Drinking and Diving/KO TAO

Somehow, incredibly, I wake up on time to catch my boat. Well, not on time-on time, but only a little late, as opposed to major missed-the-boat-fuck-everything late. I'm finally getting off this rock. Ko Tao here I come, to dive and relax and be merry. I throw my stuff together in a rush and check out. The guy at the desk only charges me 300 baht for losing the key, instead of the full 500 penalty they have written. I'm all feeling good vi-bra-tions.

As per the instructions on my travel ticket, I wait on the side of a road about 10 minutes walk from Venus. A songthaew (a modified pick-up truck with bench seats and a roof in the back) pulls up, a few minutes early.

"Are you the pick-up?" I ask.

"Yes yes!" A middle-age Thai woman in the passenger seat nods, and waves me in. I heave my backpack onto the vehicle, and we take off. There are three other foreign passengers, none of whom seem to have the same ticket I do. Before we reach the dock, the driver lets out two of the passengers, who, instead of handing the Thai woman a ticket like mine, pay in cash. A few minutes later, the driver stops again at an ATM, so another passenger can withdraw some cash to pay the woman.

"Do you have a boat ticket yet?" the woman asks me. Considering I have a joint ticket with the car pick-up and the boat arranged together, alarm bells are ringing. Man, am I tired of metaphorical alarm bells.

We pull into Thongsala Pier, where I get out and start walking away. Immediately, the driver and the woman start yelling at me for money. Pulling out my ticket, I insist I've already paid, because hey look at this ticket I have that I paid for. "That is for van! Not us!" she yells.

Dammit. Yes, it was probably my fault that I got into the wrong vehicle. Yes, considering my recent transformative drug experience, I could probably be a little more patient and understanding. But I've just had way too little sleep for this enlightenment bullshit. Breakthrough drug trip or no, I'm ready to get ugly. I mean, unless they call over the cops. If that happens, I'll totally pussy out and pay them whatever they want and apologize shamefully and profusely. But otherwise, I'm your motherfucker.

"You told me to get in! You can call the ticket people and get your money, but I'm not paying!" In response, the woman calls for the driver, a short and stout older gentleman, who steps out of the songthaew. In the back are still two German girls, watching the whole scene. The driver walks up to me and brandishes a handful of coins.

"You call! You call people! Here, I even pay for phone!" I check the ticket, and as I thought, there's no phone number, because why the hell would there be. My resolve starts to let up, and I offer him half the cost of the ride. No dice. Growing angrier, he demands the full amount, shouting that it was my mistake, that I need to call the travel people and get my money back, and pay him his due.

"I can't! I'm leaving! Take half, or nothing."

He stops shouting now. "See what happens if you leave," he says, leaning into me.

I figure if this dude really wanted to pursue a legitimate restitution, he would've called the cops over at any point. And as it is, despite the number of brutal Muay Thai matches I've seen, pudgy 5-foot songthaew drivers just don't intimidate me. That's just the form my racism has taken, I guess.

"I will leave!" I wave my ticket in his face. "I've got my ticket! My boat's over there!"

"See what happens," he goads.

"Okay," I say, and turn to walk towards the ferry. He grabs my arm. Every muscle in my body tenses at once. I lean right up into his tiny, fat face.

The woman calls out something in Thai from the songthaew, and the man relents. He gets in the vehicle, while she waves me off angrily. I walk away carefully, an enormous knot of adrenaline vibrations tying up my joints. I buy a tuna sandwich for the boat ride. 100 baht. That's how much he wanted me to pay. I almost fought a cab driver for 3 bucks, and it was probably really my fault to begin with. I really need to get off Ko Pha Ngan.

At the end of the pier I find our cast thus far: Sander, Tyler, Hefina, Cyndi, Bethany, and another Brit girl, Anna. Janice has left, off to pursue her own interests. As we wait for the ferry, Hefina mentions how she and a few of the others had to wait while their van made a stop for some "boy" who never showed up, and asks where the hell I was. My answer is vague, as I don't feeling like telling them about the songthaew. The less I think about it, the less my actions have consequences.

The ferry to Ko Tao takes about 2 hours, during which we're solicited by a handful of shills for the island's various diving resorts. The decision is made to stay at Big Blue Diving, on account of someone having seen the name in Lonely Planet. Apparently my new traveling buddies make a vast number of decisions this way. The brochure-pusher for Big Blue makes a call, and by the time we dock there's a ride already waiting for us. Great schools of fish coil beneath our feet as we walk down the pier to meet the Big Blue rep, and get taken to the resort.

