Ko Pha-Ngan, Thailand

Booyyaa! Doug is 7 + 9 is 16, times 2 is 32, minus 8 is 24! Not many people know this but in another life I was the 1995 Pennwood Middle School Challenge 24 Champion. Steve Smith eat your heart out. I dont know how to say this, but . . . . . Im kinda big deal. After making it through regionals, I later went on to states at the Ben Franklin Institute where they started to give problems that didnt have solutions. The people who ran the thing were sick people. I mean we were just kids. But I digress.

The Full Moon Party was awesome. It's funny right as I was coming to post this I bumped in one of the Canadians guys I left with. We left at 10:30 pm on the 16th for the party and this guy came back at 6 pm the next day. He was out partying for nearly 24 hours. haha. . . All he said to me was the after party was strong . . . I am going to go crash in my hammock. He is now nocturnal.

The party takes place on a beach maybe 500 m across that has its back to a bunch of bars and hotels. And everyone goes there just to get ridiculous. Everyone is wearing crazy hats and glasses and paints there body in neon paint. It was really a huge rave with 30,000 people. I left with about a group of 8 French Canadians and French people. They were a good group. Europeans love trance music. I dont know why but they do. I can handle my own when it comes to hip hop but I have no idea how to dance to trance music. Everyone to me looks like they are Zombies pawing at the air or just extremely stoned. They probably were for all I know. I danced with them for a bit but you can really only flail your arms around and bob your head for so long without vomitting. I hung out with them for a bit and then saw two Aussies who are police back home. The one guy had been there before. There was a huge sign maybe 3 or 4 stories tall in the middle of the beach with "Full Moon Party" burning on scaffolding. The one guy Nick wanted to climb the thing once it burned out and try to shake the thing over. I had no plans so we did. Im still covered in Black stuff from it. To get to the thing though you had to wade through the water for maybe 20 feet. Bad idea. Every guy there pees in the water as the night goes on.

After hanging out with the Aussies, I just wandered around for a bit and bumped into some Dannish people I had played volleyball with earlier. We hung out for a while and had some buckets. What's a bucket you ask. It's a bucket filled with liquor and coke and costs $6. Those things can sneak up on ya. We ended up hanging out for a while. At one point I ended up going to the bathroom and never could find them when I returned. I ended up roaming around for a while and then stumbled home at about 6am. This is the abridged version of course and there are some holes Im stilling trying to fill in but all in all it was a good time.

I ended up playing volleyball for maybe 4 and a half hours on my birthday. It was perfect. When I got to the beach noone was playing but there were some people just lying next to the court. So I found a ball and took a nap with my head on the ball in the middle of the court. It was my way of challenging the whole beach and forcing whoever wanted to play to play with me. It worked out well. I met a bunch of people. A Korean guy invited me to play with him and some other good people in a couple of days. He told me, and I swear this is true, the best person that plays on the beach is a Lady Boy. No Joke. He may have been lying but he said she/he can jump his/her own height. haha I dont think I am going to leave the island till I have played this Lady Boy.

. . . . .

A couple of days ago, I took my motorbike to the East part of the island just to see it for a night. On the up and down the steep hills I ended up falling off my bike. . . . . twice. One for each leg. The roads were all paved leading up to the point where I fell then it became dirt. I scratched up my leg pretty well. Im fine but it definitely hurt. I had to use the ocean to clean it out. And then because I only had my day pack with me, Listerine was the only thing I had to clean out the wound. Salt and Alcohol dont mix well with cuts. I ended up having to pay someone to take my bike back in a truck because it kept staling whenever I would try to climb the huge hill the next day to leave.

I returned the bike as soon as I got back and havent been on one since, nor will I again anytime soon. I consider myself lucky though because you pass people almost every ten minutes when you go into town who are all bandaged up from the very same thing. As I was being trucked out of the beach, we saw a girl fall in nearly the same spot. The guy driving me said he has to take people to the hospital almost every week because they fall at this one bend in the road. Thailand is a crazy place.

Good times. I fjust started Jack Keroauc's On the Road again and I think Ill stay on this island till I finish it.

Later, I have a volleyball playing she-male to find.