Full Moon Madness for my 25th Birthday!!

Full Moon Party (def) 

   -noun
1. Crazy rave on the beach which occurs once a month during the full moon on the island of Ko Phangan, Thailand
2. An excuse to drink far too much in the form of beach buckets
3. Art show in the form of body paint, neon clothing, black lights, and fire
4. My 25th Birthday Party!!!

How to begin to describe the madness that is the Full Moon? Well for one, I have been hearing about this party since I went traveling to South America last year. It was legendary. Everywhere I went there, people were either coming from S.E. Asia to S. America and talking about it, or people had tickets over to Asia after S. America and it was on the top of their list of places to visit! I figured, I have to check this thing out in my lifetime. A party cannot be THAT amazing and not be seen in my lifetime. haha.

After 38 hrs of travel from Siem Reap on a combination of buses and ferries, I arrived to the island with the intention of meeting up with my first good friend of my trip--my Canadian friend, Giang (in my elephant pics).  That was the intention. I arrived to the beach bungalow she booked us into to discover she wasn't there yet, and that I was the ONLY person staying at this place. Not exactly the way I imagined started my trip to the island, esp. after I saw the room we'd be staying in, but I figured once Giang got there we could leave and we could figure out another place to stay. I showered, I ate, I lounged on a pretty unattractive beach for hours, and still no Giang. Now I was starting to get worried. I did NOT want to stay at this place but without Giang there, I couldn't leave bc I had no idea when she was showing up. There was no internet at this place, and it was a 15 min walk down a road without any lights. In the end, I ended up making the walk to try to find some other guys we had traveled with a while bc I knew what hostel they were staying in, but I was unsucessful in my attempt at finding them, got chased by some dogs, and ended up trying to get into bed at 9:30pm. I say try because there was a spider as big as my hand on the wall next to my bed, a lizard inside my toilet, and after getting over those 2 things, there was some sort of animal on the ceiling of my bungalow that started to make noises once the light went off. OMG. I spent the night sweating away under the covers praying that nothing would touch me or try to eat me or something. haha.

The next day, I made it to the internet to discover a msg from Giang saying she'd be arriving later that day. As soon as she got there, we booked it out of that bungalow (after some arguing with the owner) and we went to stay with a big group of friends she had made on the last island she had been on for 2 wks. They were all really great, but I was really hoping they would become friends of mine in 2 days so they could celebrate my bday with me, and I wouldn't have to feel lonely. haha. Spent the next couple of days getting amazing Thai massages for $8, and spent the nights just going out and getting warmed up for the actual Full Moon.  Two of my friends from tubing in Laos were also on the island so it was so great to hang out with them and see them!

The night before full moon was my actual birthday at midnight and it was great! The people I was with bought me a rotee (the GREATEST dessert ever!) with banana, nutella, and peanut butter. Then they surprised me with a cake from 7-11 when we stopped off for some snacks for them.  And THEN they bought me a sandwich from a chicken stand on the street called Mr. K's Chicken. OMG SO GOOD! haha. I ate all that in about 30 min though, so I had to be careful after that.

The beach party that night was just a warm up to the real thing though. On the actual night, we all got dressed in our new neon clothes and started the night off with a body painting session.  We finally headed down the beach around midnight and it was crazy!! During the low season (which is now) there are about 10,000 on the beach for this party! I can't imagine what this would be like during the high season. You pretty much just walk the entire length of the beach and go from bar to bar and there are so many DJs and different kinds of music playing at each bar. It's insane. Not to mention the fire limbo, the fire jumproping, and the fire  slide. I wasn't stupid enough to attempt any of those (the slide actually caught fire and got shut down before anyone did do it), but I heard so many horror stories the next day of unsuccessful attempts at each and the burns that came with them. Yikes. I actually ended up getting lost with one of the guys in my group because the crowd was so big. We spent a good part of the night just wandering down the beach seeing if we could find anyone and checking out all the bars. I ended up seeing all of the people I had planned to meet up with at this party from my travels without even trying! It was so lucky! I still can't believe that I managed to see these people in a crowd of 10,000. It was birthday luck I think. :)

Ended up finding everyone at our planned meeting spot for the sunrise at 6:30am. The beach was still jam packed at that hour, and people were still being ridiculous. I saw one guy spill his entire bucket over another guy's head from the top of a stool.  The guy kicked the stool in retaliation and the guy on top went flying. It was pretty funny, esp. at 7am. Had some breakfast afterward with the people who managed to stay out all night, and attempted to go to bed after that, but was the ONLY person basically awake on the entire island with the exception of the locals. All I could do was lay in the bed and pray that the people I was with would wake up because I was so awake. Haha. Didn't happen--birthday luck ran out.

All in all--amazing way to celebrate my 25th with 9,999 other souls on the beach!! I would have loved to have my Laos friends around because we were much closer, but I had a couple with me and the people I was with were great, too, so things worked out! Definitely worth rearranging my trip for!

Now, I'm heading back on a boat to hop on a bus to get me back to Bangkok at 1:30am so I can sit at the airport until my flight to Hanoi, Vietnam at 6:45am. Can't wait. :)