Every month, at full moon, 30 000+ people flock to the Koh Phangan for the Full Moon Party. It’s well known as the craziest and busiest beach party… so of course we couldn’t miss this opportunity while in southern Thailand!
The night started at 6 pm with a taxi (ie. pickup truck) ride to the beach. The drivers love packing in as many people as possible so we left with a truck of 13, some sitting on the floor, and everyone drinking beer or out of buckets. This island is all hills and the roads are full of potholes so you can imagine us flying off the seats with every bump, trying to keep our drinks from spilling. On top of that, 13 people add a lot of weight so the truck definitely stalled on our way up some steep hills. No problem though – the driver just kicked us out of the back and we all just stumbled up the highway in the dark eventually meeting him at the top. We decided a while ago that Thailand’s theme is “safety first” and this was a perfect example!
Once we arrived on the full moon beach, things were insane!! The streets were packed with crowds dressed in neon and covered in body paint. People were selling everything possible, music could be heard from anywhere, and fireworks would go off randomly from the beach. The beach was definitely full of 10 000’s of people – I’ve never seen anything like it. Every few hundred feet you’d hear a different type of music and people were dancing anywhere possible, including in the water.
And again going along with ‘Safety First’, there were all sorts of activities on the beach. The boys went down a slide from the top of a bar, through pillars of fire, and onto a much too small landing pad at the bottom. Even better was a game of skip rope on the beach, with the added challenge of the rope being lit on fire. Brilliant ideas for masses of intoxicated people!
Somehow I bumped into five people from my class! Speaking of which, they had clinics everywhere, including a “sleep tent” on the beach for those passed out by the end of the night. We laughed at this at first, but around 4 AM the beach was full of people sleeping in every random corner… so suddenly the sleep tent seemed quite appropriate!
After a night of dancing and eating, we ended up back at our hotel around 5 AM, waking up this morning with paint covered sheets… a day at the pool sounds perfect right now!
