On the Full Moon/KO PHA NGAN

The first order of the day is first aid.  Even for me, I was feeling abnormally blase about the whole burned flesh business.  It was more the continued lack of a hangover that made me awfully uneasy.  Maybe it was cumulative, and at some inopportune time I would suddenly be struck with the skull-rending force of two months of pent-up morning-after suffering, spontaneously-combusting my liver and bursting my brain.  Or maybe it was the humidity.  Still, uneasy...

I saunter over to a Friends bar to google burn treatments, only for the town to have another power outage.  After a few drinks (to taunt the looming specter of hangovers to come), the power comes back on, and I sit down in an internet cafe to do some research.

First, I sign up for travel insurance, while I still have some sliver of self-preservation instinct left.  Also, the laws of irony dictate that by doing so, I'm guaranteed to never get injured again.  Next, I do a search along the lines of "what to do if you're an idiot who burned themselves doing something stupid in Ko Pha Ngan."  There turns out to be a great deal of information on the topic.

It seems many backpackers will get the "Ko Pha Ngan Tattoo" from rental scooter accidents, by either burning themselves on overheated tail pipes, or road rash after wiping out on one of the many dangerous and unfinished roads around the island.  What idiots!  It's those kind of irresponsible assholes who give us careful, sensitive, God-fearing backpackers a bad name.  But, somehow against all odds the same medical advice applied to my case.  And as it turns out, you're not supposed to pop the blisters ever.  So if you're ever in the same situation, make sure to keep the dirty fingernails of that gay whore off your stomach blisters.  A life tip you can take with you.

I amble over to the local clinic, situated very conveniently near the beach, and an unending source of customers.  After talking with the nurse, I find that my shiny new hundred-dollar travel insurance isn't taken up front, and I would have to send off the doctor bill to the insurance company for reimbursement.  Not wanting to spend 3 months waiting to get a check back for 15 bucks, I head to the pharmacy instead.  The way I figure it, the pharmacist'll point me to the same gear the doctor would have, plus I've already got my free internet medical advice.  After an hour of painstaking web research slash Facebooking, I'm practically qualified for surgery.

Inside the pharmacy a young, tanned British woman is consulting the pharmacist, an equally young and very perplexed Thai man.

"You know," she stammers, "When you have in-ter-course...but next day...you regret?"  He nods his head slightly, more of an idle bob, unable to parse out the hussy's demand.

"What do you call it...the pill..." she wonders aloud, before delivering more euphemistic descriptions of her predicament and the kind of help she wanted.

Just as I was about to say the words, it comes to her and she exclaims "Plan B!  I need Plan B!" and to my infinite dismay, the pharmacist understands and fetches the pills, ruining the chance of her resorting to the greatest and most humiliating sign language.

Once the walking paradox of a girl who has one night stands but doesn't know what the morning after pill is leaves, I show the pharmacist my burn and he immediately fetches the necessary supplies.  Either he has House-level powers of diagnosis and treatment, or he's seen the Ko Pha Ngan Tattoo before.  I end up buying antibiotics, bandages, Silverderm cream, and just for kicks, a pack of Xanax.  And seeing as how 10 Xanax costs 10 bucks, it looks like I'll be restricting myself to their intended use: hangovers and drug come-downs.

Speaking of good parties, tomorrow's the full moon.  Twenty thousand desperate fools dancing, thrashing, fucking, pissing, and puking in every predominate European language and custom...A drunk beach of horny werewolves only half-tamed by trance music.  It could be a bit of a spectacle.  I do a final count of limbs and digits before bed.

The day of the full moon begins with another power outage.  In addition to the burn on my stomach, my legs and ass are killing me, and I've found a bloody hole in the bottom of my right foot.  All in all, could be worse.

Before heading down to Sunrise Beach where the Full Moon Party is going to take place, I walk along Sunset Beach for the first time, and watch the sunset with a grocery bag of cold Changs.

I recommend trying it sometime.

Another power outage makes choosing a place to eat very simple, and I grab some food and drinks in a nearby restaurant that has their generator up and running.  As Jackass plays on the surrounding half dozen TVs, I'm chatted up by a German backpacker named Christian.  It would seem he was in Vang Vieng just a week and a half ago, possibly the same time as me.  While he was there, some guy died on the river.  Not wanting to be outdone in brushes with death, I share the story of my sunburn and the more recent actual-fire burn, and my ingenious DIY treatment thereof.

"Wait, jew are dreenkeeng on antibiotics?" he asks.

"Well, maybe, kinda..." comes my sheepish reply.  I hadn't really thought about it.  I come to the conclusion that if I can safely drink and take Xanax (and by safely, I mean hasn't yet made me die), antibiotics should be a cinch.  After all, they're pretty much just vitamins, right?  Like, strong vitamins.  I should be fine.

After a really great discussion about those yellow infected bumps you get on your legs after a killer burn, Christian leaves to search for some missing friends.

"Maybe jew und me will find each other later," he says.  I wonder if I'll be completely alone for the Party tonight.  Even the guy whose friends clearly stood him up doesn't want to stick it out with me.  No time for a pity-party, though.  Only time now for a party-party.

