninitiated, these are buckets, about the size of a bucket in a child's bucket and spade kit, containing a 35cl bottle of Thai whiskey (rumoured to contain amphetamine), a bottle of Red Bull (these look like medicine bottles - the Red Bull they sell in Thailand is illegal in the UK) and a can of coke.

Unsuprisingly, I felt much perkier afterwards. There was just enough time to play another game of shithead and share a second bucket between six of us, before we had to get in our taxi , which we shared with three Canadian jocks. It was a squeeze, and generally difficult to balance yourself, your beer and your cigarette on the red dirt track roads that seem to criss-cross the entire interior of the island. Before too long though, dirt track was replaced by asphalt, and we began the final leg of the 45 minute journey, travelling slowly in a convoy of taxi trucks containing revellers from all over the island.

We arrived at a busy car park close to the action on Haad Rin beach. The time was about 11.30pm, which meant that the party was just getting going. We made our way to the street and immediately found a hawker selling buckets for... well, I can't remember how much they cost but they seemed pretty cheap! We bought two between the six of us. my first impression of the party, as we made our way slowly down that street towards the beach, was of a busy Saturday night in any town in England, combined with a new year celebration and a street party, and transferred to a (slightly) exotic location. We spent a seemingly interminable amount of time in a bar called Cactus which was playing some urban music. At this point, the only difference I felt to spending a Saturday night in an average late bar in Bristol was the fact that I was drinking through a straw from a bucket. Vive la difference! We had fun. We danced to Dre and 50 Cent. We got a bit more drunk.

Eventually we got to the beach, which was busy, but not so busy that it was difficult to move around or stay together. We wandered up and down a bit, generally in great spirits, but there was no 'Wow factor'. Here was a beach crowded with people, containing maybe ten bars all pumping out music of a distinctly mediocre standard. Yet more shades of a English townie nightclub.

I suppose that it was around this time, maybe 1am, that my memory of events becomes a little patchy. The Samsung buckets had done their work. We retreated from the beach to a bar set up on the hillside. I don't know what motivated this swift exit from the beach - maybe it was because of the music, maybe we needed a toilet pit stop, maybe we needed another drink, I'm not sure. Anyway, this bar, creatively built on a number of different levels, was cool, and we ended up staying there for a good while. Everyone in there had a big grin on their face. Lads, covered in dayglow paint offered us their little pots and brushes and encouraged us to do likewise, which some of us duly did. We danced a lot, although I do not know what to. We drank some more buckets [containing Sangsom whiskey, not Samsung. They make TVs don't they? Ed]. We contemplated a mushroom shake, but at 500 bart, we decided against it. A fortunate decision methinks.

I went round the back to find the toilet. There, in the shadows, was a rough looking lady(boy?) who made the international sign of the blojob and then held up three fingers. Three bart for a blowjob? Thirty? Three hundred? I finished my business and didn't wait around to find out.

Eventually we made our way back down to the beach, where we set up camp a a bar playing some half decent cheesy house. Some cool photographs were taken. A final bucket was purchased - I chased mine down with about as much water as I could drink. Things suddenly became a bit soft focus. I danced a lot. Then, Phil and Hayley were leaving. Did I want to go with them? No, I didn't. I wanted to stay and dance some more. Steve was nowhere to be found, although later he told me that he was only fifteen metres or so away from the spot where I was dancing.

So, it appeared that everyone had left me, a fact to which at this point I was happily and drunkenly resigned. I decided to go for a wander down the beach. Suddenly, and without much in the way of warning, the sun came up. I think it was at about this point that I started to sober up. I sat there, contemplative, watching the sunrise while a random assortment of partygoers/casualties wandered by. Occasionally someone would stop for a friendly chat. It was a beautiful morning, the weather in stark contrast to the storms we had witnessed on the previous day.

Then it was 7am. I made my way back to the centre of the beach, where I was delighted to find that the party was still in full swing. Only one bar remained active, ruling the revellers with a rod of gleaming trance. 'Whoopee!', I thought! Maybe a hundred people continued to dance, many of them off their heads, some of them trance legends, some of them trance legends, some of them in trhe sea, some of them raving on the roof of the bar out of which the tunes were pumping. Some of them, I noticed, still in full on shark mode. This, I thought as I started to wind my body, must be what the full moon party is all about. I had my final wind, so immediately set about making big squares, small squares, big squares, small squares...

Presently, I became aware that my final wind had almost expired, and I started to experience some anxiety about the nature in which I was going to get myself to my bed. I wandered (a little forlornly) down the beach, picking my way past the revellers who had decided to sleep where they had fallen. Probably they were too pissed to have much choice about it. I contemplated the possibility that I would have to join them. But, as fortune would have it, my tired and bleary contact lense clad eyes spotted a boat with a sign on it which may or may not have said 'Taxi boat to Thong Naay Paan Yai'. The boat was about fifty metres offshore, moored in about four feet of water. I dithered. Eventually I lfted my cash, my camera and my fags above my head and waded out. It was a taxi to my beach, I was saved. I climbed aboard.

Now you may conclude that my full moon party night ended there. You would be wrong. As far as I'm concerned the most interesting episode of the night was yet to occur.

But that, as they say, is another story, and will be told at another time.

So don't miss the next exciting installment of Ollie's travel diaries: 'Ladyboys on Thong Nay Paan Yai beach'.