I probably woke up around midday, getting a good few hours in after the rough night on the ferry. Kye and I exchanged a few messages while I was still at the hostel, before I strolled down to the beach for food and a bit of sun and relaxation.
I went to the schnitzel joint I’d spotted on arrival in the morning and wasn’t disappointed, scoffing down a much needed and surprisingly brilliant western style lunch of chips and a chicken schnitzel sandwich.
Following that, I just went down to the beach for a few hours. Laid in the sun, read a rag eared second hand copy of ‘The Beach’ as I figured it was pretty much a backpacker rite of passage to do so in the Thai Islands, and popped into the water for a swim whenever I got too hot. It was beautiful and exactly what I needed before what promised to be a big night ahead.
With sunset approaching I went back to the hostel to shower, and contact Kye to work out where and when to meet. I threw on my favourite t-shirt and walked down to our agreed meeting spot, getting hyped up for a huge night and hoping the Full Moon Party would give me the opportunity to finally rid myself of the worst of my social awkwardness. I was at the world's biggest party and there would be thousands of attractive girls attending, surely the best place to be when you’re getting over a breakup.
Anyway, things soon went downhill when I was stood outside our meeting point for a good half hour past the agreed time (karma was looking after Sasha, I guess) and I was slowly crashing into the realisation I’d travelled all the way to Koh Pha Ngan just to spend Full Moon Party night all on my own and awkwardly sinking beers in a corner somewhere. I had public wifi at the meeting point, but no response from Kye.
Just as I was really cursing my luck and wondering how on earth I’d be able to turn this into a good night, a stroke of luck. The Scandinavian guys from the ferry walked by, noticed me straight away and asked what I was doing standing outside a 7/11 by myself. Once I explained, I wasn’t even given an option but to join them for the night.
Just like that I had a group, and the night was on.
I walked with them to our first stop for the night, a bar built into the cliffs on one end of the beach. There was a small crowd inside, but with views sweeping across Haad Rin beach it was the perfect spot to begin our night with a few beers, shots, and game plans for the evening.
I briefly embarrassed myself by attempting to use what little French I could still remember from studying it in high school with a French girl at the bar (her idea to switch from English to French, I can only assume she regretted it), but otherwise we just admired the panoramic view over Haad Rin and sipped our drinks, planning for when the party ramped up in a few more hours.
After a pretty relaxed 4-5 beers overlooking the beach, getting to know my new friends and discussing what we hoped would happen for the rest of the night, we went back down to the beach to start bar crawling our way along the different vendors selling spirit and mixer buckets and playing dj sets every few metres. It’s at around about this point that my many memories of the night start blending together somewhat, a giant rum and coke bucket of poor decisions, blind optimism and time flying because I was having such a good time.
I do not have any recollection whatsoever of losing the Scandinavian guys and making some new German friends, but at some point it happened and I very distinctly recall dancing on the beach for a while with the German guys and a group of gorgeous Thai girls. I got chatting with both and decided it was in my best interests to stick around - maybe I’d see the Scandinavians later, maybe we’d never see each other again. I was happy either way because most of these girls were stunning, and the guys seemed like good fun too. Having been standing outside a restaurant slowly realising I’d been stood up by the person who convinced me to travel there just a few hours earlier, I couldn’t have been happier with how the night was panning out.
After another hour or so the girls decided it was time to head back to their accommodation, and obviously myself and the German guys graciously accepted their invitation to go with them for a swim in the pool. Unfortunately for me, the largest and by some distance least attractive of the group, decided at this point (and not a minute earlier) that she was in love with me, pouncing on me as soon as we got onto the minibus to their resort.
Flattered as I was, I had been hopelessly trying my luck with another girl in the group for a while before we set off, and just flat out did not find this one attractive in the slightest (her friends were painfully aware, and tried reassuring me with “she’s not a ladyboy so don’t worry”. It didn’t help).
There were a few uncomfortable gropes from my new friend on that bus ride, and I was glad when we reached our destination, despite being painfully aware that I’d just taken myself away from a beach full of thousands of beautiful, drunk people to this isolated place where only the one who looked like a sumo wrestler was interested in me.
Once we arrived at their resort, we all got in the pool. Awkwardly I used this to my advantage, as I could swim three times as fast as my suitor and pretended to do so playfully while actually escaping from her. I tried in vain to convince the other guys that we should all head back to the beach.
Unsurprisingly as they were all either deep in conversation with or had their tongues down the throats of the girls they had all paired up with, none of the guys were keen to leave. Probably out of sympathy, some of the girls helped me find a ride back to the main beach anyway and I went back by bus on my own, arriving back just as the sun was beginning to rise for a brand new day.
Daylight meant party over, right?
Fuck that.
A good few bars on one end of the beach were still kicking and a few hundred people were keeping the party going, so I gladly joined them.
I went to the closest spot to where I got off the bus initially, but they soon called it a night. Myself and the other revellers slowly worked our way down towards the last bar on the end of the beach as each one before it closed in quick succession.
By this point I was still somewhat drunk, but had sobered up just about enough from the brief pause on drinking during my little adventure out to the Thai girls’ resort. I asked a guy in a German football shirt who had won the Champions League final overnight (it was Bayern Munich vs Borussia Dortmund, Bayern won) and got myself a beer before picking my spot on the sand just in front of the bar building.
While I’d felt a tinge of sadness on the bus ride back to the beach, feeling I’d maybe let a good opportunity slip, it didn’t last longer than the short stretch of road from the resort.
I was dancing on this iconic, stunning Thai beach early in the morning, watching the sun rise higher over the horizon with a cold beer in my hand, still partying after 12 hours and continuing to meet some fun people along the way. Life was too good to let any minor disappointments get me down.
The bar had a small open air indoor set up, with an elevated dancefloor about half a metre above the sand where the music and dancing stretched down to the edge of the sea. I spotted a gorgeous latina looking girl dancing on the edge of the stage and a bit of room on the sand in front of her, so I made my way over.
I eavesdropped on a very awkward conversation going on behind me for a minute or two between her and a hapless guy trying and failing to keep her attention, and soon found a smooth, suntanned leg balancing on my shoulder. I chuckled to myself a little and glanced over my other shoulder, catching a smile followed by the pained expression of someone caught in a conversation they wanted more than anything to get away from.
A little perplexed, because generally my pathetic tactic of situating myself near a beautiful girl and hoping for the best goes nowhere, I was nonetheless more than happy to play along and help her get rid of him. Obviously.
I turned around to say hi, and she took her leg off my shoulder while waving me up to join her on the platform above the sand. The other guy quickly took the hint and walked off, and the two of us shared a laugh about what had just unfolded. We shared a drink and chatted travel plans, how our Full Moon Party experience had been, danced together and eventually shared contact details before deciding it was finally time to call it a night.
Many months later while exchanging emails I would actually offer her a couch to sleep on in my apartment in Melbourne, but for now it was a fun end to the night at around 9am in the morning.
I walked the 5 minutes or so back to my hostel and finally, it was time to sleep.