Once checked in, we're all split into two rooms with bunk beds but, more importantly, AC. After dropping off luggage, we all reconvene to peruse the diving packages. I opt to get my Advanced Diving license, because Ko Tao is one of the cheapest and best places in the world to do certifications, so even if I can't actually "afford" it, at least it feels like I'm saving money. Everyone else opts to do various fun dives, except for Anna, whose leg is still healing from a scooter accident, and Hefina, who is terrified of diving, but we peer pressure into getting her Open Water license regardless.

Sander, having sat still for over an hour, does flips for awhile.

Not only does Big Blue have some decent deals on diving, but it also has a floating bar, where you can wade knee-deep into the ocean to drink beers from a boat moored twenty feet offshore:

It's...beautiful.

A few of us grab some kebabs, and explore around our neck of the island. By coincidence, Fred, who I previously gabbed about Dragon Tattoos and such with, has also ended up on Ko Tao. Bethany and I tag along with him back to his diving resort, Lotus, and watch the best fireshow I've seen yet:

Of particular interest is one of the fire dancers will walk into the audience, still spinning his fire cups, and twirl them so near to one's face that he can (and does) light a cigarette.

If we were sober this would probably seem really dangerous.

Staying in the same room is an eighteen-year old Israeli dude by the name of Amzi, whom I meet the following day after an afternoon dive. We hit up the floating bar for some light conversation, and as a perfect island sunset falls into our drinks, Amzi tells me all about terrorism and how this skinny Israeli kid with the goofy hair knows how to drive tanks.

With the appropriate amount of libation, Amzi, Bethany, and I find our way to Ko Tao's only ladyboy bar, known as The Queen, where I may or may not have been dragged on stage to pole dance with the ladies.

To be fair, that could be any handsome, devilishly charming, horribly sunburned foreigner.

Aw geez.

Afterward, our bartender host Mickey challenges me to a game of Connect Four, which is what one comes to expect from bored bartenders in Thailand. And I'm proud to say, for the first time in Thailand, I won a goddamn game of Connect Four. Upping the ante, Mickey brings out a Jenga set, and ropes Bethany in. Ladyboys fucking love Hasbro, I guess. The loser has to drink out of a warm, haphazardly mixed bucket drink that seems to be mostly backwash and sand, so the stakes are high.

Jenga-high.

Cyndi shows up, and makes about a hundred requests for Lady Gaga. I'm done after hearing the second remix of "Just Dance", and leave for a party at The Castle, a club in the middle of the island that takes far too long to get to, and maybe it's pertinent somehow that I have a particularly deep dive early in the morning that I should probably be awake and ready for, but you know what The Castle has a neon glow-in-the-dark triceratops:

Eat it, every other club in the universe.

Now, if only you weren't filled with assholes...

My dive instructor in the morning sees my Castle stamp and expresses grave reservations about me being prepared for the dive, even though he's Scottish, and I feel like there's some type of stereotype there that he's not playing by. Regardless, I dive, and I'm fucking awesome at it. Afterwards, I take a quick nap before our night dive on the same day.

As our last dive for the licenses, Iain doesn't even wait till we've showered off the salt water before taking our diving license photos.

Motherfucking Jacques Cousteau.

Bethany decides spur-of-the-moment that she wants one of them bamboo tattoos, so I go with her as moral and physical support. We end up at The Office, an outdoor bar that has a very strict music request policy:

Good for them. I have some more drinks on the beach with Bethany and Mathilde, our Danish roommate, and go back to the room, to smoke more cigarettes with Bethany and enjoy my first night in Ko Tao without diving the next morning. The only place I want to see now is Chumphon Pinnacle, on the off-chance of seeing a whale shark, but the boat tomorrow is full.

Bethany leaves early in the morning, whispering goodbyes to all in the dorm room. Hefina heads out for Chumphon Pinnacle as the last dive of her Open Water, as I go with Cyndi, Anna, and Sander to inquire about cliff diving. The local shop, Good Time Adventures, disappoints with the news that we'd have to get full-day packages, as a recent storm has destroyed all the bridges between cliffs, making it impossible to go by land. Instead, we ask about wakeboarding. Their boat is broken. The four of us end up climbing rocks on the shore, get ice cream, and venture out to Kimg Rama Rock.

When we stop at a local shop for water, I find this sign, which is far more educational than any number of years in higher education:

Mathilde gets a tattoo, and once again I provide a hand to hold as her foot is punctured again and again by a thin bamboo spear.

