Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Jungle Party vs Full Moon Party

After an epic first night I was ready to repeat for my second night. I don’t remember what I did during the day so I guess it wasn’t that memorable but it wasn’t long before we were making our way up to Kangaroo Bar once again. As the actual full moon party was the next night our local haunt was taken over by a large amount of nationalities leaving one table in the middle of the bar free. I was more interested in setting up against the balcony again and scanned for an opening.

Its funny you know how the paths you take, the choices to make lead you to a particular destination and it makes you realise if just one factor had varied everything would have gone a different way. The table I saw that looked most promising already had two guys sitting at it. But I’m Amanda and the simple fact of a table already being taken wouldn’t stop me. I walked over and asked them ever so politely if we could sit with them.

And little was I to know at the time the two guys would become our partners in crime for the next 24 hours. Alan from South Africa & Max from England proved themselves to be more than worthy of our time and we chilled for several hours drinking, smoking weed and just chatting. Two guys from Israel also shared a joint with us and we talked for a while but they soon disappeared the chilled atmosphere and funky beats we so loved to follow the path to a more mainstream party.

I was desperate to attend a bar I had heard good things about that was on a different beach so I eventually persuaded the others to give it a try. We stopped briefly for some food and then made our way down to the main beach on lookout for a taxi boat. We found one but the guys wanted 200 Baht and I refused to pay more than 150.  Frankly we were all to drunk and stoned that we were almost about to give up the party on principal, we brought a bucket and chilled by the water. The drivers wanted a full boat to maximise their money potential and since no one else seemed to want to catch it they strode over to us and offered us the deal firmly informing us that we didn’t tell anyone else we paid 150BAHT. We accepted and were on our way!!! The boat ride was absolutely epic we crashed through the waves on this tiny vessel becoming drenched in sea water I was absolutely smashed(drunk) at this point living life in a completely ad-hoc way, no fear, no regret only the moment I was living in stuck in my head. As the boat neared the beach it didn’t appear to be slowing down and I began freaking out a little. Pointing out to my group around me that we had better hold on we did and the boat smashed into the beach.

Crazy boat ride

We got out of the boat and were messing around like the drunks we were and all the party goers abandoned us leaving us with one guy who told us that we needed to follow this path to Eden. It was a dark beach surrounded by forest and hills so we graciously accepted his lead only to lose him as we stumbled up the stone stairs cut into the hillside. We made our way to lights and music to discover it was someone’s house & not the barbut they kindly pointed us in the right direction.

Stumbling upon Edens bar we were delighted to discover a havan of everything I love. A chilled out bar you could buy any drug under the sun from, with awesome beats and a crowd of people that appealed to my inner hippy. It was my paradise. Heather had nothing glowing under the black lights on her at all and became depressed she was not dressed correctly. Since I was happily black light appropriate in my shirts and shorts we swapped shirts and her drunken stoner grin emerged. Weed was purchased and frankly I barely remember my sister & sam moving from their little corner by the table a constant stream of joints pouring from their fingers. Well perhaps not their fingers since neither can roll to save their lives. The lovely Alan attempted to give them lessons at some point and all I did was move between the stoners and the dancefloor.


Chilling at Eden

Money was an issue since there was no atms and we had barely brought enough to get us home so the drinking abruptly stopped! I met an Austrian guy when he passed me his joint and we talked about a million random stoner things that I can’t even remember any more. As the music kept glitching the groups all moved to Guys Bar where our party soon died and the boys decided to go home. Heather and I were now buzzed on MDMA so opted to stay but maybe less than an hour later I collapsed and we made our way to the beach. We got lost and ran into two girls who had been taken to the wrong beach by the corrupt locals lucky for us since we were wandering around the forest and could have ended up anywhere. They showed us where the beach was to catch the boat back to Haad Rin but there was not enough people and we didn’t have 3000 baht to hire the whole boat. So we lay down on the beach sleeping somewhat waiting for a way home. Eventually a very energetic guy from Wales sat down next to me telling me his life story in about three seconds, I don’t think I’ve met many people who can talk that fast without breathing.  He talked some guy with a 4WD into taking us back to the beach and soon there was about six of us sitting in the open tray of this car flying through the Koh Phanagan jungle.

