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Published: June 22nd 2006
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Full moon in full swing
All the way to the furthest lights the beach is packed like this. So much fun. Culture's now taken a back seat for the last part of my travels and has been replaced by socialising, beach time and much drinking.
The place is really something and not for everyone's taste but I loved it and wish I was still there.
When I first arrived at around 7am in the morning the first thing I noticed was that instead of seeing the usual tourist amenities at the beginning of the main street there was as a line of medical centres created to deal with the many injuries sustained by drunkards every night. If you go into a pharmacy here you are likely to be greeted with a large sign at the door saying 'pregnancy test and wound healing available here'. This was all just a taste of things to come.
I won't go into all the boring details of my stay here but basically I checked into a quiet bungalow that looked out over a rocky coastline with great see views and had a gorgeous beach only a couple of hundred meters away. I met tonnes and tonnes of great people and sleep was pretty much put on hold for a few days. Favourites include
Playing with fire
Clearly they've never been told not to play with fire Hayley from California who I met the night before the full moon party. Also the three Irish girls Patsy, Ive and Nula (sp?). My 'posh' accent was a huge source of amusement for Patsy and Ive and they spent ages mocking me. The best counter I could come up with was 'tirty'. Typical.
It's also probably more accurate to say that I had more early mornings than late nights while I was there. During the day I kept 'busy' by touring around the island on my motorbike, hanging out on the beach and doing other similar things.
When it got to the night of the full moon party everybody is buzzing with excitement and anticipation. Think about it. 10-15,000 people on one beach with loads of different nightclubs blaring out music so loud that you can feel it pulsing through your body. The most popular kind of drink is a Bucket where they will happily tip in a whole bottle (around 250ml i think) of 40%vol spirits, one 'medicine bottle' (as I like to call them here) of red bull - with far too much caffeine etc in it to be healthy and one bottle of coke. If
Oh yes!!
lethal but oh so good! you really feel like it you can ditch the coke for another red bull but in my opinion when you're on a night of this stuff that would be a very bad idea as even one bottle is probably over the RDA for most of the chemicals inside. You get all of this with some ice, a squirt of lime and a hand full of straws to suck it through for the princely sum of around 2 quid. Yes that's right 2 quid!
The evening kicks off pretty early but most people head down sometime before midnight with the busiest time being around 2-3am. The atmosphere is amazing and there is all sorts of stuff going on. You will see everything and I mean everything at one of these parties.
One of the main attractions is the various fire shows going on with extremely skilled local guys throwing around fire sticks, fire poi and other burning things all over the place. The most dangerous activity I would say was the ring of fire which they hoist up for innebriated tourists to jump through. Some people are quite skilled and can do impressive things as they jump through but
Home for a few days
Where I'm now staying (lighthouse). Beautiful white sand beach is just behind where I was facing and there is great swimming/cliff jumping to be had. there is lots of drunk people I saw just run straight into it and then land in a heap on the floor squirming around to get out of the fire as quickly as possible. So many people were covered in burns the next day. Don't get me wrong this is terrible but there was definately something entertaining about it for some bizzarre reason. It's a spectacle to behold and lots of people love it. The beach is strewn with bodies that have either passed out for a while or are perhaps a couple getting far to intimate for a public place. At one point I was told about a competition or something where they stacked up 10 tables and tried to see who could climb the highest on them. Someone made it to the top and proceeded to go nuts dancing on top of them all.
Safety seems to be completely ignored at these things and I'm sure it can't/won't go on forever but for now good or bad it's an experience not to miss.
I saw the sunrise come up and then the people I had been with all night went home so thinking that the party
was going to stop there I also headed home so I could get 3hrs sleep before meeting Hayley and Co to visit the other side of the island. Little did I know that the party was far from finished at that point and other friends who I couldn't find at the time kept going until 3pm the next day! I feel lame now for going to bed so early and am determined to go back and give it another try some day in the not to distant future before I become too old to enjoy it.
Just to fill in the gap between KL and the full moon party I basically flew to Phuket where I met my Dad and spent a couple of days relaxing. I also managed to get a few dives in which I was pleased about.
That just about brings me up to speed with the present. Now in Bangkok where I plan to spend the next few days seeing the sights I missed on my last visit and doing some shopping etc.
That means this is pretty much the end of my journey but I will publish one more blog I hope just to summarise the whole trip.
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