I head back to my bungalow to make final preparations for the night.  As I'm walking through town, I notice one of the cops on security duty playing with something in his hands, and grinning like a Punch doll.

Even with a picture this blurry, you know he's up to no good.  That's not a smile you should trust.

Now, I have three major fears in life.  One: compound fractures, because man that would suck.  Two: candiru, because oh man that would suck even more.  Three: the foul abomination this officer was holding in his hands at this very moment.  Something I always told myself was an irrational fear, because much like candiru, terrifying though they may be, my chances of ever encountering them were pretty low.  Well, here's irrational:

That's right.  Fear number three is giant centipedes, and here's a guy in the middle of Wonderful Paradise Island who sees fit to play with one of the nightmare factories.  After I stop to take a picture, to document the atrocity that I once thought so irrational, the officer gestures to me.  He wants me to hold it.

Hell, what's the Full Moon Party for if not a bit of immersion therapy.

Oh God I was so right it's so awful

After successfully not dying of the heebiest of jeebies, or from the centipede itself (although the cop did look visibly concerned when the monster started crawling towards my neck, at which point he snatched it away), I shiver uncontrollably all the way back to Venus and make final preparations for the night.  After I've pissed one last time, I ditch my debit card and flip flops to be safe.  I take about a hundred bucks in cash, divided into different pockets around my body to stymy pickpocketers.  And most importantly, I conquered one of my biggest fears in life.  There's nothing like a bit of emotional catharsis to get you in the mood to shake your fucking ass.  Let's do this.

I stop for one last drink in the Venus lounge, to see if anyone I've previously met is around.  There isn't, so I sup my gin and tonic and watch the end of Bruno with some UK girls.  We lightly chat, and as I pay for my drink one of them asks why I'm not buying a bucket.  I'll get one at the beach, I reply, which prompts the Venus employee to warn me about a scam some bucket stalls have where they half-fill their whiskey bottles with water.  It would explain some of the super-faded bottles I've been seeing at some of the stalls.  He advises me to listen for the "click" when they crack open the bottle.  I'm reminded of one of the banners I keep seeing around town, that makes much more sense now:

Another girl pipes in about a specific drink stall that will hold the bottle up to your ear every time so you can listen for the crack.  I'm genuinely enthused about this advice, and the first girl asks if I'd like to join them.  They're meeting eleven other girls, and I would be the only guy.  Well, that was a gimme.

I follow the gals to their meeting point in one of the Friends bars, where the group inside is discussing the gruesome medical photos the government puts on cigarette packs.

Being forced to stare at foot cancer or whatever is still worth the crazy-low prices of overseas cigs.

I make the world's most transparent attempt at learning and remembering names, and am privy to the conclusion that the most choice cigarette pack to have is one where a man's smoke is being blown into the face of a baby in his arms (probably his baby, but who's to say).  Because "while it is 'orrible 'n that, at least there's nofink real nasty."

Maybe the baby's a real dick.  The point is, we don't have all the facts here people.

The ladies tell me they're leaving at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, but should be fine because they're all completely addicted to M-150, a potent Thai energy drink.  The clock hits 11.  The streets begin to fill.  We head to the beach.

My wolfesspack.

The noise starts from far off, a thunderous hum of a dozen different and insistent sound systems battling each other for supremacy.  I recognize a few of the playlists as the same from earlier nights, but they're now joined by music from new parties along the beach, offering bass-ed up techno in numerous and slight genre variations I am nowhere near qualified enough to identify.

I'm immediately reminded of tubing in Vang Vieng.  Like the bars there, there was such variety that you just wandered to whichever party along the sandbar was playing your taste in dance music and had the best bucket drink gimmicks.

Then we hit the crowd.  You can't even see sand, for all the thousands of day-glo painted Europeans dancing together in a half-mile long, claustrophobia-inducing flesh pit.

In other words, the party was hella bumpin'.

I buy a Sang Som and Coke bucket from the girls' favorite place, and we make our way through the shirtless, screaming amoeba that has covered the peninsula.  I dance occasionally, but mostly talk to the de facto mother hen of the group about sunburns and blisters, the usual.

The party keeps building.

It becomes hard to breathe, let alone think, amidst the Great White Throng.  At least, that's the excuse I'm going to go with in a second.  It turns out one of the side effects of drinking a giant bucket of alcohol is a pretty constant need to piss.  One of the girls and I split off from the group to try our luck at finding a bathroom.  What I hadn't counted on, foolishly, was that such massive piss-pot demand would drive all the business owners around here to either close their bathroom doors to the public, or cause them to start charging exorbitant amounts of money.

Now, I've never been a fan of paying money to use a restroom.  Even if I did cough up the cash, the lines were a staggering exercise in bladder torture.  And I wasn't about to pee in the ocean, like some others, like ANIMALS.

Anyways I'm not really sure how it happened, but we ended up sneaking into some store's generator room and peeing in the dark.  On their generator, I'm fairly sure.  And then the store worker walked in.

I freeze, no idea what plan of action to take.  Banking just a little on the worker only being able to see by movement, like a T-Rex.  It's hard to say what emotions played out across his face.  Anger, sure, but more...disappointment.  I let him down.  In a way, it felt like I had let America down.  The British girl had no such qualms.  With the cool arrogance that can only come to those born in a bullshit monarchy, she blows right by the dumbfounded Thai man and mixes back into the street, somehow managing to look bored the whole while.

