On Koh Phangan, the party continues

‘When my brother turned the music on, everyone started walking over to the beach. People began dancing and singing,” recalled Soon Somwang, who was then 18 and working at a restaurant which had yet to be named on a starry, Full Moon night on Koh Phangan in 1986.

“It was small, only local people and guests — about 300 people. There was no body paint. There was no fire.”

Back then, Full Moon parties had already been around for three years, after Paradise Bungalows had inaugurated the event on Koh Phangan’s Haad Rin beach in 1983.

Strange conversations after consuming magic mushrooms grown in buffalo dung, guitar playing and clouds of marijuana smoke had yet to make there way over the hill to Haad Rin Nai beach, where Ms Soon and her family were continuing what had become a monthly occurrence on the island.

Ms Soon’s brother Wisaim and Mooney, a man from England he had met at the restaurant in 1984, had decided to host their own Full Moon party because business had been slow, she said.

The restaurant later became known as Black & White, a name reflective of the Englishman’s fondness for alcohol and his favourite whiskey, said Ms Soon’s daughter Peach Tanoi, who was three years old when her mother and her uncle hosted their first party.

“We called Mooney 'Moolay'. He was a good person,” Ms Tanoi said. “He really loved our family — my mama, papa, grandpa, grandma. We treated him like family, too.”

Mooney ended up staying with the Somwangs for free for 10 years before going back to England.

Tourism was starting to blossom, and there were only a few guesthouses on Haad Rin and Haad Rin Nai. Koh Phangan’s lush, green environment was barely touched by development. Fishing, coconuts and rubber trees were the livelihoods of the majority of locals.

“I was happy. The people who came to the party were buying beer and sandwiches from the restaurant. Everyone was having fun,” Ms Soon, who was born on Koh Phangan, said with a smile. “You could see the environment and people who came to the party were [responsible].”

Full Moon parties on Haad Rin Nai lasted until the early 1990s, when Wisaim passed away, leaving Paradise Bungalows as the soul provider of what Mel Larcombe called “a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”.

Ms Larcombe, who is from the UK, attended her first Full Moon party in 1993 as a “wide-eyed 21-year-old traveller”.

Everyone was wearing “hippie cotton clothing and barefooted — sub-hippie style”, she said. “There was paint, but it was very organic ... Everyone painted themselves at the bungalows before going out. Even back then, it wasn’t very cool.

“You could buy mushroom omelettes and tea in restaurants in town. Ganja was on the menu as ‘Special Fish’. The main drugs of choice were diet pills from the pharmacies — ‘blue and whites’ and ‘pink and whites’. There was hardly any alcohol at all.

“Many of us would party on a couple of lipos [caffeine energy drinks] and dance for six hours. It was a happy-go-lucky, enjoy-life-wide-awake-in-love-with-the-universe, go hard or go home, not face down in the sand.”

Ms Larcombe, a self-proclaimed Koh Phangan party girl at heart, stayed on the island for several months when she first arrived there in 1993.

“We all got to know each other. And even then, the parties around the Full Moon were better than the Full Moon [Party] itself — smaller and more intimate with 50 to 100 people.”

NOUGHTIES, BUT NICE

By the ’90s, she said music at Full Moon parties had moved on from “guitar and drums [to] sound systems and vinyl records”.

Now 42 and married, she and her husband stay on Haad Rin during the winter months every year and prefer to stay away from the “messy crowds” of the seaside rave, where everything from techno to trance and hip-hop is played down the beach’s mile-long stretch of clubs.

Instead, they spend most of their time in the island’s underground party scene, as it has the vibe she enjoys. However, they do make it to a few Full Moon Party sunrises every year.

Like Ms Larcombe, many people continue to go to Koh Phangan’s Full Moon parties because of the myth that they are a “partyer's paradise”.

But this myth doesn’t just apply to foreigners and is no longer spread solely by word of mouth.

Zhi Rin, a 37-year-old traveller from China, had been on Koh Tao for eight days. There, he was learning to scuba dive when a tourist, who was also learning the sport, told him about Koh Phangan’s most recent Full Moon Party on Wednesday.

After hearing about the party, Mr Rin came to Koh Phangan on Tuesday to see why it was so popular.

“I heard it’s one of three famous parties in the world, and I wanted to find out what it’s all about. I wanted to know why it’s so much fun, and maybe have some fun myself,” Mr Rin said.

Rhys Wordsworth, 31, and his girlfriend of four years, Natalie Woodley, 24, from Leeds in the UK, went to Koh Phangan for similar reasons.

“The [Full Moon Party] is well known in Europe,” Ms Woodley said. “It’s where Europeans go to party.”

She and Mr Wordsworth, who have been travelling for four months, had visited India, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and now Thailand, and had yet to do any partying, she said.

What reinforced their decision to attend the island’s Full Moon Party was social media, Mr Wordsworth said.

“You see the pictures on Facebook of people with neon paint on their faces. It plays with your imagination,” he said.

While social media is undoubtedly influencing the number of party-goers at each Full Moon Party, its location is also playing a role.

