thailand: part 3

april 20-23, 2005

Wednesday, April 20th Wednesday morning, I woke up super early and packed up all my things. Check out the mosquito netting that's over the bed so that you don't get picked clean to the bone while you're sleeping. Here's a pic of my little hut from the side. Sweet front porch, eh? After I was packed, I walked around taking some pictures of Charlie's Huts for posterity. The place was pretty amazing. And the beach? Ridiculous. After I was done taking pics, a few of the dogs from the pack of dogs that I'd met the night before showed up on the beach and started barking at me because they wanted to be played with. So I put my camera away and swam with the dogs for like an hour. Then I checked out and caught a bus to the ferry port on the other side of the island. My plan was to take a boat from Koh Samui out to the tiny island of Koh Tao and get my scuba certification. I'd gone diving a ton of times, but had never bothered to get a PADI card and I heard that Koh Tao was one of the prettiest (and cheapest) places to get it done. After a few days of diving there, I planned on doubling back to Koh Phangan and meeting up with Claire and friends for the infamous Full Moon Party at Haad Rin Beach. Check out the scenic ferry port! I got there just in time to catch the 10:30am ferry. Land ho! Right where you land on Koh Tao, all of the different scuba schools are set up and as each boat load comes in, they all try to get you to sign up with them. After some careful deliberation, I decided to go with Asia Divers (they offered complete open water diver certification course for only 6,000 Baht - about $160 USD!!! Asia Diver also had a nice hotel with A/C and because I was diving there, it only cost 500 baht a night). And for no reason in particular here's a dog checking out a HUGE COCK. After checking into my room and dropping off my stuff, I took a nap then headed down towards the beach and ate dinner with Devin and James, two guys who were also diving and staying at the Asia Divers resort. After dinner, Devin and James decided to head home (because you're not supposed to go out drinking the night before you dive) but I decided I wanted to check out a few bars. So I walked towards a bunch of fire twirlers on the beach and ended up at place called Dry Bar... ...where I met two Danish girls who were traveling together Sari and... ...Charlotte. They were there with their scuba instructor who's name I don't remember. We took turns building sand sculptures around people. We turned this lady into a mermaid. Then we buried Charlotte and Sari's diving instructor up to his neck... ...and the girls worked really hard to transform him into... ...a giant sand-penis! Complete with a set of balls in the back! Their instructor was so drunk that by the time they'd finished sculpting him in, he'd fallen asleep! We tried to wake him up, but he wasn't having it. So we left him in sand-cock slumber and headed back to the bar. I remember looking at my watch a little past 4am totally wasted and thinking "Oh no! I have to be in the diving pool in less than three and a half hours!" I left the bar without even saying goodbye to the girls (or to even check up on Sand-Penis!) and headed back to my room. Thursday, April 21st Somehow, I managed to make to the scuba pool on time the next morning. I had pool basics with Jeff and Devin from 7:30 to 11:30. After the class was over, I went back to my room to study for the written scuba test I had to take later that afternoon. Here's the view of the diving resort from my room's balcony. And here's the resort's diving pool. Later that night after I'd finished with my scuba training for the day, I was out on my balcony reading when I heard all sorts of cheering and screaming and crazy music coming from the woods across the street from the resort. I gathered my things and wandered over there and it turns out it was the island's main Muay Thai (kick boxing) stadium and it was fight night! I decided to walk over and check it out. On the walk over I also discovered... ...that Scorpions Restaurant & Bar was also across the street from my hotel. (Complete with logo rip-off of the German hair-metal band!) The crowd. I got there just in time to see the start of the second of three fights. Here are the two dudes about to square off. The fight was so so. This guy won. The final match of the night was a lady fight! It was this English girl... ...versus a local Thai girl! The white girl was bigger, but I had my money on the Thai girl. But as the fight got under way, it because pretty clear that just being Thai doesn't automatically make you a good kick boxer. Boo yah! How about a close-up? Check out the big red bump on the bridge of the Thai girl's nose. Ooof. The Thai girl hung in there for a few rounds, but got put down for good in a big way in the third round. Ouch! After the fight was over, everyone headed out to the parking lot to hop on their scooters and head down to the bars by the water. The chaos of a hundred or so scooters starting up at once was incredible. So loud! I ended up hitching a ride in the back on some random (nice) guy's pickup truck and ended up back at Dry Bar. It was much mellower this time and I was exhausted from diving and so little sleep. I had a few drinks and ended up bailing around 1:30am. Friday, April 22nd Friday morning I took some pictures of myself to see how my tan was progressing. Not bad! Not bad at all! I got