His gaze returns to me, unfathoming.  Well, maybe a little fathoming.  He knows why his generator stinks of piss.  But there's nothing to be done now.  I shrug.  "Sorry!" I state stupidly, eyes wide, shoulders around my ears.  I follow the girl out.  I didn't even get to shake it off.

I continue down towards the end of the beach, towards Mellow Mountain, alone or with the group I don't remember.  From here I get a better view of the lights of the Party, even if my camera doesn't. This is really something, I think to myself.  Then I black out.

I wake up in bed, and it's almost noon.  Maybe it's because I was drinking on antibiotics.  Maybe it's because I was drinking on Xanax.  Maybe it's because I was drinking on antibiotics AND Xanax.  I don't know.  I'm not a doctor.

This man is not a doctor.

I take inventory.  There are no signs of puke or sex, the first items on my blackout checklist.  Next, nothing seems to be stolen, broken, or otherwise violated.  So far, looking good.  Curiously, I find an empty cigarette pack in one of my pockets, and I don't smoke.

And it's not even the sweet baby-smoke pack, either.

I probably should've listened to Christian, and taken it easier.  The Full Moon Party is a pretty big thing to just lose half my memory of.  I imagine myself partying bravely and honorably into the dust, like the orchestra on the Titanic, or Slurms MacKenzie.  But I also know that is not ever, ever the story behind a blackout.  Maybe it's better this way.  Maybe shit got dark.  Sometimes it's better not knowing.

I have a slight hangover, despite drinking enough to have retroactively given myself FAS.  The relief of knowing I can still get hangovers, and remain a mortal, corporeal being, is small comfort.  My pain is more spiritual than physical, likely due to complete seratonin crash.  I feel like Captain Willard at the beginning of Apocalypse Now, and wish my room had a slow-turning ceiling fan I could stare into.  All I want to do is read Lovecraft and watch Chris Cunningham videos and be dark.  And really, the Full Moon Party is dumb if you think about it.  The same party they do every night, just with 100 times as many people and anyways it's all commercial and lame ever since the 90s when the cool people did it.  And I really, really wish I had been conscious for it.  I take a couple Xanax, a shit, and walk to the beach.

Most people must have had plans similar to the girls and left in the morning.  The beach is practically deserted compared to the last week.

While I slept, there was a community clean-up event that picked up the trash from the night before, and to my incredible surprise left the beach looking pretty good considering the bacchanalian scale of last night.  A few deserted dance stages still stand, a sobering monument to bittersweet morning-afters.

Much of the town shuts down following the Full Moon.  Food vendors keep earlier hours, there are fewer parties on the beach, and some dance clubs I was planning to check out close down until the next Party.  I spend the next few days drinking, eating, and collecting wifi passwords around town.  I want to move on to Ko Tao, an island north of Ko Pha Ngan renowned for its diving, but I'm still waiting on my stomach burn to heal.  Here, the tourist population seems to have dwindled to just the injured like me, and, for some reason, Israelis.  Everywhere, stores and restaurants start to incorporate Hebrew into their hand-written signs, and advertise Israeli Breakfast, rather than the usual American or British.  Many restaurants put up notices that they have run out of Matzah.

These days of nothing to do last longer.  A kind of Hedonistic Relativity occurs, and time expands.  I become concerned with trying a new restaurant and bar for every meal and drink.

And that's how I ended up eating a bacon sandwich.  Australians,  you're growing on me.

Now that I have the time and resources to find such things out, I realize I vastly overpaid for both my ticket to Ko Pha Ngan, and my scuba lessons.  But that's how it goes.  On nights, I continue to go out to the beach.  New games spring up, where you try to throw a basketball hoop from a distance for a chance at winning a free bucket drinks.

One night I run into the hooker who I told I had no money.  She recognizes me and slaps me on the shoulder, smiling drolly.  It was a relief to know she had a sense of humor about it, as opposed to stabbing me to death.  I also see the boy/girl/brother/sister/whatever hooker team, but they either don't recognize or ignore me.  Which I am totally cool with.

Finally, I have to do something to get off my ass, if just to keep from waking up any more with half-drunk buckets on the floor attracting ants and free drink counters written in haphazard marker on my arm.

I buy a ticket for another Muay Thai event, this time at a different arena.  What’s that, you ask?   You want an exhaustive list of comparisons of these matches to the 80s Jean-Claude van Damme vehicle Kickboxer?  

I mean, I guess I could do that.  Since you asked.

For one, the white guy is always heavily favored, even if you can't do split-kicks!  They also really don't appreciate it when you chant "Nak Soo Khao!" in a fevered bloodlust.  Medical treatment tended to happen inside the ring, instead of not happening at all and the loser being dumped outside in an alley, and the fighters did not once beat and rape women before a fight (Geez, what a movie).  Very few split-punches were thrown, and even fewer split-kicks performed.  At one point a cocaine-addled black sidekick almost stormed the place with a machine gun, but then it turned out I don't have mind powers and it didn't happen.

Just boring ol' concussions.