When we finally get back to Big Blue, it turns out Hefina's group out at Chumphon Pinnacle spotted a whale shark. As they happened to have a cameraman diving with them, they show the video to the benefit and dripping jealousy of the entire resort. The boat was full, they told me. I sign up for the Pinnacle tomorrow. I will not be denied my whale shark. It's something special to think that these are my life problems now.

That night, I return to The Queen, with Amzi this time. It's finally Cabaret Show night, and we get seats around the stage in the back for an hour of intricately choreographed and costumed lipsync routines.

For the climax of the show, select audience members are brought backstage, dressed up, and then trotted out to dance with the stars. Amzi is picked as I snicker and jeer, mostly to cover up my shamed jealousy. Man alive, do I need attention. It isn't long before Amzi's brought back out in a gold sequined bra, matching pantaloons, and a massive green frightwig:

Drinks are expensive at 200 baht a cocktail, but through some miracle of space-time gymnastic happy hour comes around right afterwards. I have one last drink with Mathilde at The Office, and head home.

I finally dive Chumphon Pinnacle in the morning, but the whale shark has already left the area. Typical. Our divemaster is a tiny girl whom we watch taunt a huge triggerfish on the seafloor for about 10 minutes, because every other divemaster at the resort has been attacked by one, and she'll be goddamned if she's odd man out. Unfortunately for her, the triggerfish merely swims away, confused but unfazed, leaving her totally and disappointingly unharmed. Today's just shit luck for everyone. On the boat I try to show off my language skills by chatting with a Japanese couple, who call my bluff by inviting me to dinner with them. Since using the little Japanese I remember has already given me half an aneurysm, I don't feel up to it, but I do hang out with them and watch the sunset.

Outside Big Blue, the fastest banana pancake vendor alive has a stall. I get a banana pancake that I don't even really want, just to watch the guy make it. Are these the Halcyon days?

I wake up around noon, having slept about 12 hours. I check Facebook, and there's a surprising amount of talk about Osama bin Laden. More specifically, his being super duper dead. Outside, the TV in the bar is playing a BBC report intercut with Obama's press announcement. I watch for awhile, on uncertain emotional ground, before Iain finds me and hands me my Advance Diver License. Of all the things I'm feeling, at the forefront is how me getting my Advance License just got overshadowed somewhat.

I drink a tall boy in the sand and run around with a pack of beach dogs. It could be the bin Laden thing, or my lack of food and water combined with the burning afternoon sun, but I feel reeling drunk.

I eat dinner with the whole gang, and find out that all these Europeans have both seen and love Napoleon Dynamite. As the only one with an American accent, they're in awe of my impression, which gets those panties a-soakin', or at least until I order a Grasshopper and all my work is undone.

Sander, Tyler, and I go to AC Bar, where we get hammered immediately, Sander does some breaking in the sand, and shortly thereafter he and Tyler pull a pair of girls together. I dance on a stage area by myself for awhile, a lone uncoordinated wolf, until I'm approached by some ladyboys, who dance to Shakira with me. I must have sent out some sort of pheromone, because soon an old Thai man starts hugging me and kissing me on the cheek, saying he loves me, over and over. I get away from him, only to have another younger Thai guy approach and motion to kiss me on the lips. I shake my head no, he kisses me on the cheek instead.

Tearing myself away from all the Thai man-love, I finally find a girl to talk to, who I only realize is Thai after trying for about five minutes straight to speak Japanese with her. Karma, I guess, for missing dinner the other night. Tyler shows up, says Sander is leaving with the girls. We catch up, and I find out that one of the girls is pissed because Tyler called her a lesbian after she rebuffed him. I can identify, I think. They say they're going to sleep. I buy a beer and do the same.

I wake up to Sander coming into the room at 9:50. "Checkout's in 10 minutes," he says. Fuck it. I sleep in till noon and take a shit. I'll be glad to be rid of this toilet, with the cracks in the seat that suck in your ass flesh and pincer it viciously when you try to stand up. Sander and Tyler have already made arrangements at a travel agency for passage to Railay, so I get a ticket for myself and drop off my big backpack at the agency. The sun is starting to set, so I drop my small backpack off in front of the Big Blue reception with a pile of other bags, and hit the Sea Bar for a view with brews.

A Frenchman buys me a beer because of bin Laden's death, and tells me about a "temple valley" in Myanmar that is spectacular "if you have an ipod". A Lebanese girl toasts me "Kessak".

