Full Moon Madness on Koh Phangan

Every month, thousands of backpackers flood the beach of Haad Rin on Koh Phangan for the infamous Full Moon Party. We, were no exception – if you're in Thailand, you must experience this overhyped night of lunar celebrations.

Since the island is synonymous with partying, we had low expectations for Koh Phangan and its beaches. However, we were pleasantly surprised with the how nice everything was – our hostel, Om Ganesh, was fantastic, the food was amazing, the beach was gorgeous, the people were welcoming and the buckets were cheap cheap.

Backpacker Blowout

We arrived two nights before the main moon event, and had a great time bouncing between the many parties hosted on the island – the nightly pool party, beach party, jungle party, waterfall party, etc.

Basically, it's like an international college spring break during the week leading up to the full moon – each day, more and more like-minded travelers filled the beach adding to the air of excitement.

One night, the girls bravely got bamboo tattooes, which was really cool to watch. They said it felt like bee stings over and over and over again, but the end results were perfect Thai souvenirs, only costing about $30 each. (Even with a bit of Chang courage, I couldn't commit to a bamboo branding.)

'The Full Moon Party is an All Night Beach Party'

The most fun part of this massive celebration is dressing the part. Everyone wears tacky t-shirts, brightly colored nylon shorts, headbands, UV jewelry and most importantly fluro body paint.

With ridiculous painted tattoos and buckets in hand, we joined the neon zombie walk heading to the beach debauchery.

Once on the sand, it's extremely easy to loose your friends, step on glass or be soaked by sloshing Sangsom buckets. But the mayhem is all part of the fun, and it was amazing to see so many people in such a small area – during holidays like New Years, around 30,000 people attend!

Shockingly, I found the Phi Phi parties to be much more dangerous than Koh Phangan. Sure, here you're surrounded by way too many backpackers and there's a few death slides on Haad Rin, but we saw no pole of death for folks to climb or fire obstacles for tourists to tackle.

Our visit to Koh Phangan was a great success – we had so much fun, ran into lots of friends we met on other islands and got great sun on our last Thai island of the trip.

While I may be too old to attend another Full Moon Party, I definitely would return to Koh Phangan.

 

Posted with Blogsy