After the fights, I end up at a bar called Moonstone.  The whole place has a Playboy bunny theme, Jackass 3D is playing on the TV but impossible to hear over the dance music, and when I order a drink, it comes in a baby bottle.

I was also completely alone in the bar, as I sucked on the horridly sweet cocktail through its plastic nipple.  Everything seemed normal and alien and awful all at the same time.  I couldn't tell what I was doing here anymore.  I didn't even know if I was enjoying myself.  All I could feel was my mind becoming more and more unhinged.

Also, the place had one of the most stocked bathrooms I have ever seen.  A lint roller and mouthwash?!

Outside, there's a 3-legged dog lying in the street, trying to sleep.  I don't know why, but I watch it for awhile before going back to my room.

The next day, I'm eating at an Italian place called Fellini (that is decorated entirely in Fellini film posters and movie stills) when Christian, the German antibiotic-police, walks in.  As it turns out, he actually did end up finding his friends, and he tells me I was right to be optimistic.  We have a nice chat, until he leaves to rejoin his friends.  And he's right (about me being right).  I should be optimistic.  More productive.  Meet people!  I'm a traveler (testify!), and it's time to get back into the spirit of things.  So long as my sanity doesn't finally crumble into shards of drink bucket plastic and ridiculous platitudes about "freedom", everything'll be peaches and cream.  Delicious peaches and cream.

Kreativ Blogger Award

Man, how about that hiatus?  I'm not going to be that internet guy giving excuses as to why he's been (extremely) late coming out with (free) content, but let me just say writing is hard and ugh.  Anyways, the two people who still check this blog should be happy to know I am now back on track to water-birth more psychically traumatizing stories of my travels.


Also, MonsterTV gave me this blogger award:

It sure is pink.  And apparently I have to answer questions:


Seven questions -

1. What's your favorite song? Right now, "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem.  Or "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol.
2. What's your favorite dessert? Flan, historically.  Although after Asia I'm kind of burnt out on it.
3. What do you do when you're upset? I get super quiet and try to convince myself that being zen is still a really cool guy thing to do.
4. Which is your favorite pet? I always wanted a sugar glider when I was a kid.  Now I want an Akita.  That story about one waiting by a train station for its dead master to come home until it finally starved to death?  I want that.  I want all of that.
5. Which do you prefer? Black or White? Black.
6. What is your biggest fear? Compound fractures.  No wait; Candiru.  That one.  Eff those guys.
7. What is your attitude mostly? Pretty okay.

Ten facts -

1. I have been to 21 countries, and most of them were really nice.
2. I am an Eagle Scout.  Really.  Suck on that.
3. I was once offered a job as a ballroom dance instructor, despite not knowing how to dance at all period.  Turning it down is one of my biggest regrets.
4. I used to be crazy into ska music.  Not so much, now.
5. There's a tattoo on my wrist that says "DON'T PANIC."  So far, it's worked.  Also, some people think it's from the Coldplay song.  It's not.
6. Recently I got into watching straight-to-dvd sequels to horror movies.  It is a terrible habit and needs to stop.  (Did you know there's one for Blade?!  Yessssss)
7. Nowadays I read more about video games than actually play them, which is constantly depressing me.
8. When I lived in Korea, I once got in a lot of trouble by playing guitar and screaming Misfits songs in the middle of the night.  Instead of banging on the wall, my neighbors called my boss at work somehow.  Zoinks!  Another time, I blacked out and woke up in an abandoned building.  Shucks!
9. Deep, deep, deep down, I still think I could move to Hollywood and make it big because I'm different from everyone else.
10. I spent an hour last night reading about foreskins on the internet.  THERE DONE FINALLY.

I'll be back very soon with a new chapter for my now-officially-award-winning blog.  Impossible though it may seem, the worst/best stories are still yet to come.  Some of you probably won't be able to look me in the eye afterward.  Thank goodness for the World Wide Web!

BE THERE

(keep reading my blog please)

P.S. It looks like I'm getting Google traffic from people searching "worst sunburn blisters in the world".  Finally.  I've arrived.

Fire Water Burn/KO PHA NGAN

I take my first night in Ko Pha Ngan to set my bearings and acquaint myself with the neighbors.  There's a German couple in the bungalow next to me, whom I have a nice conversation with and then never see again.  In the lobby/restaurant/computer area I meet a British girl watching Napoleon Dynamite, with her leg wrapped in gauze and propped up on a stack of pillows.  She says a bottle fell on her foot and slashed it open the first day of her stay, leaving her effectively disabled for the rest of her vacation.  I know the feeling.  I know it so hard.

Back in my room I discover a hose attachment in the bathroom at about calf-level that does get water pressure.  Unfortunately, I find out it also doesn't shut off, leaving me with a shower head that doesn't get enough water, and a water spigot above the floor that is now spraying water all the time.  My home for the next week had no shortage of character, but it did cost 10 bucks a night.  Would it be petty to complain?  Probably.  Would writing in a professional manner take way more effort?  Fuck that one hundred thousand times.

So, the shower sucks, there's a spigot that won't shut off, the door won't lock, the wifi doesn't work, there's no AC, and my growing headache isn't psyched about the fact that the noise from the party beach reaches all the way up into these hills and inside my room.  Also, ants.  It was going to take every fiber of my being to enjoy this tropical paradise.