I go to put my sunglasses away, and the reception area that was previously full of bags is totally empty. My backpack is gone. It's 7 pm, and I have to leave at 8. I walk around Big Blue asking people if they've seen my bag, more and more hopelessly. The Thai don't want to help, and the Westerners don't know how to help. After an hour, Sander and Tyler take off ("Sorry man, don't know what to say...Later?"), and I'm forced to check back in to Big Blue. With my wallet (containing 500 bucks in Chinese yuan), debit card, netbook, and a gallimaufry of other electronics and travel accessories in the lost backpack, all I have left is my big backpack full of clothes, and whatever's in my pockets. My camera, and a little less than 200 USD. More time passes, and by now all of the staff know my situation, but no one can offer any help. I decide to drink.

They're playing beer pong in the Big Blue bar, which I hang around while waiting for news and sucking down Long Islands. I have a conversation with the bartender that goes something like this:

"So I heard you lost your backpack?"

"Yup, with my wallet in it, with all my cash and my debit card. Can I get a Long Island?"

"Sure, I imagine you could use one right now. That's so horrible. Anyways, that'll be 6 dollars."

I eat nothing, because I need to save money, and drink more Long Islands. A lot of drunken gazes at my wrist tattoo. "Don't Panic." Probably not the Halcyon days.

I wake up in bed, with no memory of leaving the bar. A staff girl comes in, and asks if James Wilson is here. Miracle of miracles, she has my backpack! Which, when she hands it to me, feels suspiciously light. Sure enough, no netbook (despite the Korean sticker on the cover that says 'Don't Take Shit Anybody"), no mouse, no expensive headphones, no Nintendo DS, all my cables and cords are gone, and I can't find my wallet. They even took my cheapo USB drive and the soap I had just bought. After turning the backpack inside out, I find my wallet in a pocket I didn't know existed. My debit card is floating around outside the wallet, and all the Chinese cash is gone. Curiously enough, the Xanax is still here. I check out, and even if the bartender wouldn't comp me a pity drink the night before, they don't charge me for the room. I get a new ticket for Railay and get some espresso at Tao Cafe.

I overhear some Canadian girls talking about how they heard someone say you don't get hangovers here. And it's true. By all rights, I should be hungover. I should've been hungover from Day One. I check my card's transaction history, which is clear. And so much the better, because I'll be damned if I'm going to stick around for a replacement card. After some prodding from the Big Blue staff, I file a police report, which amounts to exactly what you might figure. Some rumblings of a Burmese culprit ("Couldn't be a Thai..."). Of course the security guards didn't see anything. Of course the cameras are broken. Of course, nothing ever gets stolen here.

I get a massage, only to find massages aren't that relaxing when you're thinking "When I am relaxed, all my problems will be over" the whole time. For dinner, I eat something called the Hungry Hippo burger:

Because I'll always love you, Jamie.

A truck pulls up to the travel agency around 8, where I've been using the internet and feeling sorry for myself. A quick drive, and I'm put on a boat to Surat Thani, where everyone has a 3x5' bit of padded floor demarcated for sleeping. Some try to read, undistracted by how they haven't been robbed.

Like that one there. Look at that smug personal property-having dick.

At least I've got my camera and my debit card, and whatever health left before I soon destroy it with titanic amounts of drink. And to play devil's advocate, the 500 dollars cash wasn't really mine, as I hadn't yet paid Sarah back for it. So really, I'm just fucked out of my new netbook. And my cables. And my DS. And my goddamn soap. Optimism is an uphill fucking battle.

He knows.

Still, I can't bring myself to read, or sleep. Did I mention this is my first theft, ever, in my life? I can see why someone might get worked up! It definitely isn't all smiles and banana splits. Before I left for this trip, I considered doing it Luddite-style: no electronics, no diversions, no Western bullshit. A real gritty classic adventure. Of course, I laughed the thought away a second later and took all my toys, but it seems forces are pushing me the other way. Maybe the thief did me a favor?

Fuck. I had the new episode of Game of Thrones on the netbook. I hope that goddamn thief gets AIDS.

The Dog King/KO PHA NGAN

I needed to move on. No one should remain in Haad Rin this long. North of Ko Pha Ngan is the island Ko Tao, supposedly the best spot for scuba diving in the Gulf of Thailand. That's where I wanted to be. However, my stomach burn wasn't quite healed yet, so I was stuck killing time just a little while longer.

