Full Moon Party
Considering I rarely go out much in San Francisco, the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m staying in the party capital of Southeast Asia (according to the T-shirts). Last night was the famous Full Moon Party, and travelers going through all different corners of Asia descended on our little island for the traditional all-night beach rave in Haad Rin.
As I said previously, my last Full Moon Party was six years ago, and ended in a rejected marriage proposal and cuddling on the beach with Dae, explaining why I couldn’t bring him back to America with me and be his husband, through our drunken states and language barrier. So, I knew to ratchet down my expectations this time. In fact, I don’t think I would want it to be crazier than that night, heh.
I entered the beach near Cactus playing a “Kids” remix by MGMT, so I took a mental note that I knew I liked the music there already. I arrived around midnight, so the party was in full swing. The beach was loaded with day-glo drunks as far as you could see. It was hard just moving through the crowd.
I went south first, checking out the shorter patch of beach from where I entered, then went all the way north, stopping at every dance area to sample the music. There’s no evident gay area, yet, if there ever will be. Last time may have been a fluke, a boy jumping onto a stool as a beacon for everyone else. After that, our little haven may have been just as hard for anyone else looking, but once you were there, it was a tiny little gay club.
Of course, trying to find a gay vibe among drunk straight boys wearing bikini tops amid the gay-glo references their friends wrote on their backs is certainly a challenge. On top of that, all the country-specific gaydar adjusting, it’s near impossible.
I stay very buzzed the whole night, which is to say it was pretty perfectly executed. I would have one drink, get a bit buzzed, then switch to water or diet coke. As soon as the buzz started dipping, I’d have another drink. Just did that all night. Took more than 5,000 Baht with me, just in case, and came back with more than 4,000. No buckets this time, which caused my premature Half Moon departure.
Last time, with George Bush’s pride flag of terror in full swing with all its fearmongering about kidnapping and other craziness, and Bush being president in general, the last thing you wanted to identify as was American. Many Americans put Canadian flags on their backpacks. This time, I wore my Obama T-shirt, which got all positive results from everyone who referenced it, and it was interesting hearing people from around the world offer their slight twist on saying “Obama!”
I am continually drawn to fire shows, and watching tourists do the limbo under a flaming bar. Some come dangerously close to injury, since no one’s sober. It is the same fire crew as the Half Moon party, so I’ve seen most of this before, save for limbo. A few boys try to hang under the bar, bent in limbo stance, and light cigarettes off the bar. They never succeed. Thankfully, most attempts at lower levels are aborted, as they all seem like they will only go wrong. The Thai boys can make it under the bar that seems to be just above my knee, but is probably a bit higher.
I stay on the lookout for the gay enclave, but never find it. You see random gays with groups of friends, and say hi, or nod knowingly and smile. But that’s about it. I use my normal method of going to the club whose aggro drum-n-bass is the worst music on the beach to my taste, figuring that’s where I’ll find the gays. That’s usually how it goes. But no dice, so at least I’m spared spending time listening to this mess.
Cactus seems to be my touchstone. I go from place to place throughout the night, but that is always the destination of choice. They also seemed to spin a lot of Michael Jackson, and the crowd all cheered and sang along in tribute. At one point, I’m inside, watching a very happy, very drunk Thai boy come on to all the ladies. He talks to them, they move away, he smiled, then he comes back to me and says stuff I rarely understand. I don’t get his name, but that he lives on Phangan and loves Full Moon. I ask him if he is going to take girl home with him tonight, and he smiles and nods. That is the plan.
Another Thai boy comes over to him, whispers in his ear. I can’t hear any of it, but the other boy keeps pointing to me. Then he says, they are going to the beach, do I want to come with them? Sure, I have nothing else going on. He keeps smiling and dancing as we head out to the beach, making sure not to lose me as we navigate through the crowd.