Before turning in for the night, I make a circuit of all the money exchange places in the area, looking for the best rate for my 500 dollars in Chinese yuan.  The general consensus I get is the exchange rates are pretty terrible on the island, and I'd be better off waiting till I get back to the mainland before changing the money, which is still drying out on my desk.  I take a couple Xanax to counteract the noise from the beach and go to bed early, so I can be nice and fresh for my 9 o'clock scuba lesson.

What a terrible fucking idea.  Thanks to the Xanax, I wake up late and feeling groggier than a pirate's hip flask.  On the way to meet the instructor I stop for a banana pancake, which makes me even later, but also makes my mouth and belly so very happy.

Ben10 is actually our country's biggest export, after child obesity.

My scuba instructor is an overweight, middle-aged Swiss man named Alex  He has a crazed energy when he talks, but that could just be his kooky accent.  At his shop I can see his Thai wife using the internet in the back, and his son playing computer games in the front.  I can sense an atmosphere coming on, where I'm late and he resents me for it, but I'm paying him and feel weird about being made to feel bad.  He takes me to a pool for the first lesson of my Open Water License.

There are worse places to learn.

This was my first time scuba diving, but I wasn't too bad.  Alex commented that my "hovering" (trying to float in place underwater) was excellent, and I discovered that the fingernails I had neglected to trim worked like tiny little flippers.  Alex and I chat for a bit, mostly about Steam sales and buying too many computer games, but he also mentions that Song Kran, or Happy Water Torture Festival, lasts up to four days in the North.  Christ.  We make arrangements to meet the next day for our first dive, and part ways.

As night fell I felt some regret about having signed up for the scuba course so quickly, as it meant I was going to have to hold off on the nightlife for the next few days.  In particular, I notice this:

SOLD.

But I'll return to that.

I finish my Open Water License over the next two days, doing a dive each morning at Sail Rock, a popular scuba spot about an hour's boat ride from Ko Pha Ngan.

Armed with our spearguns, the hunt for Ariel begins.

Sail Rock, supposedly the premiere dive site in the Gulf of Thailand, is a pinnacle that goes down 35 meters to the sea floor.  Before signing up for the scuba lessons, I had worried that diving would be overrated and an expensive, boring waste of time.  I was wrong, on every level (except the expensive part; holy freaking moly it is expensive).  Maybe it was just the crystal-clear blue waters talking, or the wondrously dense schools of fish rushing past like so many incandescent clouds, but scuba diving is kind of the shit.

Everything becomes the greatest thing in existence.  The slimy barnacled rocks around the pinnacle become an exotic alien landscape, full of mystery and life.  Some colorful nudibranches all of a sudden seem like evidence of a kind and loving God.  One enormous school of trevally swimming by was like that same God giving me a handjob, and it was the most kind and loving handjibber there ever was.  The most famous feature of Sail Rock is its natural vertical swimthrough, which is basically like a 12 meter chimney you can drop down through the pinnacle.  Swimming through that...if you could take the opposite of racism, that's what it felt like.  It was the anti-Hitler.  Every fish I saw was a perfect ball of magic in a universe ruled by love and Studio Ghibli movies.  Every tuna or mackerel or barracuda passing by was a little hug from underwater Totoro.

My instructor, however, was not as super psyched about these things as I was.  Instead of all the pretty fishies, when we got back to the boat he wanted to talk about the oil crisis.  And corrupt Western governments, in particular mine, but also those of everyone else on the boat.  That accent could only do so much to kooky-up diatribes about corporate greed delivered with a thousand-yard stare (although, to be fair, everyone gets a thousand-yard stare in the middle of the ocean; there are, like, literally thousands of yards out there to stare at).  This brought me down for a little while, but then someone caught a seahorse in a bucket and we were right back to Totoro hugs:

THIS BUCKET IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OBJECT IN ALL OF SPACE-TIME.

And just like that, three people on the boat turned into Star Childs.

Meanwhile, Alex rants about Wal-Mart, and gives an in-depth treatise on how to cross international borders illegally, which...okay actually I was pretty into that last one.  You never know when stuff will come in handy.

Now that my dives are over and my Open Water License complete, Alex gives me some sage advice for the  Haad Rin beach parties.  According to him, on some nights a massive jump rope will be taken out, doused in kerosene, and lit on fire for any inebriated soul to jump through.  He warns me to stay away from such activities, as too many drunk tourists get horribly injured.  "I'll be safe," I promise.

I take the rest of the day to eat, rest, pick up laundry, and gather strength.  Somehow, I had managed to get myself sunburned yet again.  Not a hospital-worthy burn this time, but it definitely gave my skin that shade of Naked Mole Rat Pink that I had begun to miss.

At least it's even.

One thing I've learned about Southeast Asia is no matter where you go, laundry always costs about a buck-fifty per kilogram.  Across every country and exchange rate, it's stayed the same.  It's nice to know no matter how sideways things can get, at least I have one constant to hold onto.

