The Full Moon festival was an intense night of partying on the beach. This party, supposedly the original, was located at Haad Rin on Koh Phangan. Koh Phangan is a 20 minute speedboat ride from Koh Samui. For us this party was quite intense, Crystal and I are not really hardcore partiers so for some people this may have been a little mild. But perhaps the thing that I loved the most about it is the near total disregard for personal safety. I think that there may be some sort of pyromaniac gene that some of these people here have. Check out the pictures below. (sorry it was very low light and I am not a particularly good photographer)
So these are some fire twirlers, also known as fire dancers or fire spinners, these guys are pretty cool, they are all amateur performers that come out just to show off their skills. These guys are cool but sort of unsafe since people will literally stand 3 feet away from them to watch them. Drunk people are not very concerned about their safety. And as you can see in one of the pictures there are crazy sparks and crap flying off of his fire stick (is that what it’s called?). On our trip to Koh Phi Phi crystal was sure that she almost died when an amateur fire dancer threw his burning stick/baton into the air and it almost hit us. This concern would be magnified here to say the least, but a lot of things that are dangerous are REALLY fun and this was definitely fun to watch.
For more pyrotechnics look at the pictures below!
Yes, you are correct, that is a burning jump rope that the owners of a bar encouraged drunk (and people who are intoxicated from other substances) to try to jump over as many times as they can. As you can imagine many people did not even make it once and walking around I saw quite a few people with bandages, probably from getting burned by this rope. Luckily Haad Rin has a large selection of 24 hour clinics where injured drunk people can get all kinds of service at any time. Many, many people were taking advantage of these services.
Did I mention the alcohol? check out these pictures
Along the alleys in the town and on the beach there were many places selling buckets of alcohol (they cost anywhere from 200 to 500 baht, $8 to $15 USD). As you can see in the first two pictures you buy the bucket and it comes with a smallish bottle of hard liquor and a soda of your choice. You then make your mixed drink IN the bucket and walk along the beach drinking out of said bucket.
By the time you reach the flaming jump rope you are ready to make your drunken skipping rope attempt and then afterwards you can drunkenly stagger to one of the many 24 hour clinics. There was actually one less then 50 feet from the flaming rope.
Once done at the clinic you will have started to sober up so you then have to get another bucket of alcohol and continue to stroll down the beach. Once you reach the flaming hoop you are drunk enough to make an attempt there, except this time your burns are covered by bandages, which are probably flammable. Enjoy! Fun to watch not to do or maybe your so drunk that it is fun? I dunno.
The other two pictures are our buckets. I got a long island iced tea and Crystal got a Pina Colada. We chose to enjoy our buckets at the bar overlooking the flaming jump rope so that I could take wonderful those pictures and share them with you.
There was also lots of food there, good food to!
This is a banana pancake from Mr. K Restaurant. It was REALLY good
This is a picture of the selection from one of the many food stalls in one of the alleys. The food looks really really good here too. You can get one plate for 50 Baht (~1.60 USD).
Overall I had lots of fun walking around the full moon festival. But I think the festival is more for single people who are on the hunt, if you know what I mean. I did see a few couples like Crystal and I roving around but the crowd seemed to be overwhelmingly made up of extremely drunk single guys and girls. It made people watching from the second floor of that bar very interesting.
When we left at 2:00am people were still streaming in to go to the party. From the schedules of the speedboats it seems like the party goes until 7AM. I know that I do not have the endurance to be drunk that long but for those that do, this is the party for you. You should probably go next year! They do have other Full Moon festivals throughout the year but I think this one is the biggest one since it is so close to New Years.
Oh I almost forgot to mention, there is a nominal entrance fee to get into the town from the speedboats. It is 100 baht (~3 USD). But included in the fee is a really nice re-useable wristband. In the US this band would probably cost about $3 dollars. So really you have to just buy the souvenir to get in.
Here are some random last pictures from the full moon festival!
Crystal says bye!