After taking some Xanax to celebrate finding their bottle, I try to think of something to do. Haad Rin seemed to have nothing left for me. I had no idea where the group from last night was, so I eat dinner alone, drink beers alone, walk the same loud beach alone. As I got to the north end, it occurred to me there still was something I hadn't done yet.

Once I've drugged my body into laughing, then I'll know I'm having fun!

So, I head to The Rock, situated on the opposite end of the beach from Mellow Mountain. It's built on the rock cliff face overlooking the beach, hence the name. Maybe it was popular in the days leading up to the Full Moon Party, but now it's totally empty.

After one of the workers disengages from bored conversation with the other employees, I order a Singha and some nitrous, for which they're charging 200 baht a hit. While I sip my beer, the guy puts a canister of nitrous into what looks like a whipped cream dispenser, and uses the machine to blow up a balloon. He gives me some instructions, but come on, I've been to the dentist. I think I know how to huff some fumes.

I grab a table by the railing, with a view of the entire shore. In one go, I inhale the entire balloon, curious if I'm being watched by any of the workers. I'm not. Unsurprisingly, the sight of another stoned foreigner is one they've long since tired of.

The effects of the nitrous come on quickly, scant seconds after inhalation. My vision expands and contracts, like I'm seeing through the eyes of a Stretch Armstrong being fought over. Upstairs in the brain box, it feels like a pile of quilts have been thrown over my cerebral cortex, comfortably smothering all higher and unnecessary faculties. Complex thought processes simplify themselves, until they resemble the pithy urges in a cartoon caveman's thought bubbles. The beach is nice. I wish that sign was lit up. Lights are pretty. The air is warmmmmm.

And then it's over. Logic, reasoning, and all the rest return, and my tunnel vision snaps back to normalcy. 5 bucks for 5 minutes of lights getting a little brighter, and me getting a lot stupider. Maybe doing it by myself, at night, looking at an existentially depressing beach scene wasn't the best environment for getting all the laughs out of my laughing gas.

This is all your fault, sign.

Still, there was a tempting simplicity to the experience. Maybe that explains what happened later. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I return to the beach, where I buy a whiskey bucket from the first drink stand to catch my eye. With the bucket comes a free shot, and more plastic jewelry. I was more excited about one of these than the other. The whiskey bottle's seal is broken, but the drink stand girl addresses my concern by showing me that the cap itself is still unbroken. However, when she pours out the bottle, I notice that she seems to have found a way to take off the entire cap without breaking the seal. Clever girl. She couldn't have watered my drink down too much, though, since the bucket still reeked of liquor just one grade above moonshine.

I drink my bucket at one of the benches and watch the midnight dancing. The fire ring comes out once again, and I join in. This time my keys were totally safe, because I no longer had keys, due to my room no longer having a lock of any kind. I have to say, the drinking was doing a good job of squashing any worries I might have had, though.

Once I got too woozy to keep jumping, I stumbled on down the beach and found myself heading up the steps to Mellow Mountain. I hadn't been back here since my last trip to Thailand, so why not hang out for a bit?

Mellow Mountain is divided into two levels. The bottom level is called Kangaroo Bar, which has much nicer tables and decor, and is generally a more legitimate, nicer place to hang out, and the top level is the Mellow Mountain bar, which has much sparer decoration, but is where the more illegitimate, namesake items can be purchased. I head to the top level.

The guy working the bar is very open and forthcoming about what they sell, so I inquire about prices. A mushroom shake is 500 baht, a half-cup of just mushrooms is 1,000, and a full cup 2,000. I buy a joint, for 250, and am soon joined by a Finnish guy, asking if he can share.

"Sure." I shrug, and he buys me a Chang. The Finnish man stays long enough to teach me how to say cheers (something like "Holkan kolkan"), before leaving for parts unknown. I take my joint downstairs to Kangaroo Bar, and finish it while watching a girl throw up over the balcony.

I snap a photo, because I'm all about the memories, and this pisses the guy she's with right off. "Oy! Wot the fuck?!" His voice sounds familiar somehow...He walks over. Just as I start to prepare myself for a fight by hoping really hard that his morals prevent him from hitting a drunk man, he steps into my light.

"Jamie?! Long time no see, mate!" It's Jake, from last night. And by the look of things, he's moved on from Bethany.

"Hey, Jake. Your friend okay?"

"Aw, she's fine! Jos' too much mushroom shake." He gestures to a cup on their table, still two-thirds full. "These things are fuckin' strong! A full shake is jes' too much for one person. Want summa' this one?" He indicates again to the girl's cup, which I have to assume she isn't coming back for. Well, I don't want to be rude.