picked up at 7:30 to head out to do two dives in the ocean. Here's Devin and my diving instructor Jeff. On the boat ride over to the first dive site, I realized that we were diving right off the shore of the two little islands I had seen on the travel poster back in Bangkok that made me want to come to Koh Tao in the first place! Remember this poster? Well here I am approaching it in real life! The poster was taken from the main island - I'm approaching it from the left side of how the picture in the poster was taken. Here's us taking a break before the second dive. (Both dives were at a depth of 12m, which is just about 40 feet). Here's me back at the dive shop near the ferry with Jeff getting my diver certification card. After dropping off my diving gear, I checked my email and Claire had written telling me that they'd arrived in Koh Phangan a day early and that I should hop on the next ferry to meet them so that we could all head out to the "warm up" party that happens the night before the actual Full Moon Party together. So I hopped the next ferry... ...and a few hours later I'd landed on the northern, center part of Koh Phangan at Ao Chaloklum Pier! From there I had a hellish, 90 minute songthaew ride (one of those crazy converted pickups where you sit on a bench in the back of the cab) to go all the way to Haadrin Beach, which is the south-eastern tip of the island. After getting off the songthaew (and after I was finished kissing the ground after having been successfully not-killed again!) I met up with Claire at a hostel on the west side of the island, Haad Rin Nai (Sunset Beach). After checking in and dropping off my bags, I hopped on the back of her scooter and she took me over to... ...Haad Rin Nok (Sunset Beach), a half-mile crescent of beach that would soon be filled with 10,000 people! After checking out the beach, we headed over to... ...The Vinyl Club to meet up with some of Claire's friend - and to pick up some flyers to hand out and promote the night's "Full Moon Party Warm-up Party" that Claire's friends had planned. (Claire's been living in Thailand since she was little and has been involved with promoting the Full Moon Party for years). After we'd handed out all the fliers, I left Claire with her friends and headed back to Sandy Bungalow to relax, read and take a nappity-nap! A little after midnight, I got up, showered and then walked back over to the east side of the island to check out the party. Stopping on the way to purchase a bag of weird, spicy pork balls served in a plastic bag. (Complete with little pokey stick to eat them with!) By the time I got to the beach, the party was already in pretty good form. This is one half of the 25' tall wall of speakers that's out side of the Vinyl Club. The beach has like 15 different bars and clubs down it - and each one has a similar "wall of speakers" out front pointed out towards the water. Because this was only a "warm up" party - the music was playing at a reasonable level and only a few of the 15 or so bars were open. All of them had blankets and tables set up outside on the beach so that people could lay around and chat. People on the dance floor inside of one of the clubs. Besides all of the dancing and chilling, the only other thing that was going on was... Fire twirling. Lots of it. For seriously, if watching people twirling fire is your thing... ...then Thailand.... ...is... ...the place.... ...for... ....you! Most of fire twirling guys were really, really good. They had choreographed routines and everything. Woooooo! A few Dutch ladies that I met. I do not remember any of their names! While I was in one of the bars getting a drink... ...I ran into Sam who was one of the first people I'd met back at the hostel I was staying at in Bangkok. We hit the beach and caught each other up on where we'd traveled and the things we'd done. And around 4am, just before I was about to head home... ...I ran into Charlotte - who I hadn't seen since my first night in Koh Tao when we turned her scuba instructor into a giant sand-penis! Saturday, April 23rd This pic here pretty much sums up how I spent my Saturday. Aw yeah, motherfucking HAMMOCK! Oh wait, that's not entirely true - I didn't spend my entire Saturday reading in a hammock on the beach...there was at least a little bit of... ...this to break up my day. Oh, hello there, tasty Pad Thai (which, much to my server's surprise I ordered in Thai - thanks to my trusty Thai phrase book). Later that afternoon while swimming, I met this girl Carla who was staying at the hostel next to mine. We shot the shit and then ended up getting dinner and watching Pulp Fiction (all the resorts in Thailand pretty much play 2 or 3 American movies every night). Before settling in for a disco nap, I walked over to Sunrise Beach to say hi to Claire and her friends who were setting up for the party. Check out the empty beach with the full moon rising in the background! Here's Claire and her friend Claudio setting up at the Vinyl Club. I stuck around for a while and helped them, and then headed back to my hostel to bum around, take a night swim and a nap. When I awoke from my nap a little before midnight, the power was out and a lot of people were talking about how there was a terrorist group threatening to set off bombs at the Full Moon party. I decided to stay at the hostel until 2:30am and then headed to the party. (My reasoning for waiting until 2:30, then going? "If I were a terrorist, I would have definitely exploded the bombs by then." Hahaha. WTF?) So the party scene on Koh phangan is sort of a time warp back to the early 90s rave scene . All of the music Drum & Bass or techno, and everyone that attends is looking to take ecstasy and dance all night (I swear I'm not making this up). I'd say that probably like 85% of the people there were rolling. Instead of twirling glow sticks while dancing, everyone one there... ...