Sometime in the late 80s, somebody on Ko Phagnan decided to move away and all of his friends threw him a big going away party on Hat Rin, a beach on the southern tip of the island. They rented some bungalows and put on thumping dance music. It happened to be a full moon that night, and everyone had such a good time that they started throwing these parties every full moon. Or at least that’s the story our taxi driver (born and spent his entire life on the island) told us.

Nowadays, a full moon party has anywhere from 5,000 in the off season to supposedly 70,000 this past Christmas. The entire island gears up. Taxi drivers get a good night of rest and try to line up rides. Boat tickets sell out as people converge from all over the Gulf of Thailand. Resorts line up travel arrangements for their residents. The beaches that day are deserted as would-be-partygoers catch afternoon naps. As the sun sets, soorng-taus (taxis) start streaming south and east, to Hat Rin. Vendors set up booths to sell glow necklaces, neon clothing, neon body paint tattoos, food, and buckets.

Buckets? What’s a bucket? It’s a way for partygoers to get around the very high per-drink prices ($4-5). For $7 or so, depending on the quality of alcohol, you get a small flask of liquor, a mixer, straws, and a small bucket filled with ice. So rather than plastic cups, partygoers wander around with little pails filled with liquor. There’s lots to share – just hand your neighbor a straw! Those who know us well can guess that we did not buy a bucket; The Private Eye does not drink and liquor puts The Professor to sleep, which isn’t helpful if you want to stay up until 6AM for the return taxi ride. We stopped by a minimart on the way in to pick up Red Bull, little coffees, and water.

The monthly shindig has had a profound impact on the island. Thais here are not modest, reserved people; everybody wants to know if you are ready to party-party. Our “taxi” driver (it was a plain pickup truck and the Professor and I beelined for the cab in selfish prudence) was a plain local guy who had grown up the next bay over from our bungalows, has a family, and played very very hard trance music the entire bumpy, rutted, steep-dirt-road ride to Hat Rin. “It’s good for driving late at night” he said; indeed. “It is great to have the three islands,” he said. “Samui, you can shop. Ko Tao, you can chill out, dive, water things. Ko Phagnan? You can party!”

So there you are, dropped off by your taxi on this street with people walking and milling, scooters honking, and everyone heading in one direction: Hat Rin. You pay a B100 entry fee ($3.50), step out on the beach, and… are greeted by bedlam. A calm surf stretches about a half mile, with 10 or so bars, each of which has set up its own music stage. The beach curves, so you can see from end to end – the northeast end has Kangaroo Bar and Mellow Mountain bar, perched up on the rocks so you can see out over the entire bedlam, to Paradise Bungalows at the southwest, where the whole thing started 25 years ago.

The crowd is a real mix – mostly foreigners but some Thais among the party-goers. All ages, from 15 year olds who maybe shouldn’t be there to 60-somethings with a well honed taste for the nightlife. More black people than we have seen anywhere else in Asia, predictably better turned out than the sloppy majority. A few little children; we saw one four year old Thai boy helping a twenty-something white man build a small fire in a sand pit. Here’s a blurry picture of one bare-chested Thai man with glow-stick glasses, dancing his heart away:

We walked the length of the beach, then headed up to the Mellow Mountain bar with its de rigeur view of the scene. We enjoyed seeing the craziness below and chilled out with drinks, but ultimately the bad house music drove us back to the sand. We wandered through a breathtaking press of people to Chicken Corner to try to meet up with the Other Burner from SF, but it was a missed connection. So we settled in for a good long while at Tommy Resort, clearly the best funded of the dance offerings – they had lasers projecting rotating pictures, dj names, and “Welcome to Koh Phagnan Full Moon party January 2013” onto the Mellow Mountain. Aside from the window dressing, they has a busy trance stage and a busier house stage, both with solid music. we danced to trance for a good long time, venturing to the other stage when the house veered into the electro.

When we needed a change, we wandered over to Hansa Beach bar, which had quite good minimal techno, some fire dancing displays ( we saw better at Maya Bar on Koh Tao), and a smaller, friendlier crowd. We made friends with a young Dutch man who had done some really laudable volunteer work with orphans in Ghana, and who had traveled widely. We also hung out with a German man who liked our dancing: “You have a lot of energy!”

A lot has been written about the insanity of the Full Moon party, perhaps even more since the one in December, when a British tourist was killed at the event. But, to us, it didn’t seem that insane. Was there wanton excess, drunkenness, and an occasional flagrant disregard for decency? Yes, of course. Was there anything that I found unconscionable? Yes – someone threw a bottle out a window and it nearly hit a drinks vendor, and there was a shocking amount of litter despite large, clearly marked and regularly emptied trash cans.

But things seemed mostly under control. There were police everywhere. The preponderance of Thai food vendors, drinks vendors, taxi drivers and taxi touts meant that there was a large population of sober people and general order. Most people just seemed to be having a good time dancing with their friends, and for those who had the bad judgement to drink too much and walk barefoot with their flip flops around their ankles in a place with glass litter, there were at least a dozen well marked and open medical clinics and pharmacies. Mid-evening, we saw one man on his side, near the surf, dead to the world as his girlfriend tried to rouse him and a half dozen Thai police shined their flashlights in his face. A little later, we saw him in the same spot, but sitting upright on a stool put there for him, still quite unconscious but seemingly alright. Partygoers patted or rubbed his bald head as they walked by. And with that image in mind, we headed back to our taxi just as the sky lightened to be in bed by 7AM.

— The Professor and The Private Eye (tag-team!)