White Sand Christmas

I have now been in Thailand for over 6 months. This is the longest I’ve ever been away from home, as my previous travels ended at 5 months to the day. The past few have gone by in a blur- Christmas and New Year came and went, and I spent January anticipating the arrival of my first two visitors! Anyway, this is what I’ve been doing =)

-Christmas Eve happened to be my day-off (which was lucky because I would have otherwise had to work). My friends called me and asked me to make egg-nog, but never having attempted that before and not being a fan of eggs in general, I decided to make coquito instead: a Christmastime drink from Puerto Rico made from coconut, milk, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg… oh and I can’t forget the rum ;) I brought it to work and served a bit as some of the teachers finished their shifts. Verdict: they loved it! We stopped at the Four Seasons and had a drink as well while listening to Christmas songs played by a string quartet and then later sung by an accapella choir. A funky Santa wearing giant green-rimmed sunglasses sauntered around the room, posing for pictures. Later, we went to another friend's apartment to hang out by the rooftop pool; we stayed until 4am mostly just because we wanted to indulge in the fact that none of us had to work the next day.

-The next morning we all went to Bourbon Street, a New Orleans-inspired restaurant that had the biggest mash-up of food I’ve ever seen: everything from traditional English roasts and desserts to spicy Cajun seafood dishes. I definitely got my money’s worth, leaving the table feeling full and exhausted. I then went to another friend’s house to watch movies, and finally, we all managed to un-mold ourselves from our chairs yet AGAIN to eat a not-so-small Italian meal. It was very strange not being with my family- it didn’t really feel that similar to any holiday in my memory. My consolation was to speak with them all on Skype, using the video camera to see all their smiling faces and receive their well-wishes. If it weren’t for technology I seriously don’t know whether I could live abroad!

-A few days later I boarded an overnight bus and then a ferry to go to Koh Phangan, an island in the south of Thailand, best known for its out-of-control Full Moon parties. I had been there as a backpacker before, although back then I had chosen to stay on the opposite side of the island to avoid the insanity of Haad Rin beach. This time I would be venturing straight into the thick of it but remained confident that I would be able to handle it in the company of my friends. The other teachers and I had rented out all of the bungalows at one resort, and we quickly made it into our own, stacking coolers and food around the picnic table in the sand, alternately swimming in the ocean and playing cards, strolling the grounds to browse the various cement plant-holders that freely dispensed timeless and clever (if not grammatically or orthographically correct) advice in the form of decorative inscriptions written in seashells.  At night we would all jump in a sawngthaew- a pickup truck with two parallel benches and a steel frame covered in canvas to form a roof over the passengers’ heads- and hold on tight as we rode to the Full Moon beach.

The way to Haad Rin is treacherous, the drivers constantly switching gears to urge their trucks up and down the steep hills, brakes squealing loudly, as if trying to make it “just one more time”. The first trip was on New Year’s Eve. The signs that we were almost there couldn’t have been more obvious: masses of party-goers in bright colors and neon body-paint carrying plastic beach buckets (the kind used by children the world-over to make sandcastles with) but filled not with fine, granulated particles the ocean has methodically polished for thousands of years and deposited on shore, but with ice, liquor, and mixers; essentially a giant cocktail. I refused to touch a drop of it, mostly because I felt I needed my senses to deal with the intense overstimulation that is a Full Moon Party.

The beach is a curve of about a half-mile, and every single inch of it was filled with bass-pounding clubs, fire-twirling performers, and glow-stick adorned, fist-pumping twenty-somethings in the midst of what had to be the biggest rave in the world (having never been to a rave, I guess I can only assume the similarity). One particular bar, the aptly named Mushroom Mountain, is perched on the side of the cliff so that one has to walk up a steep stone pathway to reach it and the “special” cocktails it doles out. This, combined with the proximity of swelling tides and burning towers that read “Happy New Year”- not to mention the perilous roads to get there- had us counting the ways it must be possible for a wasted reveler to win a Darwin Award* on that island. I took it all in, stayed to wish my friends a happy New Year, and turned around and went back to my bungalow (I’m sure with mouth still agape) to sleep and process what I had just witnessed. The next day it had calmed down significantly as many people left the island, and we went back to our previous pattern of chilling, until it was time to go back to Bangkok and work…

*Darwin Award- recognition given to someone who actively participates in removing himself or herself from the world’s gene pool by dying or otherwise losing the capacity to reproduce.