Voyeuristic maybe, but never rude.

Jake and I split the rest of the cup, and eventually he leaves with the girl to presumably have freaky pukey hallucinatory sex. I leave the beach, and wander back into town. Mushroom shakes have never really affected me in the past, although they were giving an interesting edge to the booze and weed, not to mention the Xanax from earlier still in the background, fuzzing out the edges. I become very interested in a dog trying to eat something in the sand.

Something about the image...spoke to me. Or spoke to the drugs, and really, they'll speak to anything. I drift through the streets as if on walkabout, my consciousness compressing, my sanity disintegrating. I found a video on my camera not too long ago from this night, which I don't remember taking at all:

Speaking of memories, have you ever had a blackout that you can actually remember? Where you can recall glimpses of what you got up to after losing all control? That was the rest of the night for me. A real stare-into-the-abyss-and-the-abyss-stares-back kind of night.

As I pinball around the town in an impenetrable haze, I come across a small pack of street dogs. The animals flock to me, craving attention, and I must have really wanted some companionship, because it's hard to explain what happened next...After hanging out with the dogs for awhile, I notice that they start to walk with me, loyally following in my steps. "Alright," I think. "I accept." I became King of the Dogs.

Together with my pack, we roam through the alleys and backstreets of Haad Rin, looking for trouble. They had accepted me as one of their own, and I was determined not to fail them as a leader. My first order of business was growth. Whenever we came across another dog, I would offer my hand, as an olive branch. Some dogs would accept, and allow themselves to be pet, and joined our pack. Other dogs, afraid of our gang's power, would instead bark and growl, but they would be immediately shouted down and drowned out by my troops. Before long, my pack of three or four had grown to almost a dozen. And they all obeyed me, their Alpha.

After a few run-ins with other packs and some thoroughly perplexed storeowners, our pack finally disbanded. The last thing I remember is seeing some sort of horrible monster in the sand, and ogling it with extreme trepidation, before passing out back in Venus. The ravings of a dangerously unbalanced mind, I assumed at the time, after waking up, feeling sober and absolutely shitty. But, once again, I found something enlightening in my camera much later:

So, yeah. Monster.

Fuck you, ocean.

The sun dawns on a new day, and I'm thrown from canine royalty back to lowly human commoner.The Half Moon Party's tonight, so after eating some recovery pizza and a fruit shake, I stop by Friendly Resort to see if anyone's around and interested in going. By the pool, I find Sander and Tyler, who tell me the whole group's going. Well alright then. I walk with them to the travel agent and buy a ticket to the party.

Back at Friendly, we're soon joined by the rest of the group. Whereas most Dutch people I've met walk around eyes half-lidded and seemingly on the verge of sleep, Sander is fearsomely energetic. To pass the time, he does backflips in the grass, while I find out that Tyler and I are both fans of the ska band Less Than Jake. Not really important, but I'm always pleasantly surprised when I meet anyone overseas who wants to talk about any music besides Oasis.

A van comes by to pick us up, and inside I have a conversation about horror movies with Sander, who remains to this day the only person I've met, and indeed probably the only person who exists, who thinks Hannibal was a better movie than Silence of the Lambs. I just...I chalk it up to him being Dutch, somehow.  The driver slips in a CD, and the entire van erupts into a nasally singalong of "Wonderwall", including Tyler, who was now dead to me musically. Last night I lost all sense of civilization and became nothing more than an animal, and this is worse. "Hotel California" comes on next, and in retaliation I sing it as loudly and aggressively as possible over their groans, with Sander's enthusiastic accompaniment. What is friendmaking if not naturally adversarial, anyway?

Janice looks much cuter tonight, which I think is due to wearing her hair differently. I cannot stress this enough: British people need bangs. If you're British and you're reading this, you are not exempt. Consider this your PSA. Bangs. Wear them.

At the entrance to the Half Moon Party, which happens to be situated rather deep into the jungle, we're issued free drink tickets in exchange for our entrance passes. Cashing in the drink ticket grants me a weak, watered-down strawberry daiquiri. Once inside, I buy a slightly stronger Sang Som bucket, for twice the normal price. Since the Half Moon Party is a closed event, they get to control the merchants and their prices, so everything is double what you'd normally pay around Haad Rin.

Everywhere are vendors hawking day-glo body paint, but it's rather easy to find some expats who've already brought a load and want nothing more than to share. Once my face has been painted up by some Europeans, I get to dancing on tables with the remains of our group that hasn't already wandered off to some other corner of the event.

