Full Moon Party Recap

Still a little tired so this post will not be as comprehensive as I might've hoped but oh well.  Went to the Full Moon Party last night.  It was pretty crazy.  Basically a whole beach full of drunken partygoers with glow sticks and body paint (I had glow sticks and body paint on too - it was fun) dancing to blaring music, carts selling buckets of liquor and crappy food all up and down the beach for 1km, people juggling fire, jumping through fire hoops, trippin balls on E lying in the ocean, passed out drunkies, etc.  I didn't bring my camera (didn't want to get it stolen or lost) so no pictures, but if you want to get a sense of it do some googling and you'll find plenty.  

Don't get me wrong - it was an awesome scene so I guess I would say it was a "good party" but really I was more impressed by the drunken debauchery.   I didn't drink much at all - just a beer - my primary goal was to people-watch.  And boy did I see some crazy stuff.  

One staple of the Full Moon Party is the fire tossers, who juggle flaming torches for the crowd's amusement.  Well as the night went on, the flaming torches were shelved and the flaming limbo bar brought out.  Then after that, it progressed to the flaming hoop.  The drunkies kept jumping through the hoop of fire and while many of them managed to impressively clear the hoop, many others of them failed and got caught and got burned.  At one point two guys tried to jump into the hoop at the same time from opposite sides and crashed into each other and caught on the fire ring spending sparks everywhere. I watched it with a mix of curiousity and horror like a trainwreck - you can't really peel your eyes away from something like that. One guy in my taxi (actually pickup truck with ten people stuffed in the back) coming home had a big burn mark and exposed flesh (for lack of better words) from getting caught on the fire hoop.

By 3 or so in the morning, there were tons of people just passed out lying on the beach contorted in various positions.  I saw one guy sitting on a step slumped over with vomit (or poo, couldnt tell) on himself.  I ducked into a massage parlor for an hour for a very pleasant foot massage, and by the time I came out around 4 the streets were filling with sloppy belligerent drunks, so that was my cue to bail out of there and take the boat back to Koh Tao.  

It was pretty ridiculous, actually, but I'm glad to have gone just to have seen/experienced it.  

More diving tomorrow.