Koh Phangan; A Tale of Moons, of theft and tattoos, of drinking from shoes, of Germans and of FUN!

16th November - 22nd November

Welcome to Koh Phangan, the island of light and sun, the island of darkness. If you've never heard of it, this is where the monthly Full Moon party occurs in Thailand. And if you've never heard of that, well neither had I until a few months ago. Basically, it's a huge piss-up/rave on a beach in Thailand. It's pretty decent.

It started in and around 1985 when the first party was improvised for a group of tourists in the area. The full moon tends to be a time of celebration in Buddhist culture anyway, and any number of actual religious festivals occur around the same time as the various full moon parties. Actually, if you remember, there was one such festival occuring in Laos the night we were in Pak Beng (see the slow boat blog).

Anyway, from the first party of about 30 people this has grown into a massive party, attracting as many as thirty to fourty thousand in the high season. The music is mostly party stuff, R&B, techno, dance and hip-hop, which is not my favourite, but sometimes you just have to drink the lemonade when life gives you lemons, right? Or maybe you could sell the lemons and buy an apple, I don't know. Philosophy was not what I came here to do.

But my time on Koh Phangan doesn't start here, it starts at 9 in the morning on Koh Samui with a Swiss guy who was catching the same ferry. He's a journalist. I forget his name. And I never saw him again, so I have no idea why I'm even bringing him up.

So it really starts with jumping in the back of a tuk-truck (my name for the converted pick-up trucks that serve as taxis here) on Haad Rin pier, having randomly chosen a beach to look for somewhere to stay from the guide book. I picked Baan Kai because it's not that far from Haad Rin, where the Full Moon party takes place, and it's not too far from Thongsala, the main town on the island.

"Take me here," I said, and there he took me. I got off at a place called Munchies, which was nice and ended up being my base for the week. It's run by Andy from Newcastle, though it's owned by his girlfriend Kay and her family. It's been around about 30 years, but it recently got done up and rebranded and all that. It's all bamboo huts and bamboo everything else, though the bed and shower were nicer than a lot of the places I've stayed recently.

To the right, my home for a few days. Or perhaps my house. If home is where the heart is, then it doesn't do to call any of these places home, no matter how attached I get.

Andy's dad was around that day and night, and although I forget his name he was, and remains, a lovely man, a very English sort of guy, not from a rich background, worked on oil rigs all his life, but decent like. You know the sort of person I mean, even if you don't think you do. Think of one of your friends parents, whose door you could turn up at in the middle of the night, when the friend wasn't home, and they'd still bring you in and give you a cup of tea and a bed. Think of Martin Sheen in the Departed in that scene where he brings Dicaprio in for some food, he was like that.

Didn't do much that day, just sat around in the sun and read Stephen King's It, which I have have read before and which I lent to Neena about a year ago and she still hasn't finished because she sucks - Nah, I'm kidding, it stands at 1378 pages and takes some bloody going. But it really is one of his best books. It concerns seven children in the summer of 1958, and their adult selves in 1985 and charts the jounrey from child into adult, and the loss of something in between, and the struggle to recapture the power of childhood, the innocence and the imagination that gets lost between youth and adulthood. Also, it concerns their struggle to defeat an ageless monster in the form of a clown praying on the children of Derry, Maine, murdering dozens over months every 27 years. It's a book about magic, and about growing up and if you can stand the work of reading the whole thing, it's a fabulous read that will make you remember some of the best things about being a kid, and some of the things that you really have to hold on to as you get older, like the friends you had back then.

Had a few pints with Andy and his dad and two Mexican guys that night, but when I went to bed I hit that wall I mentioned before, the one that fucked me completely, and the next day was spent in an exhausted and painful stupor, and some of the next day too. Nothing much to report here so maybe it's time for some photos of where I am? Yes, I think so . . .

Jealous??

In the distance of that last one you might actually be able to make up Koh Samui under a bank of clouds.

It was such a gorgeous place. If you look over to the right of Samui you can see the islands where The Beach was written. It was filmed on Koh Pi Pi, but that's where the book was born (and yes, books are born).