MAGIC MUSHROOMS

Only three hours from Surat Thani, Thai students also head to Koh Phangan every month, and Ai Chamnithurakan, 18, was one.

“The first time I went to a Full Moon Party, I was 16,” Ai told Spectrum, as eight of her friends stood behind her, with seemingly permanent smiles on their faces, looking eager to party.

She and her friends have been going to Full Moon parties once a year for the past three years.

“We come to have fun, to dance and for craziness. We also come to forget everything about studying,” she said, laughing.

This “craziness” Ai speaks of didn’t just happen. It’s been developing ever since the first Full Moon Party more than 30 years ago. Now things have evolved.

“Every month there is something new,” said one local, who works at her family’s guesthouse on Koh Phangan and asked to remain anonymous.

In her 28 years of living on the island, she says she has seen people climb everything from trees to power poles to the roofs of hotels and the railing on balconies.

“Last year, a party goer at the guesthouse across from ours was climbing on the railing outside his room and he fell onto a motorbike. He was just laying there,” she said.

“A couple of years ago, a guy who was staying at our guesthouse, ended up breaking into my grandma’s room. He told her, ‘get out, get out! You’re in my room.’ ”

The man’s room was actually across the road at another guesthouse.

“When they’re drunk, they walk around and steal anything that’s outside,” she said.

Her mother’s scooter, which was parked at the Thongsala pier market, and her shoes, which were on the mat outside her family’s guesthouse, are a few of the items that have been stolen from her family over the years.

But, she said, it’s not only alcohol that people consume.

“We have lots of buffalo here, so we have lots of mushrooms,” she said. “At first, local people would sell to each other. When the parties got bigger, people from [other parts of Thailand] started bringing mushrooms to sell.”

SECURITY CONCERNS

Now drugs come in a variety of types and forms, including mushroom shakes, marijuana joints, cocaine and MDMA. They can be bought under their formal names, as well as code names, not only at bars on Haad Rin, but those throughout the island, and at restaurants — even in taxis.

And it’s not only Thais doing the dealing. Foreigners, the resident says, have been drug dealers on Koh Phangan for a long time.

Whether the dealers are Thai or foreigners, she says they have contracts with the police.

“Police will go to the party and sell the ganja they find on tourists to the bar owners. They then put the ganja in cigarettes and re-sell it,” she said.

After the drug market became established, ladyboys came from neighbouring islands, hoping to prey on tourists too out of it to know their belongings were being stolen, she said. Then came foreign gangs doing the same, as well as breaking into people’s rooms and stealing anything worth money, she added.

It was these events that led to the creation of the Haad Rin Business Association five years ago, said Nepal-born Raju Bulami, one of the organisation’s members.

The organisation, which has 100 members who are Koh Phangan business owners — both locals and foreigners — as well as a nine-member directors’ committee, charges a 100-baht entry fee from nearly everyone who attends the Full Moon parties.

For those who come to the island on the day of the party, the fee is paid at one of the island’s two piers. For those already on the island, depending on the route taken to Haad Rin beach, some pay the fee at one of 12 police checkpoints across the island, while others do not.

At these checkpoints, as well as at the piers, which have body scanners, police search everyone to try to ensure no drugs or weapons are being brought onto the island.

“Ten years ago police couldn’t control everything,” said Mr Bulami, who has lived on Koh Phangan for 20 years and owns the Om Ganesh Indian Restaurant and Hostel.

“For example, at the New Year’s Eve Full Moon Party, there’s 40,000 to 50,000 people, and only 40 police here.”

In addition to petty crime, people fighting, people having sex on the beach and drugs were sold, he said. Ashes in the sand and bottles scattered everywhere were common sights.

“Everything is good now,” he said. The 100-baht entry fee goes towards cleaning Haad Rin beach and the roads on Koh Phangan.

It also pays the roughly 160 paramedics, officials and volunteer security on patrol on Full Moon night — hailing from Surat Thani and the surrounding islands and from ministries including the marine, immigration and tourism and the military.

Since the organisation was created, the money has also paid for the installation of lights throughout the island and 56 CCTV cameras.

COSTS INVOLVED

There is a catch, however.

While the 100-baht entrance fee pays for maintenance of the association’s two tractors that sweep the beach every morning, it does not pay for the 15 Myanmar men hired to clean it, as well as the island’s roads.

According to Mr Bulami, the men, who work from 8am to 5pm daily and on the morning after a Full Moon Party, are paid a monthly amount by the association — and not with the money acquired on Full Moon nights.

He says the money collected also “sponsors an annual police football tournament”. It has also created greater accessibility to security when party-goers are in need of help, as well as a fund used to help foreigners who have had all their belongings stolen at the party, he said.

On the night of, and day after, Full Moon parties, locals and those working on the island pitch in to keep it clean, but they do not receive any of the money made from the monthly event — something that is undoubtedly the backbone of business on Koh Phangan.

NO FOREIGNERS, NO MONEY

When Spectrum arrived on Koh Phangan on Monday, two days before the island’s Full Moon Party, locals and foreigners working there spoke of the impact the murder of two British tourists on Koh Tao last month continues to have on the island.