Haad Rin as a town is about halfway between Vang Vieng and more upscale tourist destinations, like Kuta or Ubud.  The buildings are sturdy brick and concrete instead of wood and aluminum siding (and even the occasional glass storefront!), but there would still be almost-daily power outages from the heat.  I became used to going into a restaurant with my netbook to eat and use the internet, only to have the power fail and wait for the restaurant's backup generator to kick in.

Who am I kidding.  I was going to the Friends bars.  Could I be any more lonely?

Having been to several spots around Thailand before, I was surprised by the absence of open prostitution.  Nowhere did I see 24-hour massage parlors with girls of varying age lying around calling to the tourists at night.  There are, however, plenty of reggae bars:

Pictured: The most Jah shit you will ever see.

While I eat dinner at one Friends bar, a car passes by a few times with a speaker system in the back, playing "The Final Countdown" announcing a Muay Thai event happening later in the night.  I love Muay Thai, the ticket includes a free taxi ride to the stadium, and I get a pleasant reminder of Arrested Development.  I'm in.

I share a tuk-tuk with a gaggle of Chads, and once at the arena order a bucket of Sang Som Whiskey and Coke.  The stadium is actually pretty huge for such a small island.  While the fighters are getting warmed up, I have a chance to look over the match-ups.  They have 8 or so fights lined up, with the usual main event of Westerners, but I'm a little disappointed they don't have any girlfights.  In my experience, girls fight each other harder and longer, and generally make for a much better show.

The first match out of the gate is, per usual, a pair of younger boys.  They fight well, with good spirit and other such Bukowskian observations, and it marks the first time I've seen a couple of young Muay Thai fighters go at it and not end with one of them hit so hard that they collapse and foam at the mouth.

So, good on them!

As much as I love going to Muay Thai matches, I have to admit I've never seen any fights on the mainland.  I've heard that the bouts on the islands are played up for the audiences and aren't as serious, and if that's true, then someone forgot to tell this guy:

Because Chris Tucker is about to materialize in front of his face any second now.

Of course, it's also probably true that the guy drives a tuk-tuk for a living and only does Muay Thai fights for tourists as a side income, hence the belly and the whole getting-his-ass-beat thing.  So not as serious, but also sadder and more worthy of a Russell Crowe vehicle.

The next fight was between a local in red shorts and a challenger from the mainland in silver.  And, in another first for me, I bet on the fight.  Red Shorts was favored as the local, but I could see Silver Shorts had some amazing abs.  I decided to go with my gut (get it?).  Surely such hardcore training and conditioning would trump the local advantage.  And just like that, I lost 200 baht as Red trounced Silver.

I wondered if I should take my old guidance counselor's advice, and stop  making all my decisions so ab-centric.

The fight between Westerners was supposed to be a Czech fighter versus an Israeli, but it gets canceled after the Israeli is reported sick.  As a replacement, a fight is added between a giant Canadian and an old Thai man who probably invented the word "underdog".

That isn't a trick of perspective, the Canadian fighter really is 8 feet taller than his opponent.

I decide to bet once more, and this time I know I'm going to win.  Then they tell me they're not accepting bets on the Canadian, and I reconsider.  I look at the Thai's record: 70 wins and 30 losses, compared to the Canadian's 11 wins and 4 losses.  I put down 200 baht on the Thai.  Maybe...maybe experience will give him the edge?

Noooope.  

The next few fights lend credence to the idea that island fighting isn't as serious.  The judges aren't impartial in the slightest, as they openly side with some fighters and even cheer them on, and another fight gets decided by audience decision (and was suspiciously filled with Superman punches and crazy spinning kicks).

Also, there's the matter of the free drink ticket that came with the Muay Thai ticket, that is cross-promoting for a pool party at a hotel called Coral Bungalows.  I don't know how many times I've said it: More marketing synergy needs to involve free drinks.  Once the fights are over, I meet a couple guys in the audience who happen to be staying at the same resort as me, and together we pile in a taxi for the Coral Bungalows.

The pool party is packed (predictably).  We redeem our drink coupons at a punch stand where a promoter is ladling out extra-strong Vodka Red Bulls, and we talk.  One of the guys says he hates the band The Killers.  Looks like I have some new best friends!  

The pool party is very confident in its own identity.

However, I don't have anything to swim in, I'm carrying a backpack, and I'm still sober enough to be scared to talk to girls (I heard they don't like backpacks??).  Interestingly enough, all the other men at the party seem to be in the same situation, as they're all crowded into a room inside the bar watching something called a "Man You" and a "Man See" play "Phut-Bawl".  They seem excited by whatever it is.  The "Man See" wins.

I usually justify not talking to girls by watching HBO dramas, but whatever works for you guys.

My new best friends, who are British and very angry about what just happened on the TV, ask if I want to head to the beach, and I agree.  We hitch a ride on the bed of a truck back to Haad Rin Nok, the party beach (and therefore, the biggest pool party), with a stop at an open-air fast food joint called Same Same Burger.  Once at the beach, I stop by my room at Venus to drop off valuables, and on the way talk to a couple girls who ask me what I think about football (I'm assuming the one I just watched).  I say I hate it, which turns out to be the correct answer, and for a while we chat about how sports are dumb and awful.  Out of the infinite combinations of brilliant repartee and body language, there must be one that led to me having a threesome with these two girls.  I didn't find it.  And if I had known what was good for me, I would've stayed in my room and pondered that.