Just casual as all hell.

The decor is certainly impressive, even if the atmosphere is ruthlessly capitalistic, what with the 20 dollar entrance fee, and 10 dollar drinks prices. The central decoration is a massive white tree surrounded by abstract spikes, ripped seemingly straight from the nearest tribal tattoo.

Wife beaters mandatory.

Skilled fire-twirlers twirl their fire to the beat of professional DJs, spinning club tunes only slightly indistinguishable from any other night on the beach. There's a flyer listing the DJ schedule, but none of them are the four or five maximum DJs I could name off the top of my head. Still, they are all very adequate at pushing play on a deck and making the speakers go "uhn tsh uhn tsh uhn tsh".

As more members of the group splinter off, I find myself talking to a German, who is very insistent about me acting as his wing-man during the party. "Ve shall get ze girls together, ja?" Sorry, but nicht. I've got enough drama keeping up with this crowd as is. I go to find Sander, who is currently chasing after Cyndi, the most naturally drunk girl in all the land, who keeps burning people with her mooched cigarettes. Cyndi, meanwhile, wants no one but Tyler, because he's tall and she's predictable. Elsewhere, I notice that Bethany has sussed out Jake somewhere in the party, and they're most definitely back on, the Mellow Mountain girl vomiting over the railing a thing of the distant past.

But my attentions keep coming back to Janice. Those bangs, man. They make all the difference. I chat with her and Ted from Australia about ping pong shows, which Ted claims to have never seen, despite living 9 years in Ko Samui. Bullshit, says I. There's just no way you can live in Thailand for 9 years, and not end up seeing a baby chick being swallowed up and then emerging from a woman's vagina at some point in your life.

Ah, Thailand.

Janice and I leave the party together, but I'm shut down at the door to her room. "I'm really just so tired..." says she. But...the bangs...

I should've known. I wanted it too bad. I wasn't expecting the unexpected. I leave her to be tired or whatever, and return to my own room to brood. To think I pruned my fingers for nothing. Certainly food for thought. Also, gross.

The next day I'm supposed to meet Sander to rent scooters and see more of the island, but I don't know his room number, and anyways I'd rather sleep in. Finally I've resolved to get off this island, so I've bought a ticket for a boat early the next morning to Ko Tao. I head out for food, eating a subpar bacon sandwich and end up drinking in another Friends bar, where I'm approached by a Burmese man who asks my name, where I'm from, says nice to meet me, and leaves. My last night in Ko Pha Ngan, and I can already tell it's going to be something special.

As if on cue, I walk back to Venus to drop some things off, and in the almost-total darkness, I swear I see a willow-the-wisp. Or, whatever optical phenomenon begat the willow-the-wisp story. For context, I was walking around in this:

When a green light, just a dot, starts moving around my eye line, before zipping off into the trees to my right. It was too immaterial for a firefly, and far too green, but too independent and lazy for a sunspot or effect from the inside of my eyelids. Whatever it was, I put it out of my mind, and continue on to Friendly Resort, to meet the Sander and the rest of them.

After regaling Sander with an extremely abridged story about trying nitrous the other night, I get him curious enough to try it with me at Pla-Bla. They charge the same price as The Rock, and deliver the gas in the same balloon-filled manner. Being in a brighter bar however, filled with patrons, huffing the gas at the same time with a compatriot, makes quite a lot of difference.

Look at that smile! And I'm not even high yet!

Even better, Pla-Bla is showing a movie, so we have some visual stimulation. Unfortunately, the movie is The Beach, and it's at the very nihilistic end, which is not so great for doing drugs to. Still, Sander has a great time, while I just kind of wish it was the scene with the glowing jellyfish. That would have been nice.

On the way back from the bar, we run into the main group, and venture to the beach together. They're set to make their last night in Ko Pha Ngan something to remember, and immediately start ordering round after round of drinks. But not me. I actually have something different in mind for tonight. I'm going to finally try mushrooms, totally sober.

I've always been disappointed with my shroom experiences, and a friend pointed out to me that the common denominator seems to be that I'm always drunk when I try them, which dampens their effect. So tonight I'm going to go in totally clean (well, except for the laughing gas, but come on) and see what happens. I excuse myself from the group partying on the beach, and make my way to Mellow Mountain and order a shroom shake.

On the walk back, I notice an old woman reading tarot in the sand, and it's one of those great idea moments, light bulb over the head and everything. The mushrooms haven't kicked in yet, if they would indeed have any effect at all. After paying for the session, the woman asks me to cut the deck, which I do. She has me draw several cards, and then turn them over in order, analyzing each one in turn.

