Dec 22, 2020
Full Moon Party
Freedom, insanity & fire
Every month is the same thing. All full moon is a party. It’s like a movie scene: fire, juggling, more fire, all the pyrotechnics possible. Place: Koh Phangan Island, Thailand. It’s not a religious celebration like the Lantern Festival, which happens in Chiang Mai. Far from it. Full Moon Party is chaos amid Buddhist centers. Get inside that unknown world, surrounded by all kinds of people, is to get in touch with the insane center of all Asia.
Some go to yoga retreats to recharge their energies. Some want to connect with the animalistic side of the island. I have never met so many people in the same vibe and intensity: happiness, euphoria, electronic music, and, for the most daring and inconsequent, drugs. Bold, because the use of any illicit drug is forbidden anywhere in Thailand. I am sure no person wants to be caught by the police and pay a bribe. Either that, or it is jail: a hell on earth, I believe.
The island works accordingly with the full moon, not the party, the real moon. There is not much movement on “normal days.” Full Moon Party is once a month, but when it happens, the island changes.
Barefoot on the sand and tons of people having fun near the sea along the endless blue water. Have you been to a beach party? Probably nothing like the Full Moon Party. Those who do not get lost at the party and spend hours looking for a familiar face does not know what excitement is.
More emotion is to get in touch with some random group from Scandinavian countries and become best friends. Euphory only ends if you are willing to face the insanity of that island.
Want to jump on a rope with fire? Do you want to participate in a pull-up championship? It has either. Do you want to sit and watch it all happen? Yes, you can. What you can’t do is lose your mind. Forget the world around you, have the sense of experience that once in a lifetime.
What are the odds of a return to chaos? I knew chaos, and I say: it was an intense experience, unique, but once is enough to leave the body like that. No soul and body can withstand two rounds of a full moon. Balance is more than welcome to you.
Enter the first sanctuary after facing the full moon on Koh Phangan island and energize yourself. But don’t think you’re ready for another. Retire, even just for a few days, the bucket of dubious rum and cola that is not Coca-Cola. Your experience might be even more intense than your roommate’s if you finish the night in one of the hundred tattoo studios scattered around the island. And yes, they work through dawn to catch tourists thirsty for a lifetime mark to remember that chaos.
I saw men and women lying down while their tattoo artists were marking their skins in those who went beyond us, mortals, who just performed with leaping over the flaming rope. Thank you, full moon, for making me sleep in the top bed and wake up without clothes. The cycle was complete. I can’t deny, almost had a mark in my arms.
Better keep the full moon in the sky for enjoyment and away from the buckets.
