Ko Phangan's Infamous Full Moon Party

January 30 2010
Tonight we went to Ko Phangan's infamous full moon party. We left for the Hat Rin beach at 11:30pm with a car load of other partiers from our bungalow. The trip to the beach can only be compared to a horrifying demented Disney world roller coaster. Along the steep narrow road were signs about 20% uphill grades and imploring English phrases saying "SLOW DOWN" to which our driver ruthlessly ignored. With other truckloads of passengers aggressively flying past us on the narrow 2 lane road we finally made it up the mountain to the famous beach. The streets were lined with probably a good solid one hundred vendors selling pastel colored buckets with rearrangable bottled boozes (each bucket complete with a small bottle of red bull) pleasing any drinkers preference. There were thousands of people, ranging from in control to out of control, old and young, singles, couples, and groups carrying and stumbling with the buckets of mixed booze across the squishy beachfront.
We saw many things:
men standing in the wash from the beach releasing their urine.
a sinister version of jump rope as people jumped over the rope in flames.
people passed out in sleeping slumbers in the sand.
girls with painted bikini tops.
overflowing bathroom stalls.
tens of tattoo shops offering evidence for bad drunken decision-making, with pictures taped to the window of others' past bad ideas in ink.
and many over-friendly boys asking in perfect English where we're from.
(To which our new response has been, "Canada." The response this illicits is usually a disappointed, "ooh. nice country." We decided to do this because we've tired of all the questions and commentary Thais have regarding the US: their thoughts on our new president and our health care system, the comparisons between their country and ours, and the assumptions that we have a lot of money...when we very muchly do not.)
We only stayed and dance till about 3am, deciding that we wanted to make it home decently without issues in order to be able to function the next day under the sun. While it definitely was a haven for youthful celebration and silliness we kept ourselves smart and aware, to which we hope our parents will be proud. There's a time and place for indecent and irresponsible behavior...we didn't feel this was one of those situations.
We took with us a point-and-shoot film camera, so once we have the film developed and a digital cd then we will upload photos :)

Brittney's dad shared with us a very interesting link about the particular moon we were dancing under. It was the "wolf moon" and it was the largest and brightest moon of all the full moons of the year, check it out: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100129-biggest-full-moon-2010-mars/