"You...are very good with money. Yes?" Whoof. Not a great start to divining the universe. "Sure, I'm great with money. Love the stuff," I reply. "Keep going."

She turns over another card. "You...have many girls back home! Yes, many girls I can see." Swing and a miss! But I don't want to be a dick about her fortune telling: "Oh yes. Lots of girls. All the girls." She nods sagely, turning over the next card. She explains something about cups, and further elucidates just how good I am with girls. It's my turn to nod sagely. "But they want your money!" she explains. I wouldn't count gold-diggers on my top 5 list of life problems, but she continues on without pause.

Another card is turned. This time, she hesitates before speaking. "You like...men," she states, matter-of-fact. There isn't any question in her voice. She waits for my confirmation.

"No?" I'm not quite sure how to let her down. She's so confident, I feel bad for being straight. Maybe I have been living a lie, and I just chose the weirdest possible way to be outed. That kind of adds up, I think.

"You're sure? But...you like men." She examines the cards more closely, looking back and forth between them and me, positive that they very clearly reveal my homosexuality. After refusing a few more times, she relents, although I can see in her eyes that she's going to continue under the assumption that I've lied to her and will continue lying about my sexuality, asshole that I am. She turns over another card.

"Okay, your future." Serious business now. "You will marry girl in foreign country, and have," another card turned, "three child!" I shrug, and accept my fate. With no more cards to turn over, she indicates for a tip, but in a kind of resentful way that says she still knows I lied about being gay, and ruined my own tarot reading. I give her a buck.

Walking on, I rejoin the group on the beach, one of whom, Hefina, has order a hookah for the table.

The foam machine started up, prompting the others to get on their feet. As everyone dances in the sand around me, I take seat at the table as the mushrooms come on in full force. Finally, I have what they call a breakthrough experience. Everything becomes poignant, and full of incredible meaning. I could see into the actions of everyone around me, understanding their thought processes in full, as they happened, and realize that person's ultimate place int he world. Everything became obvious, and okay.

Somehow I end up sitting cross-legged on top of the table. I am a buddha amidst the fire and foam. Even the douchebag tourist meatheads had their place, and it is in a way reassuring to see them perfectly filling that role. The prepubescent Connect Four girl makes an appearance, and her hostility is revealed to be a gimmick, as I catch her smiling while pulling out Jake's chest hair, trying to goad him into a match.

I was people watching on a sublime level. I could almost hear Ken Kesey saying "That's her thing, and she's doing it" as Hefina, a Welsh girl known to have a boyfriend back home, makes out with a birthday boy in another group. Janice, who would talk so much about not liking or needing these girls, still finds herself following them into pictures, into their dance circles. Cyndi, drenched in foam and seawater, a desperate guy tentatively touching her ass as she mooches cigarette after cigarette, hands me her cell phone, so fucked up that the screen only glows white and won't stop vibrating.

And the hookah, neverending. I'm Alice's caterpillar over here, the only one puffing. Hefina tries briefly to learn from me how to blow smoke rings, but soon gives up and dances back into the bubbles. Everything, its place. I am peaceful, and complete. Very groovy thoughts, man, like "I should get water. Water is just in general a good idea" or "Cigarettes are just so...dangerous," of course after I get burned by one of Cyndi's as I stumble my way into the foam, on a whim. I simply stand there, enjoying the texture of it, before taking my place back on top of the bench. I look up occasionally, and see the stars moving, shifting slowly about each other. The moon is orange, and for all I know the moon is actually orange tonight. Still, I try not to stare, because I've decided this is a secret trip, for paranoid and druggy reasons. I tell no one, and they seem to not notice. Occasionally I'm asked to dance, which I do for a minute, loose-limbed and with an enigmatic smile, before going back to the bench. I understand the difficulty I've been having with Ko Pha Ngan: I'm a big dog in a small house, left alone.

There's something of a wrench in the works when it's getting on to 5 in the morning, and I'm still the little buddha at peace with everything, but man I've also got to be up and moving to another island in 4 hours. I know better than to fight the trip, so I just go with it, sleep be damned. The others leave, one by one, but every time I think the shrooms are done with me, they come right back and show me who's really enlightened. The sun breaks over the horizon, and I walk sleepily back to Venus..

I respected the mushrooms, and they treat me in kind. I lie in bed for a few moments in soft euphoria, before lazily drifting off. One with everything. And just in case that's all bullshit, I set an alarm.