Cocktails and Dancing

Posted by Chris

This day was spent as a relax and AFD (Alcohol Free Day) day due to the night being the world (in)famous, full moon party. We had breckie at the hotel and Danae and I went off to see the Ko Pha-Ngan waterfalls. Ryan and Heidi would instead relax by the pool and chat with the other travellers (obnoxious tourists perhaps). The waterfalls were very sad looking with barely any water, but at least there was a nice lookout to make the journey worthwhile. In any case it was good to get back out on the open road with the wind in our hair as we cruised along on the chopper. (Danae failed to mention that we rented a moped yesterday for 3 days. Don’t worry we are ok and the bike has been returned without incident.)

Lunch was again at the hotel restaurant and unlike other hotel places the food is pretty good and not overpriced. Of course it is a bit of stretch to say this place is a hotel as it is only about 20 separate bungalows, on a Thailand beach, in the middle of nowhere (It doesn’t even have TV. They do have a mini-bar and aircon luckily). Yet another cocktail for the girls and a Chang each for us boys and we were primed for an afternoon nap.

Dusk was falling and a storm was rolling in quickly, we were back in the hotel restaurant for happy hour cocktails. I am glad we are not keeping count of the cocktails consumed as it would be quite a number by now. The storm passed over as quickly as it came, bearing no rain – lucky, it has been such a nice day today it would suck if it rained on the second most important night of the holiday (engagement night being most important of course).

We prettied ourselves and left the hotel, walking to the main road. Sawngthaew after sawngthaew passed us, completely laden with revelers, probably about twelve in the tray and four hanging on to the back. Finally one came past that had just enough room for us, provided Ryan and I could stand up and hang on the back. It was a beautiful and impressive sight to look down upon a full moon lit, Hat Rin town, over the top of a massively unsafe, leaning and completely overladen sawngthaew. I love that feeling of absolute epic-ness when you are arriving at a huge event and realise you are in for something special.

The town was electric and there were young people everywhere, all hailing from different countries around the world. We had dinner at a nice place and we got a great seat upstairs so we could watch the goings-on. After dinner and cocktails we headed down to the beach where the real action was.

The full moon party was epic. The biggest dance party I have ever been to and all for the low cover charge of zero baht. Trance and commercial House music was pumping from enormous speaker stacks facing the beach from the bars all along the two kilometre beach. One of the bars was drawing so much current that it blew the power to a whole block. We saw a dodgy technician up a power line with a new coil of wire and a flashlight before the power was restored.

We were entertained along the beach by fire shows (even fire-stick limbo!), and fireworks, some of which were set off about 10 metres from us – scaring the crap out of my fiancé. A few times we were offered drugs from dodgy Thai’s, who quite possibly were undercover cops. Of course we declined their offers! Instead we had a lot of buckets (for sale absolutely everywhere) mostly vodka, lemonade and red bull but we also had the quintessential Mekong Whisky buckets. It’s a shame we have such strict ‘responsible service of alcohol’ laws in Australia because these events are so fun. Some people just have to ruin it for everyone I suppose. I blame our parents.

We left about 2am, pausing for some spring rolls and Thai sausage on a stick, before catching another sawngthaew home. Back at the bungalow we had to drink the mini-bar of all its beers to combat the obscene intake of red bulls, and allow us to get to sleep.