As soon as we get to a clearing, the first boy stops. The guy I was chatting with continues to dance until someone with their hand wrapped around a bottle clunks it into the back of his head. He turns around, wondering what the hell just hit him, but not phased. Until in front of him, he sees another Thai boy, with a bottle in each hand coming at him directly, this assault misses as he walks backward and stumbles onto a group of tourists sitting on a blanket. To my right, the guy that invited us out also has a bottle in each hand. So, there is definitely an ambush going on. They don’t look at or care about me, so I never feel in danger. And within a second, this guy is off into the dancing throng, being chased down the beach. I double up to the main road off the beach, and head in that direction, figuring if he gets away or injured that will be his path back, and especially if he’s injured I want to make sure he gets help. But I never find him.
I do see the guy that invited us out onto the beach at Cactus later, looking like nothing unusual happened. And, after telling this story to the staff at the resort, they don’t seem to find this out of the ordinary. They said bottles are often a lead-up to knives or a gun, so who can tell. I’m intrigued what he could have done to merit this, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to go chat up that guy and ask or not. It’s still dark, so I skip it. I figure, if I see him when it’s light, and he’s less likely to do anything, I’ll ask. But, once the sun comes up, I never see him again either.
It’s always interesting how resilient you can be, and something like that happens and sort of shakes things up, but then within 30 minutes, you’re dancing again. But it never freaked me out, I was just a witness, tangentially involved. Thankfully, the action moved away from me lightning-fast, so I never had to decide to protect him or anything. By the time I knew what was happening, it was far away from me.
At some point, I do find a cute boy dancing up on a stool, and I do my part and gravitate. But I am the only one responding to the beacon this time, which is fine with the boy on the stool. He tells me he is Goff (which is probably entirely wrong), he works as a tailor in his family’s business on Samui. He seems way young, but insists he’s 19. He’s there with a group of friends, a grab bag of gays, girls, and who knows. So I’m dancing with Goff, then he leans in to kiss me. So, we dance and kiss a bit. Then we leave his friends and go for a walk on the beach, just chat mainly. Seriously. But at this point, it’s like 4 a.m. and he and his friends are going back to Samui at 4:30, so we return to his stool, they gather their things and he heads back to the pier with them.
The longer the night goes on, it’s interesting how it devolves. All parties have a hint of this, and if you’re sober or not drinking much you can usually chart the progress. It seems more obvious when you see everyone freshly-painted and ready to have fun and, a few hours later, you’re straining to see what their paint initially said, they’re passed out in the sand, or walking like marionettes with a clipped string and defying gravity. And the crowd is a lot more thinned out by 5 a.m.
It’s hard to judge the sobriety of people, though, because by the end of the night, we all stumble around like zombies, as we step on bottles hidden in the sand and have to shift awkwardly to not fall, kick straws out of our flip-flops. So, we all move with a bit of zombie flair, and most wear the appropriate faces for the role, but not all.
Eventually, you see the line of the hills that surround the beach, a silhouette forming as the sun starts making an appearance. But this isn’t sunrise, just an indicator. I’m staying for proper daylight before going home this time.
Finally, it’s light enough and I call it. Head for the taxis, and head home. On the taxi home, you see the remnants of party on everyone. I have specks of day-glo paint on me here and there, just from rubbing against people all night to make progress. You look around the taxi, and British girls tease their friends about the hickies on their necks, and the drunken people they received them from. The half-Swedish, half-Japanese boy next to me, from Japan, has most of his day-glo tattoos rubbed off, and I can’t piece together what they once said. He fills me on that one isn’t even a word, after I give in trying to figure out what could have rubbed off to leave this piles of letters remaining, but he says it is just that he is a member of the Yokihama Beer Drinking Group or somesuch. Just something he and his friends made up, as a club to which they all belong.
Everyone shares their history and stories and hometowns with strangers, and their more scandalous Full Moon experiences with friends, and we all listen. When 10,000 or however many people gather on a beach, 10,000 versions of what exactly happened last night exist.
This is mine.
