“The Full Moon Party is held on Haad Rin’s eastern beach and for those who haven’t been….the party is INSANE! During peak season up to 30,000 revelers descend on Koh Phangan from throughout Asia and further afield to party hard from dusk ‘till dawn in front of massive state of the art sound systems and light shows. Walking from one end of the beach to the other expect a blur of glow sticks and fluorescent body paint with people gyrating to every type of music imaginable”!
That seems to pretty much sum up nicely the bare bones of a typical monthly full moon party scene!
The July party fell on Sunday 17th and it was no coincident that we landed in Koh Phangan just in time for it, believe me! The full moon party was something which I’d heard a lot about was also an item on my bucket list that needed to be ticked off!
We got a long tail boat from our resort in Thong Nai Pan and along with about fifteen other people we travelled south along the coastline in pitch darkness for forty minutes until we reach Haad Rin. This was a very exciting while all the time dangerous boat trip. The full Moon was coming into view as we reached Haad Rin and was a gorgeous blood red in colour and by the time we got off the boat, it was in full sight.
Pretty happy with this shot taken using the G12 and tripod!
The scene as we landed on the beach was a pure adrenaline rush, with ropes of fire, fireworks, aluminous hats/shirts/people, and banging dance tunes taking a firm hold of all our senses, with the commonest of senses left behind on the boat!
The beach was about a mile in length and had the full spectrum of colourful lights. I took a good few videos which I compiled into a video clip which is at the end of this entry.
The order of events is pretty much standard for everyone that arrives. You get painted up in UV paint if you haven’t already, pick up a few fluorescent items of clothing, then go get a bucket of either a shoulder of whiskey, vodka or bacardi complete with coke and red bull mixer, before banging out some dance grooves along with 30,000 fellow party goers.
We met an Irish couple the day of the full moon who were also staying in our resort and we ended up heading to the party with them. They’re a really cool couple and if ye read this Edwin and Faye, hope ye have a ball in Indonesia and keep in touch!
Speaking of those buckets of whiskey, your talking about a sand castle bucket full of drink and costing between seven and ten euros, which is so cheap when you consider the amount of booze you actually get. Really cheap and delish!!
I heard an amazing and scary stat(unofficial). Its that over 200 people die every year at the full moon parties on Koh Phangan! So going by that then an average of 16 people died the other night. I honestly can see how those fatalities occur but its a little freaky to imagine that out of an estimated 30,000, that 16 die each night at the full moon!
One fact happens for sure though on the night of the monthly party, and that’s that extra morgue is opened! This combined with the amount of mobile medical centres around Haad Rin proves just how crazy the place can get.
Our only criticism was the state of the beach. I mean you have literally thousands of fellas and girls walking into the sea and going to both number ones and number twos!
Its pretty bad when you see a group of three or four girls holding hands walking out so that the water comes up to their waist and them peeing in their pants!
There was this one girl when we were getting the boat off the island who was hunkering down in the water with her knickers down and making floaters for fun! No shame!
What’s actually worse is that you have loads of people swimming in the same spots a few seconds later. My shorts the next day smelled so bad that I was retching to get sick with the smell of shite and urine. And that was from just hopping in and out of the boat that the end of my shorts got a little wet in the water. Id say that beach is a massive toilet bowl and I can’t see how people could swim in it. Well at least if they are sober anyways!
In all fairness though, its a savage atmosphere and one that should be sampled at least once if you ever get the chance. Koh Phangan really is an island of diversity. Relaxing by day and getting bananas at night can become a very smooth transition!
And finally here’s a video to round the night up.
Ciao!!
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