Big Mango Bar
drink and blog

Full Moon Day 1

Posted by sideshowBOB | Blog, Koh Phangan, Reader Submissions, Trip Report | Posted on March 4th, 2007

It’s holiday time folks. Been a while. U can read about my last trip to the US but I don’t really count those as holidays – feels more like a duty than anything else. Of course I miss my family, my friends and some aspects of being in the US but I don’t miss it all that much. So the US trip – not holiday. Going to Koh Phangan – holiday for sure. Going to the Full Moon Party is something I have wanted to do since I first started visiting Thailand but just have not pulled it together. Looks like this time I will. A big shout out to my biz partners for giving me some time off to go party. Your turn next. That is the beauty of running the bars and having cool biz partners. We work, we play and sometime we play while working. I will be writing everyday and organizing my posts per day but not sure how often I will get to upload until I source some good connectivity. As of this juncture the Internet is down. FYI – my trip reports tend to be long so read them at your own peril. Not my fault really since I enjoy writing. Here we go…

First off – the new airport. I am not quite sure what all the fuss is about other than I think people need something to bitch about. We grabbed a metered taxi right outside my apartment on Soi 4 and I think we made it door to door in about 35 minutes. About the same time or a little faster than going to the old airport. 250 including toll. Quick side note – if u are paying somewhere north of this for a non-metered taxi asshole to take u, just know u r getting ripped off. Plenty of meters around so don’t fret. When u first drive up on the new airport it looks amazing – reminds me of the HK or KL airport but even cooler since they combined some elements of the outdoors with the actual structure.

Grabbed a trolley and right into the Bangkok Airways check-in counter. Checked in within 10 minutes, through security and was in a dining area, with bathrooms, before 20 minutes had passed. I only bring up all these details to try and balance the world media attention that is constantly railing against Thailand and the new airport. Are there issues? Well I was not able to check the runway but I assume they found cracks that need to be fixed – but I trust that they will. Are there bathroom shortages? I did not see them as frequently as I am accustomed to in most airports but at the same time we did see them and used them when needed. However the girls(more on this later) said that each bathroom they went to always had a line so it seems there is not enough.

One thing I noticed about the bathrooms within the food court is that more space was wasted on design than on utilizing the space for toilets. No need to over engineer bathrooms given there purpose. There was one sit down toilet, 2 urinals and 3 sinks but there was a huge janitor closet even though outside the bathroom there was also a janitor closet. Just seems a simple case of poor design since there was no reason for 3 sinks and there was indeed space for more toilets. It seems once u are inside specific departure gates there are bathrooms so I think the overall shortage must be in the general areas. Design errors can be fixed but they take time, cost money and render some places unusable during renovations. I think the airport will be okay and eventually something Thailand will come to be proud of is my guess.

I used our trusty travel agent Will @ DTCtravel. We always use Will cause we trust him, we get what he promises and he is always available to take care of any issues. Will lined up the resort, planes and transit. I could have done it myself but I like the ease of one phone call and a few emails rather than tracking it all down myself. Will include more info on the transiting and resort as I go.

Life in Thailand can border on the bizarre almost to the point that it no longer seems to be strange at all. It is hard for me to decide exactly where to take the thesis of this trip report. I could make it simply a normal trip report, sprinkle in the coverage of the Full Moon Party and leave it at that but as I continue to write for the blog the more I find myself yearning to talk about politics, running businesses in Thailand and some of my own life experiences. I intend to try this technique with this series of posts.

I had considered going to Full Moon alone but I was told by a few friends that the chick action is quite low unless u are looking for white girls or the few Thai girls that show up around Full Moon – usually coming in from Koh Samui. I thought about it more and more and decided to take the Protege with me. This could be the first time I am mentioning her in this light. Some other posts have referred to her but not directly. I don’t intend to write about her but since she is a part of my current experiences then for sure I will be bringing her up a bit. I call her Protege cause I am not sure exactly how to classify her right now. We are not really boyfriend/girlfriend because I don’t want a girlfriend however I do care about her and am currently sponsoring her so to speak. I don’t mind sponsoring girls if I am getting what I want and they appear to be moving ahead in the world. Meaning – if u are bar fining, drinking, paying for freelancers or whatever – u r still paying for it. So I am not against the paying for it and I tend to find direct sponsoring to hit me less in the pocketbook than outright whoring. We all have our own math. Anyway – the Protege is a fun girl, pulled out of the scene before she was in it long(she is young), she does some nude modeling for extra cash, is learning English, is learning Japanese, pretty handy with a computer and likes girls as much as I do. Yes folks- she is a lesbian but as we have written about before, maybe cryptically, but as Mochalover has recently spelled out – this is not always easy in Bangkok.

