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Published: February 25th 2008
Ko Pha Ngan has long been legendary for its monthly ‘Full Moon Party’. These are the events where thousands of backpackers from all over the world descend on Hat Rin beach to dance from dusk till dawn fuelled by buckets, oh and errr… other stuff. Though the lunar cycle had conspired against my attendance at such an event, the more I thought about it the more I realised that this actually came as a relief. I think it would be a great thing to do with a few mates, but if I was to go it alone and not meet a great bunch of people the music would grind me down fairly early on in proceedings. Though it was not full moon time, they still crank it out every night on the beach - the sort of loud, electronic techno that I categorise more as soulless ‘noise’ than as music. I’m a grumpy old man I know.
Not only was I not there for the Full Moon Party, but I also missed the Half Moon Party. I was around for the Black Moon Party and the Shiva Moon Party, although these were at another beach further round the coast and
I had to… well I just couldn’t be bothered. Every night that I went out and looked up at the moon, I tried to figure out what it was that made it such an object of reverence in those parts. After a considerable spent time gazing up at it, I finally understood one night as I lay back on the beach sipping a bucket and somewhere behind me I heard a cash register open. The Full Moon Party kicked it all off way back in the 80’s some time, and since then the local businessmen have clearly realised that they don’t have to wait a full lunar cycle to wheel out the cash cow. The moon is in some stage of its cycle every night after all.
By day, Hat Rin beach is pretty special. The surrounding scenery is great, and unlike all the other island beaches I have been to in South East Asia, there are some gentle waves for a spot of body surfing. On one of the days they were of quite a reasonable size, but my body surfing efforts were constantly hampered by some bloke who kept dropping in on me. I suspected that he
Beach paradise
Mid afternoon scenes from Hat Rin beachhad seen me pulling some positively gnarly moves moments earlier and wanted to thwart my efforts to impress the many females in various states of undress sunbathing on the beach. Now I understand why all those bank robbers were so angry at Johnny Utah when he intruded on their turf in Point Break.
Like in Ko Tao, the majority of my stay at Hat Rin was under blue skies, and most of my days were whiled away on the beach. The Anti-Cancer Council’s slogan of ‘slip, slop, slap’ seems to have hit a real nerve on Ko Pha Ngan, as almost everywhere I went I saw evidence of it being adhered to. That being said, it has a different interpretation on the island. Instead of ‘slip on a t-shirt, slop on some sunscreen, and slap on a hat,’ the dominant practice on Hat Rin beach was more along the lines of ‘slip off your t-shirt, slop on some coconut oil, and slap on some tunes.’ In the many hours I spent on the beach, it was also difficult not to notice that a considerable proportion of the crowd were Israelis - I hazard to guess that there is more
Hebrew spoken in Hat Rin than in the Torah and the Talmud combined.
While I spent a lot of time on the beach, I also enjoyed frequent swims in the pool of one of the swanky beachfront resorts that were well out of my price range. Of course, if there were any signs anywhere saying that the pool was for the exclusive use of resort guests, I would have respected that. Since there weren’t any to be seen, I couldn’t see the harm in trying my luck. For three days I strolled in with the confident air of a man who didn’t half suspect he wasn’t supposed to be there, and not a single eyebrow was raised. I even began nodding in acknowledgement of the resort staff as I entered, and giving them a smile and a wave each time before I headed back onto the beach.
Late on the third day one of the resort staff came up and asked me which room I was staying in. “I’m in C-1” I replied. This was true - I was staying in room C-1, just not at that particular place. Clearly they didn’t have a room C-1. His surprise
at this was palpable, as I suppose I had become something of a local identity given the frequency with which I’d used their facilities over the previous three days. As sensitively as you could possibly imagine, the guy said that the pool was for resort guests only. “No problem - I’d best be on my way then” I said as I exited the pool. At this point he started with a profuse, almost groveling apology for having asked me to leave. If I’d had any money on me at the time I would have felt obliged to tip him, such was the courtesy and grace with which he handled my ejection.
The only time I made it out of Hat Rin was for a long-tail boat cruise around the island. For me, the major selling point of the trip was that it took in two waterfalls, one of which had a series of pools at the bottom which were good for swimming. You can therefore imagine my disappointment when the day wound up and we had not seen a single waterfall. Apparently the conditions were too rough to make it round to the point of the island where the
main waterfall was. As for the second, the guide said “nah you don’t want to see that one - there’s hardly any water flowing down it at all.” Considering this came from the guide who ran the show, I thought it rather unethical that it was one of the main attractions listed on the flyer advertising the trip.
We did visit a few very nice beaches though, particularly Bottle Beach on the northern coast and Mae Hat on the northwest. Just off the coast of the latter was a small island called Ko Ma, and you could walk all the way over to it in waist deep water. That was pretty sweet. The snorkeling just off Ko Ma was good, although strangely the visibility was only about a quarter of that around Ko Tao, just 60km or so north. I guess that explains why pretty much every business on Ko Tao has some sort of diving themed name, whereas diving is not one of the main drawcards at Ko Pha Ngan.
On the way back, to compensate for the fact that we’d missed out on the waterfalls, we were taken to Ko Tae, a small island just off
the coast from Thong Sala, Ko Pha Ngan’s main port. There was once a restaurant and some huts on the island, but they are now abandoned. As a result, Ko Tae may well hold the distinction of having the dirtiest and most rubbish-strewn beach of any uninhabited island in the world. It looked as though we had arrived minutes after the end of a wild beach party, but we were told that that particular beach lay right in the path of the prevailing current, and therefore most of the rubbish dumped on the beaches around Ko Pha Ngan wound up there after a high tide.
As my time began to wind down on Ko Pha Ngan, I was very conscious of the fact that this signaled that a year long odyssey was also coming to an end. All that lay ahead was a long boat and bus trip back to Bangkok, a little over a day there, and then I’d be boarding a Melbourne bound plane. I could have done without the extra time in Bangkok. Now that the end was nigh, I had started seeing a picture of all my friends and family back home with me in
it, rather than just thinking of everyone who I was missing as some sort of far off mythical creatures like I had been doing throughout the previous year. For fifty one weeks I had prayed that my travels would somehow last forever, but all through the fifty second week I just wanted to get home. Strange huh?
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