So, eventually I got better. Some of my friends from before had turned up on the island in the mean time so I went out one night to meet them. These were the two Aussie girls, Cork and Bekaa, who you may remember from various Laos postings. The Germans had also arrived, but only just and weren't up to heading from Thongsala to Haad Rin that night! Pity though!

Anyway, headed out to Coral Bungalows in Haad Rin for a pool party, but I was a careful bunny that night. There are stories you hear, about people getting robbed and mugged and stuff, and while this is fairly rare, it still makes sense for those travelling alone to travel light. And this was a good idea since it seemed for me a bad moon was rising in the night. Actually, to be fair, Andy did warn me that Coral was a shithole and I'd be better off going somewhere else.

Anyway, the night was good fun, although I will say one thing - pool parties clearly attract more guys than girls and early in the night it was fine, but the later it got and the more drunk idiots were in the pool flexing their muscles and almost literally fighting over the girls, and pawing them, the more annoying it got. I wouldn't be in a rush to run back there and I sure as hell wouldn't advise you bring any girls there, because you may end up wanting to punch some tool in the face. That said, there was a fair few of us so we were okay.

Also worth mentioning, I met a girl from Limerick who spent last year teaching in Firhouse Community College, coz you know, the Shamrock effect, coz it wouldn't do to meet people who were completely foreign or anything! Nah, there were New Zealanders and English and South Afrikanners too, but that one deserves the most mention.

Anyway, bout three I decided to jump ship and head on home. There was already a fair crowd getting into the taxi, so I had to sit in the front - my first mistake involves not getting out and sitting in the back as soon as a spot opened up. Anyway, everyone else got out first, which I assume now was design, and then as we were heading back to Munchies, the dude reaches down near my leg and comes up with is little bag, which appears to be weed.

At first I think he wants to sell it to me, but I have no interest - believe it or not. If I wanted weed, I'd by in the safe confines of the hostel, where Ton, the Thai barman has plenty and isn't adverse to passing around a few joints at night. So really, I don't want this guy's weed, and I tell him so.

Except he isn't trying to sell it to me - or when I refuse he changes his tack a little. After a few minutes I realise, he's saying this weed is already mine - and that he's going to drop me outside a police station unless I pay him two thousand baht. Which I don't actually have.

And he's not impressed. Neither is his friend on the other side of the car, who's presence means I can't just get out. Shit.

So I tell him, fuck it, drop me at the fucking police station, I'll take my fucking chances and we'll see which of us ends up in the prison cell. At the time I didn't think I had a snowball's chance in Mount Doom, but I didn't really see as I had much choice. I haven't got the money and there's a chance, minor as it is, that I can talk to a cop, unless the cop is in on it. Which is highly likely sometimes. There's also the chance I could get Kay or her dad (a bit of a local legend apparently) to do me a solid, maybe.

But we never really got that far. Instead, his friend just kinda pinned me and he checked through my pockets. Not that I struggled. Thai guys are tough, and most of them spend at least some time as kids in a Muai Thai gym, plus there's every chance they'll just stab you.

So I let him rifle though my pockets and take my money, all 400 baht of it. Which is both very little and a fair bit. It's only something like 8 or 9 euro but at the same time, that goes a lot further over here. It's at least 7 drinks, maybe two nights drinking or three meals, so in my mind at home it'd be worth about 30 or 40 quid depending on if you were in Dublin or somewhere else. You know?

Plus they didn't even drop me at Munchies, which is probably clever of them because the security guard there probably would have got them arrested instead. Which would have been awesome. However, if they keep pulling that shit they're probably going to get themselves into fucking trouble. Turns out, they probably aren't Thai, but Burmese. A lot of them come over for Full Moon week and try to rip off tourists. The local guys aren't so interested because they make a hell of a lot off tourists anyway, and the standard of living on the island is pretty good. That's not to say that they never rob anyone, or get them into trouble, but it's a lot less likely. And if they are caught, the local guys, their peers tend to take a very dim view of them doing anything to endanger the one source of income on the island - tourism. So basically, it probably wasn't Thai people, which actually makes me feel a bit better, because I've come to quite like the Thailand people. They've a fantastic sense of humour, and are generally lovely people, though more so up north than in the south. Moral of the story, eh . . . well basically it's don't carry much around, stay in groups as much as possible and let the dudes rob you, coz I heard about a guy on Full Moon who tried to fight back and ended up cut up, lying a puddle of blood until someone found him in a gutter and got him some help.