The sun was rising slowly, evil sun.
I was at the front and had a horribly clear view of what I was getting into. The road was dirt with the occasional muddy spot the track unlike anything I had ever seen before. Some of the paths were so steep I had to hold on for dear life in order not to fall out the bottom of the tray like that scene from Titanic where the ship is sinking and it teeters vertically on the water for several minutes. And the bloody driver tore through at impossible speeds beeping seconds before he went round a blind corner. I knew all he needed to do was slip on the mud and we would roll likely killing all six of us becoming yet another Thailand statistic.
We survived (if you didn’t realise) and as we rolled into town the two young German guys in the rear jumped out and ran away as fast as they could. The guy wanted us to pay their fares but I had no idea who they were and I needed sleep. Heather & I walked back to our hotel slowly. The daylight on our skins.

I should have searched for my earplugs and dropped some sleeping tablets because I was woken up by the music blaring outside my window at about 12pm. Meaning I had, maybe 3 hours sleep – if I was lucky. When I wake up I have a hard time falling back to sleep.
I was really really sick. I threw up all afternoon and dozed in and out in my bed until finally getting up about 7:30pm. We had plans to meet our buddies Max & Alan at a restaurant. It turned out Heather was just as bad as I was and we stumbled into reality feeling so sick. I have never had this before and could only assume I had been poisoned by whatever drugs I had taken the night before. I have been told MDMA can have those side affects but I have taken A LOT of MDMA in my life and not once have I spent the next 24 hours vomiting. Also Heather was along side me in the hangover so I have no idea what happened to us. We had eaten a very similar meal before the adventure but our symptoms only included vomiting and not the other end. So I ruled out food poisoning.

Anyway we were struggling to eat, vomiting minutes after devouring anything and ended up in Max & Alans room to get our glow paint on. Heather decided to wait it out in the room with Sam. and Alan, Max & I made our way to mellow mountain. I took a beer with me as I was attempting to get into party mode but it was a serious uphill climb my entire body protesting the affront. Max & Alan grabbed shakes and before long Max wandered off on whatever adventure the night brought him – I never did see him again. Alan stuck by my depressing side and I struck up a conversation with two young people from Leeds a girl and her boyfriend. They were tripping hard but the girl told me how refreshing it was to meet a real girl and not some bleached up bikini bimbo. 

Mellow Mountain Dance floor

As my Dj friend was coming on we manoeuvred downstairs to dance. 


Heather & Sam showed up but Heather was still passed out unable to get the strength together. Alan decided he needed to smoke and went to go back to his room but realised he would forever lose us the mission in his state to serious and returned to drag us from the music with him. We went back to his room and Sam had decided to buy out an entire street food stall. I was thinking my body was finally on the upwards stretch and decided to partake having not eaten for over 24 hours. Sadly the weed and the strangly delicious fatty pork was my downfall and my sickness overtook once again. I needed to sleep and they locked me  in Alans room for an hour coming to wake me back up and drag me out to the party.

After dragging me away Alan soon ditched us deciding we were bringing down his trip and poor Heather was stuck with two people not interested in partying at all. So we made our way to the mellow mountain took some mushroom shakes and watched the sun rise.

After walking back to our hotel room about 8am we were to experience the absolute chaos that lay before us. I looked at the ocean to a guy floating face down his friend repeatedly kicking him towards shore as he floated back & forth in the tide, maybe it was the mushrooms but it felt like several minutes passed before I eventually decided something was wrong and made my way over. But just as I took my steps the guy floating sat up laughing at his abusive friend.

Walking back to the hotel

On one stage hundreds of people still danced hard a topless girl screaming and grinding against a naked guy oblivious to everything around them. There were plenty of people sitting along the beach watching the ocean slide back and forth barely keeping their eyes open, rubbish was strewn everywhere I was thankful for my sandals protecting me from the glass.

And the party is still going

This kind of attitude towards complete chaos and destruction of such a beautiful place made me realise how little I enjoyed these kinds of people. I love to party, I love chaos but can’t it be intertwined with respecting the world around you. What is happening with this backpacker generation? I much preferred the drum & bass hippy beats and chilled out people of my jungle party the previous night than the 30,000 drunken revellers bopping out to club mixes before passing out in the piss filled ocean. 







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