But I didn't know what was good for me.  Really, I wanted the opposite.  I had it up to here with going to bed early, waking up early, and being constantly on the move.  I wanted to get some blood in my teeth.  Some grit in my bones.  In a trip already marked by irresponsible hedonism, I was going to really cut loose.

I leave my flip flops and wallet behind, taking with me only cash and the bottle of Xanax.  Remember that I am 22 years old, and a relatively common sedative still seems like a cool, subversive thing to have on my person. Returning to the beach I can't find my new best friends, but on the plus side, there's a foam cannon going, and that's never not fun.  I won't see my ex-new best friends again.  Still, foam cannon.

The beach is maybe a quarter mile long, with bars at regular intervals each hosting their own separate parties on the sand.  Like the riverside bars in Vang Vieng, each provides a slightly different selection of music and drunken activities.  The foam cannon is blasting away around the most popular bars, where the usual soundtrack of Top 40 Dance is playing (before I leave Ko Pha Ngan, I'll have heard "Empire State of Mind" far more than human ears were meant to handle).  Also like Vang Vieng, everyone seems to be wearing Tubing Vang Vieng wife beaters, but something about foam makes it so hard to judge.  Trillions of bubbles had me loving my fellow man, be he douchebag or no.

After wading around for a bit and realizing how hard it is to dance in the vile quicksand that foam turns beach into, I rest on a foam-adjacent picnic bench with a 3 dollar bucket drink and pop a couple Xanax for fun.  The whiskey in the bucket is lethally strong and tastes similarly I imagine to xenomorph acid blood, but for 3 dollars you just can't beat that value.  As I sit and murder my liver, a little Thai girl marches over to me, and thrusts a travel-size Connect Four board in my face.

"You play me!  One hundred baht!" she demands, with a vicious sneer.  She couldn't have been older than twelve.

Not to brag, but I'm pretty great at Connect Four.  When I worked in Korea I used to play a Connect Four app on a friend's iPhone in between rounds of darts, and I got fairly good.  Good enough to beat some punk little girl, and win back some of that boxing money I foolishly gambled away.

We play, and it's over with the speed of a car crash.  The little girl slaughters me.  But that's to be expected. I'm getting drunk, I haven't played in awhile.  She challenges me again, and it's my turn to smile.  I clear my mind, focus my chi, and gather my wits.  I'm ready for her.

She ruins me like an insane warlord cruelly ignoring the Hague Conventions.  I give the little girl her blood money, not quite understanding what just happened.  She gloats, the sadistic mini-harpy, and challenges me yet again, but I wave her off.  As the pre-teen Connect Four shark leaves to find a new victim, an older Thai woman approaches me.

This mysterious new stranger is pretty in a gentle, relaxed way, and her age could be anywhere from late 20s to early 40s on account of her trim body and fair skin.  She stands next to me on the bench to keep foam away from her dress.  I think we have a conversation, but at this point the Xanax is kicking in, making a peaty stew of my thoughts.  The gist I got was she thought I was very cute, and wanted to know if I lived nearby.  I gesture towards the Venus, and she grabs my hand, leading me along the beach.

I was fucked up, but come on.  Of course I knew she was a prostitute.  But, I kind of wanted to see how things would play out.  Plus, the Xanax had me thinking about making snow angels in soft sheets, and everything felt pretty good.  After we had walked about half the beach, I tipped my hand.

"Yeah, I wish I had some money, but I'm broke," I slip seamlessly (probably) into our conversation.  Then, with somewhat less subtlety, I bark: "Broke!  No money!"

She stops walking and drops my hand.  "You have no money?" she asks, incredulously.

"Nope!"  I give her my best golly-gee-shucks face.  Your move.

She laughs and shakes her head, suddenly looking much older.  Her blue dress whirls a 180 and she walks back to the party.  I wonder what I expected.  That, really.  The Xanax keeps my spirits bobbing along, and I move on to another party.

I'll never forget you, headless Thai beach-ho

The night speeds up as I guzzle more doomsday whiskey and dance in the sand.  I find myself handing out Xanax to a small group, wondering if I can convince them it's something cooler.  Unfortunately, one girl (impressively) recognizes it for what it is, and with that my bottle of friend-makers is rendered useless.  In hindsight there's some moral grayness about handing out unidentified pills, but then they were only being taken by people who had no interest in knowing what it was.  No harm (probably), no foul (right?).

The foam cannon stops, but only to make room for something greater.  Something jaw-dropping.  Something I had specifically been warned against.

YES.

Fire rope-jumping.

A couple local boys unraveled a 20-foot length of tightly-wound cloth, poured out a couple gallons of kerosene from a couple battered aluminum buckets, and, taking posts on some raised wooden platforms opposite each other, lit the sucker.

They started swinging the rope, slowly, in half-time with the music, and invited participants.  Anyone could join.  I watched as the first few jumpers ran in.  Most ran out almost immediately, but some tried to keep with it.  The boys swinging the rope would sadistically increase the pace, until the jumper gave up and dived out, or fucked up and got nailed by the rope.  Which, if you've forgotten, is on goddamn fire.

