Monthly thousands of backpackers from around the world arrive upon the small island of Koh Phangan in the Gulf of Thailand for the Full Moon Party on the beach at Haad Rin. It is like a ritual of Babylon. The spotty youth paint their faces in luminous grease paint wear their funkiest beach shorts or bikinis and get drunk on the beach. They drink the famous Koh Phangan called the ‘bucket’ in excess, do some of hip wobbling and shark around looking for sexual adventure.
It has just become such a cliche and like all hackneyed things to do, the occurrence has lost much of its original significance.
The first Full Moon Party happened at Paradise Bungalows in the 1980s. It was a spontaneous idea to celebrate the moon at its peak, a return to paganism, a link with the lunacy of innumerable generations who have been fascinated by the silver glow of moon beams. It is a time for carnival, a time for change, a time for female cycles.
No doubt at that initial party they revelled all night, got high on dope and Thai booze, made new friends, danced in the lapping surf and went to bed after watching the sunrise over the sea. It must have been a great party because it created lots of copy-cats.
The gatherings got bigger and grew in popularity. What started out as one bash soon became several parties all vying for customers, all endeavouring to drown out each other’s sound systems, all offering pretty much the same thing. As the tourists started arriving on Haad Rin in ever increasing numbers so those looking to make a fast dollar also began flocking to the beach in ever swelling numbers.
First new bungalows were erected taking up every unfilled square foot of space along the perimeter of the beach. Then the bars all with the same prices and menus squeezed themselves in between the bungalows and along the main roads. Then the dealers came selling defectively made equivalents of the party drugs available in Europe and America. Weak pills and powders that by-passed the euphoria and just made you grind your teeth like a fool. And with the opportunistic pushers came the equally opportunistic peddlers of the felsh.
And there it happened. The Full Moon Party became an official thing. A gathering and a ‘must do’ for all those travellers taking a gap year before university. It was de rigueur to do the Full Moon Party just as you had to lease a car in Australia and drive around the coastal roads and just as you must plod the Inca trail and visit Machu Picchu. And when something becomes a must do it loses its original purpose. The Full Moon Party stopped being a jamboree of beautiful folk hanging out and having merriment with the locals and became an event of a multitude of wannabee cool youth posing around and getting fleeced by non-local Thai people.
Thai people from all over Thailand are now involved in the lucrative scam called the Full Moon Party. And the worst of the bunch are the police. Uniformed and undercover they prowl all night not to stop the pilfering or the fights, not to insure the safety of foreigners on the beach, not to stop the prostitution, but to arrest those unwise enough to try and smoke joints on the beach. That is their sole purpose. Once they have a quarry they then relish scaring the bejesus out of him or her until any demand for money will be met with a rapid compliance. It is giant business this crusade against narcotics; so much so that in the 1990s English coppers used to take working holidays to the beach to join in the fun of arresting marijuana smokers. There is nothing great in that.
And that still is not enough. They still want to wring more capital out of the event. I suspect the folk story about the goose laying golden eggs never entered the annals of their folk literature. Now they want to charge people an entrance fee to enter the famous ‘Full Moon Party’. Who will get to keep this entrance fee? Will some of it go towards cleaning the beach after the event? Or perhaps some of the Baht might be used to purchase much needed supplies for the local school or the congested hospital? I think not.
The saddest aspect of all this for me is the fact that Haad Rin used to be a really beautiful beach blessed with both sunrise and sunset beaches. It used to be a place of funky little bamboo bungalows and friendly laid back locals – a real island paradise.
That paradise has disappeared forever. The original colurful folk that used to have fun under the stars have long since moved on or got jobs. Just like with Goa, the colourful folk who believe in love and sharing have long since understood what a mockery and commercial fiasco their party has become and have sought out newer places for their raves.
If you want a cool beach without whores and police, without peddlars and blustery gangsters you go to more remote parts of Koh Phangan. Places like Bottle Beach and Thong Nai Pan still have unblemished white sand beaches, low-priced bungalows and cool vibes. These are the beaches where you can be left alone to look intently at the stars, have a chuckle with the locals, see butterflies playing in the shallows, catch fish and slouch in a hammock and not be disturbed by over-loud speakers and vomiting youth.
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