Anyway, walked back to Munchies and when I arrived in, there were still a few lads up and about. Though Andy was fast asleep in the hammock behind the bar.

This is probably a good time to start introducing people, all of whom arrived some time after me, but they were all good folk, and helped make Koh Phangan a great week.

First of all there's the Australians, Karl Woodberry - known as Woody or Berry - who's a comedian in Australia. Then there's Simon Wright who is a musician with a band and everything. We'll get to that though. His girlfriend, Hannah and her friend Kiah. These guys were awesome, they're friends of Andy's/Andy's friends and Simon and Hannah had been out before.

They were actually here for a holiday but also to put on a comedy/drinking games night on the 20th, the night before Full Moon.

Then there were the Scots; the two Daves, Bean, Finny (or Vinny?) and Baz. Sometimes you worry when you see a group of lads from Ireland, England, Wales or Scotland arriving somewhere (though, you worry much more and are generally proved much more correct if it's a group of lads from the States or Australia) because it can go either way, but this time it was definitely cool. These lads were awesome.

Also around were a bunch of other English guys, a mixed gender group of English, Josh from England, and long haired English guy, two Swedish girls, A Dutch girl and her French friend, a Canadian girl and her friend who I never met and may not have actually existed. Seriously.

All and all, it was a good group to have around.

Anyway, Dave and Dave were up, drinking at the bar, so I was telling them about getting robbed. Not-shaved head Dave (actually I'll go with Dave Stewart since that's both his name and easier) bought me a pint, which at the time I took, but I got him back the next day. We ended up sitting up awhile chatting and then I went to bed (having already taken the time to bitch on Facebook).

So let's move on to the day of the drinking competition. I was kinda bored and restless and had been talking about tattoos with Andy for about an hour, so eventually I said, you know what, fuck it, let's do this shit! So what did I do?

I got in a goddamn taxi, went out to 3 Tattoo as recommended by both Andy and Ton and I got fucking inked!

A little about this process - bamboo tattooing is expensive by Thai standards, because it's harder and also traditional and takes a long time to build up the skills involved. What I got was a fairly sizeable tattoo aswell. But it was well worth it. If you've got a tattoo and want to know what it's like, well the needle prick is a bit sharper than the machine, but it's also lighter in that its not so fast and heavy as the machine needle beats down quite fast. So went in and two hours later, out I come with a new tattoo. It reads,

Son of Man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images

This is a line from a TS Elliot poem, The Waste Land, that I have been in love with since my first year in college. Conrad Brunstrom (also my supervisor for my thesis) read a bit of it for us in a lecture on poetry and I went out and bought it that day and read it twice that night. I've probably read it a hundred times since then. I've also written at least two essays in it and have included quotes from it, sometimes this quote, in many things I have written since then (in many ways this line inspired that story Confusion I wrote back in second year). It was written in 1922 and mostly concerns itself with the fear that came after the devastation and social upheaval of World War I, and the realisation that earth might not be such an ordered safe place after all, that terrible, awful things happen in the world and that God might actually not be actively out there, making the world a better place. Fundamentally, it is about the end of the world as it was, and the fear of what it might become. This particular line is about the impossibilty of knowing everything, or of knowing anything for certain, that things can happen that we might not have expected, and that we should never presume to have all the answers.   

Back at the hostel and it was time to prepare for the drinking night!

There weren't loads of us, but there were enough. The Germans were supposed to come, but they couldn't in the end, but that's okay, I don't hate them - or do I??? Nah, it just meant I had to find another team. So me and Dave Stewart and Josh were one team.

Woody, a comedian back in Oz, was the MC for the night. And he is actually pretty funny. As with most good comedians, his job was to make fun of us for the night.