(you guessed it!!!) twirls FIRE! This night had an ever more advanced degree of fire twirling. If you wanted to take a turn showing off, you had to enter the RING OF FIRE! Fuck yeah! Ring of Fire! Fire twirling spectators. Wooo. What's that you say? You can't twirl fire but you want to rave REAL HARD? Don't worry... ...there are plenty of women selling assorted glow sticks and necklaces that you can wear and twirl so that you won't feel left out. And if you're real HARD CORE, you can always get a black light tribal rave tattoo painted on your body. So now I should probably talk about the drink known only as "THE BUCKET." This is pretty much the only thing that people drink at party spots in Thailand. They take a plastic beach pail with a little ice in it, then dump in two bottles of Red Bull (and keep in mind, this is the original Thai version of Red Bull that feels like it actually has amphetamines in it), a can of Coke, and an entire pint of Thai whiskey. They they throw in 7 or 8 straws in the hopes that you'll share it with strangers and not die drinking the entire thing by yourself. Any where you go on the beach, someone has a bucket and they're only too happy to share it with you. Cost per bucket? $3. Ooof. Almost as famous as THE BUCKETS, are the huge ass fire-signs that they light up on the beach. Check out the size of this bad boy. The thing burned for HOURS. So anyone that knows me knows that the whole "take ecstasy and rave until dawn" scene's not really my thing. It was only 5am or so and I was already pretty bored. So I decided to just walk around and take pics of people... ...like this really nice girl. And then I walked around and took pics of people... ...RAVING SO HARD! At this point in the night, the dancing had moved out of the clubs and spilled out onto the beach. Full moon in the sky. Pretty much everyone there was shit-hammered out of their minds and dancing up a storm. Hahah. I wandered all the way to the edge of the beach and there was a tiny restaurant that was up on a hill that had a balcony that overlooked the whole scene. I went up there, had a few drinks, met a few people and then sat on the balcony people-watching. Around six in the morning or so, there were signs that the party was starting to wind down. For example, instead of dancing in the water, quite a few people were starting to... ...puke in the water. And then I noticed that people were dropping like flies! It was awesome! One minute someone would be drinking their bucket and jumping up and down and dancing, and then they sit down to eat their bag of Lays chips and the next thing you know, they'd be out cold. Rather than heading home early, I decided to stick around and document the carnage. Haha. This guy is one of my favorites. I love how he carefully placed his flip flops and his bucket before going nighty-night. (What's with the broom, though?) Pwn3d! Uh-oh! Somebody's missing a shoe! Hahaha. Hahaha. Seriously, how weird are these pics? It looks like a fucking neutron bomb went off on the beach or something, right? I don't know if you can tell from this pic, but this dude was passed out with his eyes OPEN. I was worried that he might be dead and checked to make sure he was still breathing (and that his sure his heart hadn't exploded from too much Red Bull). While this is my favorite photo of this guy. I'm also posting a second photo of him... ...so you can better see that he's pissed his pants. Fwiends Hahah. This guy has his tongue hanging out. Oof. "Please don't take a picture of my friend! He's passed out!" Are you starting to get an idea of how widespread this was? And keep in mind, I wasn't even shooting everyone that was passed out! I probably only took pics of every 1 in every 20 or so! More. More. Yes, more. I like how this group built themselves a little bottle-ring before collectively passing out. Wood pillow. Ouch. I like how this guy's passed out and clutching his disposable camera. Yes, still more. Bonus points for passing out with an open mouth AND gimp-arm. All the old dudes were passed out. Hell, even the... ...yeah, ok. You get the point. (PS - Check out how the dog painted just the tip of his tail orange so that he wouldn't feel left out while RAVING! Hahaha). I'm not even sure how late it was, but I know that the music was still pumping and I was one of the last people standing! It was starting to get light out so I decided to walk home via the beach. I started on the east side of the island (Haad Rin Nok), and walked the beach all the way around the southern tip of the island back to where I was staying. The sun started to come up as I was walking. I snapped this pic of a bunch of Thai kids with their mom swimming at the butt-crack of dawn. More sunrise pics. A boat anchored in the shallows. Home sweet (temporary) home. Right before nodding off to sleep, I made up my mind to head into town first thing in the morning and leave for somewhere new!   (added on 11.30.2006)

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