But other than that, pretty safe.

You can only drink and watch that sort of thing before the bug gets into you, under your skin, pulling you like just such a freaking moth.  I was a drummer once, you might think.  My sense of rhythm is impeccable.  I'm practically a human metronome.  You just might think those things, and jump in.  I did.

And it was fine.  At first I do the weenie thing of jumping and jumping right back out, but then I stay for a few swings, getting used to it, or as used as you can get to being inside a flaming tornado in front of an audience.  Then they start to increase the pace, and it isn't so fine.  The weight of all that whiskey and Xanax is dragging down my limbs, and they can't keep up.  I feel a horrible sting across my ankle as the rope slaps into it at full speed.  My legs tripping over themselves, I sprawl onto the sand, as the swingers quickly pull the rope taught and off of me.

I scramble to my feet and dash out of the danger zone, where the rope is swinging again and people are already jumping back in for more.  Normally, when the rope hits you, it bounces off too quickly to do any actual damage, thus preventing most serious injuries.  I check my feet, and to my relief they're fine, with just a few singed hairs that smell fantastic.

The sun rises.  As I watch, I'm approached by a partying Thai girl, young, between 18 and 20.  I'm a little wary this time, but she seems innocent enough.  She just wants to keep partying.  My veins are still pumping heavy waves of adrenaline, so I'm inclined to agree.  Sure, she's a local, but to assume that she has ulterior motives would be pretty darn prejudiced.  I'm just not that kind of guy.

The girl calls a friend over, a boy about the same age, and the two of them suggest we go somewhere.  As I look around for any place that might still be open, I look down at my stomach: I have a 3-inch burn splashed across the left side of my abdomen, right above my belly button.  As it turns out, while you might not get burned if the rope bounces off, the same is not true if it bounces off and then lands on your stomach while you're still dazed on the ground.

I can't do anything but laugh and point at the blisters forming across the surface of the ruby-red streak.  Before I say anything, the boy reaches a hand out to my stomach and pops the largest blister with his extra-long fingernails.

For the first time, I feel the searing pain of the burn explode under my skin.  The boy laughs as I think hateful thoughts about him and his nasty fingernails that only a gross jerk would grow out and the multitudes of hellish bacteria that no doubt live therein.  He and the girl give me some of their bucket drink.  I exist to forgive.

They buy a water, and offer it to me.  I can't remember the last time I drank something that didn't taste like Red Bull and battery acid, and take a couple grateful glugs.  Then the two of them ask if we can all go back to my place.  God dammit.  Maybe there's something to be said for profiling.  Even if I had wanted to try the no-money gambit again, and I wasn't starting to crash hard from the adrenaline and the Xanax and the booze O! the booze, there was still the matter of this extra guy.  I give a vague answer about "some place on the beach," and hand back the water bottle, preparing to walk off.  The girl picks up on my disinterest, and exits.

However, the boy keeps up with me, pressing me for details about where I'm staying.  My body is weak, exhausted, at the brink, and the boy dances around me like a demon, goading me about some awful "party".  My brain fumbles and spills through thoughts like a hobo rummaging a dumpster for cans.  Where did the girl go?  Why is the boy still here?  When you have a boy and a girl trying to pick you up for sex, removing the girl is the worst possible solution.  Then the boy strikes like a sexual viper and grabs my crotch, cutting suddenly through my mind-fog.  It occurs to me that everything about this is terrible.

I can't let him know where I'm staying, and if I tried to fight him off, or do anything more strenuous than keep walking slowly in a more-or-less straight line, all my joints would cease to be and I would collapse onto the ground in a dead pile of useless limbs.  I try to tell him off, but either he ignores me, or more likely the language center of my brain has finally dissolved, drooling out a monotone of word soup.  Desperate, I look for an escape.

We pass a hotel complex with an open pool, and I make my move.  "This is...it," I slur.  "You wait...here.  Yes..."

If there's a pool, there must be a nearby bathroom.  I find it, and lock the door behind me.  I drop to the floor, and start waiting the gigolo out.  A janitor bangs on the door, telling me to leave.  I keep waiting.  It's all I can do.

Time passes, maybe five minutes, maybe twenty.  I emerge from hiding to an angry janitor and no one else.  I'm free.

It's past 7 a.m. and it's with great relief and the very last of my energy that I make the rest of the walk to Venus, and pass out immediately on hitting my bed, maybe even before.

Morning comes, like a bitch.  By the time I finally muster and get out of bed, it's 5 p.m.  Stumbling to the bathroom, I survey the damage.

In my pockets, I can't find the bottle of Xanax, or any cash left.  Probably the boy-whore stole it, I figure.  Maybe those weren't totally innocent crotch grabs.  In my defense, it's hard to notice anything else when a relentless catamite has his talons around your shaft.  I remember starting the night with about 50 bucks in cash, but I feel worse about the Xanax, it being a gift and all.

I do find one of my bet receipts from the fight.  A handy reminder of the general consistency of decisions I made last night.

You are NOT my boy, Blue.

Outside on the steps, I see a huge dead cicada being eaten by a swarm of ants.  I can identify.

That's the feeling.

Tomorrow's the Full Moon Party.  Christ.