Round 1 was clearly our best. It was based on that shit American frat party game, beer pong. But with a twist. Two players from each team sit on the floor, one a distance away and the other with four cups of alcohol in front of him. Each cup has a number of points associated with it. In a minute, the further player throws ping pong balls and tries to get them in the cup, if he misses the other player catches the ball and throws it back. If he gets it in, the other player drinks the cup.

We went last and were aware that we didn't need to do that well to win. In fact, we did do well. Dave threw and I drank. Getting three cups, including the fabled fifty pointer, we scored 90 out of a hundred points! Off to a good start!

Round 2 was golf, by which I mean kids golf. And it didn't really involve any drinking. You just had to hit a ball into a little plastic thing with four holes, each with different points. Josh took his turn here, but Josh can actually play golf, so that's probably why we didn't get a single point.

We took a drinking break here, which means we drank just coz, rather than because we had to. Then it was back for Round 3, which involved the beach and broomsticks.

Three people from each team (the whole team in our case) stood out on the beach. You drank a full beer ran a distance to a broom, put your head against the top and spun around ten times before running back and tagging your next team mate who does the same thing. So I down my beer, ran to the broom, spun round and round and then ran straight back . . . except I was dizzy, so I actually ran to the left and really I more fell until I went head first into a girl on the other team and sent her fucking flying across the beach because I'm not light. At which point, rather than be a gentleman and help her up I ran fucking straight for the rest of team to bring us in second.

Later, I did apologise somewhat.

Round 4 was air guitar, but I got shitty Sweet Child of Mine, which doesn't start as rocking as you'd think. The last team got fucking All Along the Watchtower, which I could totally have done something better with, but seeing as I have long hair, and can swing it around, I did manage a repectable 7 points.

Round 5 was the sex round.

We had to invent a new sex position and demonstrate it. And you may remember that there are three guys on our team - akward! So we had to borrow a girl, who was a pretty good sport, even when Dave couldn't hold his weight and fell on her. That pretty much killed us though. Nil point!

I said, "We'll do her again!

Woody said, "I'll fucking bet you would!"

Classic Woody!

I forget what Round 6 was. I think it involved drinking.

Round 7 was the decider. This was the Shoey Round. You drink from an old shoe. To make it worse, not one of our shoes, but a random hostel shoe. Yes, awesome. Who had the balls to drink from this chalice? Who do you think? Shane! I've actually done this before at another games night. Michelle or Sinead might remember but not too many others.

We needed points badly, so I drank two whole beers from that shoe and it wasn't all that pleasant. And then some bitch drank upside down from the rafters in a skimpy top and stole my points even though she spilled most of it on the floor. Skimpy top trumps beard though, that's pretty much a Law of the Universe.

So we didn't win. We had fun, and we stayed up drinking anyways so really, who cares. We did finish up bout three though, because Full Moon was the next day and there really wasn't any point in being too wrecked for that.

Actually at this point I had to leave Munchies, because it was booked up for Full Moon, but I knew that was gonna happen and I'd already booked in next door. In actual fact, my new room was closer to the Munchies bar than the old room. Funnily enough, and I take this as a personal compliment, Andy told me not to bother paying my bar tab until I was leaving the island, that he'd keep it open for me. That's something considering he didn't have my passport details or my credit card, but I suppose just as I've learned to make calls about hostels and how good they are from a glance around, hostel managers must get plenty good at calling whether or not guests are going to be shit are not too. As it went, I moved next door, came back every day and made sure to pay my tab and for my rooms my last afternoon. Because why wouldn't I?

Not much happened the next day other than my moving, just the gear up for the night. I had a beer with the Scots and then jumped a taxi out to Haad Rin where I was meeting the Germans, Josefin, Anna and Lisa, but when I got to the place they weren't actually there yet. However, the other people they were meeting copped that I must be the other guy so they were like, come join us, drink! So I drank!

Anway, this is our crew, once everyone had turned up. I'll try names, but I forget some. Back row - Australian guy, German guy, Lisa, Josefin, Sly, Me. Front Row - Canadian girl, Gabrielle, Anna, Casper.

This photo is interesting for another reason. The guy who took it has a brother, and his brother is Monty, of this place, in Dublin! You know the place? You've totally walked passed it a few times, I know I have! Small world huh?