“Alcohol is selling 70% less than this same month last year,” said one vendor on Soi 7, after taking a shot of whiskey out of frustration at the lack of business.

A food vendor on the same soi said during the weeks before, and after, Full Moon parties, families would stay on the island for a few days. But not this year. She said this year is an anomaly, as during the low season families — especially Israelis — used to travel to Koh Phangan in large numbers. Not any more.

An employee at a guesthouse in Haad Rin Nai said the murders on Koh Tao have led to “the lowest number of tourists in 10 years”.

“If we have no foreigners, we have no business,” he said.

Despite the decrease in foreigners tourists, about 2pm on Full Moon day last Wednesday, different types of music started to blast out of speakers at shops, restaurants, stalls and guesthouses everywhere.

The families and friends working there began to set out alcohol in small buckets, an innovation of the past decade which sometimes involves mixing cheaper alcohol with more expensive drinks. Others set out freshly cooked food, fluorescent paint, clothing or accessories.

The music is to attract good business during the approaching party, and each shop, restaurant, guesthouse and stall on the island plays its own variety.

One store, where a group of family and friends were selling funky, fluorescent-coloured hats, was playing rock and roll as they welcomed party-goers with smiles, hoping they might wander over to buy one or two.

By 11pm, people from countries in almost every continent made their way down the many sois leading to Haad Rin beach, passing by Thais offering to paint fluorescent designs for 200-300 baht, and the many people selling buckets of alcohol.

One of these party people, a young Canadian, who was walking with his girlfriend, had the words “If found, please return to Canada” written on his back. He was hoping for a big night.

After joining the crowds at the party, it became clear it had evolved from a chilled out atmosphere in the ’80s to dancing to music, amid watching young Thai men play with fire. Others enjoyed fiery limbo dancing and skipping with ropes.

People in stupors were sliding down a giant plastic sheet or swimming after bottles that no matter how hard they tried to grab, floated away into the Gulf of Thailand.

It also reflected more of what Ms Larcombe described as “messy crowds.”

There was the odd fight and people having sex on the beach, while others bought bucket after bucket of alcohol, and balloon after balloon of laughing gas, a business venture that started in the past five years.

The party continues to be shaped by the main demographic of people attending it: the young generation, most of them backpackers.

“The people who come for the Full Moon Party are [mostly] no more than 25-years-old. [They] come for sex, drinking and drugs,” Mr Bulami, who was also a security guard at the party, told Spectrum. “They think they can do anything, but they don’t know anything. It’s like they think the island belongs to them.”

This attitude can be seen throughout the island.

About 3am, two Brits in their mid-twenties were walking toward Haad Rin beach when one noticed a chicken kebab stall run by a Myanmar woman and two others from her country.

“Can I try some of this,” he asked the woman in an arrogant manner.

“Yes,” she said.

He then took a large handful of the meat and asked, “can I take lots?”, leaving only enough for his friend who was encouraging him the entire time.

The two men then said khob khun krap and walked away without paying.

Thirty minutes later, at the same spot, two Myanmar men chased down a group of tourists who had eaten then run off without paying.

On both occasions, no police or security of any kind were to be seen. It appeared as though the police would rather see the foreigners leave happy and return again in the future than reprimand them for their deplorable actions.

Later that night, however, police did catch several ladyboys who had stolen dozens of phones from people in drunken or drug-induced stupors.

THE CRAZIER THE BETTER

Party-goers should be responsible for their behaviour at the parties, many said. But at the same time, the parties themselves foster some bad behaviour.

“If there’s no party, there are no crazy people. If there are no crazy people, there’s no business,” said a doctor at a clinic near Haad Rin beach.

The doctor, who admitted to attending a few parties himself, said on the night of the party, his clinic received 30 to 40 patients, as opposed to one to seven on any other day.

He said everyone on the island steps up for the Full Moon Party, including doctors from the hospitals, who work at the many clinics that have four to five staff each.

“I wish it wasn’t as harmful as it is,” said the doctor, who has been working on the island for four years. But he added: “It’s good for business.”

Although the parties have changed dramatically in the past 30 years, the people attending them continue to leave feeling the same way.

“At first I was very afraid because I heard the party is not for children,” said Amit, an 11-year-old Israeli girl who attended the party with her family. But, she said: “I was surprised. I enjoyed it. I like dancing on the stage.”

Nick Wellner, a 23-year-old New Yorker who works in finance, said: “I’ve had a lot of fun in my life, and this is right up there.”

Mr Wellner, who had never been to a Full Moon Party before, added: “It doesn’t matter what country you come from. It doesn’t matter what your race is — if you’re black, white or Asian. Everyone is here to have a good time.”

Wednesday’s party on Koh Phangan drew less than 10,000 people. Despite being a small crowd, the community came alive, just like at every other Full Moon Party.

As seafood continues to be shipped to the island, fishing will become even less profitable for the locals.

An airport is also being built on the island and should be finished in two years.

Its construction has displaced coconut and rubber farmers.

In two years, it is likely that more of these people will have become a part of the island’s Full Moon Party, a community venture that continues evolving. n