I was first introduced to this when I came to my apartment one night to find her making out with a girl on my couch while watching porn on my tv, but to be fair it was her porn. She almost acted caught and was worried I would be upset. I tried to play it cool and even make her feel a little bit bad but how could I make a scene when her next suggestion was for all of us to shower up and hit the bed. We did. Amazing. I did not have sex with her friend that night but let’s just say all of us had a good time and the door was opened. There was a subsequent incident that stemmed from one of her friends coming over that actually ended up with only me having sex, with her friend, but with her go ahead. Not exactly a threesome but u won’t hear me bitching.

This behavior started a routine on Thursday nights that we nicknamed 3some Thursdays. The goal was to hit the go go bars and look for girls she liked and take them home. Easier said than done. We would get girls to sit with us, drink with us but they would make it clear that if we took her home it would not really be a 3some. No fun there. Long story short. The first night out we did find one from a bar in Soi Cowboy but Protege got too drunk and the deal was never closed. We tried again the next week and ended up with the same girl as before but late in the night she admitted that a full on 3some was a little much for her. Some people have commented on the blogs that u can find 2 girls into each other, which I agree with, but I think in the situation where u already have your one girl and are just looking for the 3rd wheel – it is not as easy as one thinks.

Well a few days before we were to head out for the Full Moon trip we had a little house party at home. During this party Protege brought a friend over who happened to be from a go go bar, was not super hot per say, but was willing and eager to have some 3some action. So we did. And for the next 2 nights after we repeated the incident to double check its authenticity. Then we decided to take her with us so that we would spice up the holiday a bit. So this trip is turning out to be a little different given there are 2 chicks with me. I keep getting funny looks at the airport and around Koh Phangan but I think mostly it is because the girls look good and appear to be into each other more than me, I can deal with it.

From BKK we took BKK Airways to Koh Samui. Plane was somewhat late which could be related to no gates at the BKK airport and having to bus to the plane. Oh well. The stewardesses are all pretty hot though and the in flight snack was more than decent. Samui is fun to land in because the terminal is small and outdoors which means while u are waiting for your bags you are quite close to the runway and get amazing views of the planes taking off and landing. Good fun. We were picked up by the resort and taken to the boat pier. Then grabbed a boat to Koh Phangan. This took about 45 minutes and was at dusk so it was awesome views all around. The boat was full of basically a transplanted group of Kao San road groupies looking for the next party. Not really my scene but I was interested in the whole affair and a few days away from BKK. BTW – there were no Thai girls on the boat except for the 2 I brought and we all struggled to see one semi-hot white girl. Let’s just say most of them were a tad overweight. Needless to say we were getting all the looks. I am sure it is my amazing fashion sense that was bringing it on.

Boat arrived and then we got in a four wheel drive pickup for a ride across the island on a bad road to the Panviman Resort. The road sucked but I will take that if it means getting to a quieter side of the island. I was not sure exactly where Full Moon party area was but I figured we would sort it later since I had no intention of staying near it but just wanted to go experience it one night. We got to the resort way after dark but could see that the place was ideally located on a nice beach and the resort layout was incredible. Of course I had to explain the checking in with 2 girls and that an extra bed really was not needed but them are the breaks.

We had a nice seafood dinner, bottle of wine and sat on the beach to finish the bottle. I felt a million miles away from Bkk which is what I wanted. There was not place to party or hang out so after we finished the bottle we took ourselves accompanied by our buzzes to the room. The girls had bought some outfits in BKK that they wanted to model and who was I to stop them.