So someone eventually brought out some body paint and we got to work on writing ridiculous stuff all over each other, coz you know, why not? This to the right is Sly's mustache! And left is all of us lads showing off our glowyness under a darklight! YAY!!!

Mine says, "Shane Shane but different!" which is a turn on the Thai and Laos phrase "Same Same But Different!" Literally everyone says it, but until Josefin no one thought to apply my name to it . . . it's coz she's such a comical genius. Speaking of Josefin, I wrote on her too. She wanted to be multi-lingual, so she had some German and some French already. Where's the Irish!? I wrote "Na bi ag caint!" And for some reason she was displeased to learn that the phrase she had plastered over her back effectively means, shut up! I got a slap for that one.

Then we went off in search of buckets and the beach, and along the way ran into Fran an Jo-Anne, though that was the last we saw of them. Finding people on that beach was not an option! I did run into Bekaa and Cork later on too, but randomly and by chance.

Anyway, here's us all at the big sign, where I'm sure everyone goes to take this exact picture, but still, tis awesome so fuck you! Or, possibly, I love you and you're cool? Better? Yeah, a bit better!

We got a bucket into us, which is basically a naggin of cheap whiskey, a can of coke and some ice. Sounds like a terrible plan right? Yes. Indeed it is.

Then there was some wandering and some getting up on a fairly unsafe wooden platform to dance. It was awful music, especially when someone played a terrible remix of Nirvana's Let Me Entertain You done all pop-like and shit. But we got through it. And had more buckets.

And later that night, as I watched the third naggin of the night going into the third bucket I realised, a) it was a good night and b) this was a terrible idea. And it was - by the next day. I was surprisingly undrunk at the time, though I did switch to water after that one!

What else can I say? Full Moon is a drunken romp of an experience, you can get very fucked up if you want. I was offered drugs several times that night, and I'm sure at least one was a cop. I'd actually love to know, coz it'd be a pretty handy skill to have, if I could actually spot an undercover cop! You know, for the life of crime I lead back home . . . Okay, so it'd be useless, but I'd still like to be able to do it.

We found one guy in a bad way, and I had to check on him and wake him up. He was passed out on the ground by one of the dancing platforms and was a definite target for some robbing, but he want off then and hope he went home but I honestly doubt it.

Some others found other people, later in the night. Some just passed out, some who'd been hit and some who'd been cut, most of them quite drunk. This is a reality of Full Moon, though it's easy enough to avoid, it's also probably pretty easy to stumble into.

If you ask me, tubing in Laos is way more fun. I've done a Full Moon, and I'm in no rush to go back, but I'd go tubing tomorrow!

Anyway, somewhere between 4 and 5 we left. I had no watch or nothing with which to tell the time, and three buckets so don't judge me. Me and the Germans all were going the same way so I shared with them. Actually, I could probably have stayed a little longer, but they were leaving and I wasn't going looking for anyone else so it seemed like a smart plan to leave with them. I'm glad I did. Got dropped off at my door, fell into bed, once I managed to get my key into the lock, drop it, find it and get it back into the lock that is. Woke up a few hours later to the sound of the Scots coming home, went out to chat to them and get some water and then went back to bed . . . God that cheap Thai whiskey is a pain! Eugh!

Not much to report from that day, other than being hungover and reading enough to finish It. Though that night Simon played a bit for us in the evening (actually he played nearly every night but this time I remembered to grab the camera) and I made these two videos just for you guys.

Simon Wright playing Van the Man! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gBvy2UYV58

And this one is especially for Sarah, especially since I asked him to play it, just so I could make this video, just so I could put it here. I know other people like the stupid song, but I really doubt any of you like it as much as she does. So, Lonsdale, this one is for you - in actuals! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PqQe9NuOgo

Though, the bit where he stops in the middle is probably not directly aimed at you . . . Don't take that the wrong way!

After that there were some tearful goodbyes, because I was leaving at 6 in the morning on a long, long trip to Bali.

Koh Phangan, you were great! Maybe see you again some time!

And guys back home, I'm another week closer to seeing your shining unbearded faces again! Unless you've grown a beard in the last while . . . Which would be fine.

Talk soon,
Shane.