The Home Stretch

After a lazy day and night of imitating fog, we were on the move again. Our final destination being the world famous Full Moon Party on the island of Koh Phangan, nearly 200km to the Northeast.

It seemed somewhat contradictory to be waking at 6am in a perfectly peaceful rainforest to make a mad cross-country dash by land and sea in order to attend an all-night dance party, but by this point, I'd long since learned not to question such things, and just go with it. So, one pickup truck ride, two pointless stops, a jammed minivan, a ferry crossing, a boat ride, and another pickup truck ride later, we arrived at our hostel where everything was, “no praablem.”

Night fell. Some food and a few beers later we made arrangements to get to the Full Moon Party. The hostel had a driver, but he would only take us as far as the pier—about half way—we would have to find our own transportation to the beach from there. Whatever. We grabbed a beer for the road and piled into the back of a pickup truck outfitted with benches and a rudimentary roof, along with the usual assortment of foreigners one finds in the back of such vehicles in SE Asia.

Nearly to the pier, our truck was delayed by a traffic stop, in which a police officer shone a flashlight in the back to ensure we all had open bottles of alcohol, then let us on our way. Once our driver would go no further, the four youngest travellers pounced on a taxi, leaving us to try to recruit two middle-aged guys to split the fare to the beach. “You guys heading to the Full Moon Party?” I asked. “The what?” (Was he serious?) “The Full Moon Party. Huge beach party. It's tonight. It's what this island is famous for.” “Ohh, nah. I think we're just going to try to find a bar around here.” “I'm pretty sure it's all just souvenir shops around here, we were here earlier.” “Yeah? Well, we heard there were a few bars somewhere around here.” “You sure?” “Yeah, we're just gonna' look around for those bars.” Suit yourselves, lamewads. We were heading to the giant fucking beach party.

The official Full Moon Party website boasts that the event draws between 10000 and 30000 people each month to the crescent-shaped beach of Haad Rin. I'd say (at least on December 21^st, 2010) that a few thousand would be more accurate, but who's counting? However many people there were, they were happy: the alcohol was flowing, the was music thumping, and the night was young. Drinks here come in one form—buckets. The beach is lined with stalls run by unshy locals, each trying their best to outdo their neighbors in terms of lewd signage. I chose the stall I felt struck the finest balance between perversity and poor English, and got myself a bucket of booze. However, by this time, the beer I'd drank earlier was right ready to leave my system, so I gave Mia the bucket and went to find the nearest bathroom.

Upon returning—no more than 5 minutes later—I found Mia in the same spot, but the bucket half empty. That wasn't good. This was a girl that turned red after half a beer, and she'd just downed three double shots in as many minutes. “How do you feel?” I asked. But she was already curling up on the sand, trying to go to sleep.

One benefit of an early end to our Full Moon Party experience was a decided lack of hangover the next day (well, for me anyway). We walked a few back roads and beaches. Watched a man burning brush in a clearing cut into a patch of trees. Took it easy. I tried not to think about our trip coming to an end. Or about the flight back to Canada. Or job searching. I tried, also, not to think about how a lot of things could have gone better. Or about all the money I'd spent. Or disappointment. But that wasn't so easy.

Writing this now—one year later to the day—I find myself thinking back to some advice that Mia shared with me early on in our journey. A well-travelled friend of hers once told her that, when travelling, it's best to have no expectations. I think that's good advice. Very little of what I experienced over these sixty-two days lived up to the ideal that I'd created in my mind. But, even so, I like to believe there is value in even the most unpleasant of situations. At the very least, they are an exercise in endurance; a test of ones mettle. At best, they give me a wealth of memories and plenty to write about. The highs can't exist without the lows, after all, so why complain?

We returned to Haad Rin beach the night following the Full Moon Party, (we discovered there was no shortage of moon-themed parties on Koh Phangan: Full Moon, Half Moon, Black Moon, and why not? Did people really need much of an excuse to party on a tropical island?) and found things very nearly as lively as they'd been twenty-four hours ago. The energy, alcohol, and fire flowed here almost as constant as the tide.

Looking out down the beach, I felt a strange déjà vu: like I'd dreamt this place once, but had forgotten it until now. We walked alongside the revelry, letting the waves lap our feet, the almost-full moon pulling us towards home.

Khoa Sok

Our inflatable canoe slid into a river of oily army green, beneath a multi-tiered fog that hung in the air like a crude afterimage of the jungle canopy, superimposed on the sky. We were in the heart of Khoa Sok National Park—thick jungle grown out over karst topography covering an area larger than Toronto. But that frigid metropolis was far from our minds twenty minutes into our trip down a tropical river, through forest older than the Amazon. In fact, the jungles of Khoa Sok are so old that they once shared the planet with the dinosaurs. And now, floating down this river between soaring, twisted cliffs of rust-streaked grey rock, under dozing pythons and mammoth moths, it wasn't difficult to believe that prehistoric beasts once hunted and ate each other here.

Back at the lodge, we had a buffet-style lunch with an overly-talkative Australian woman, (inexplicably in white), and a couple from Indonesia, who communicated almost exclusively through a series of knowing looks. “Have you eva' seen anything like this? Just look at this place...oh you're not Japanese, you look Japanese, has anyone eva' told you that before?...we don't have elephants in Australia, you know, not enough wata'...it's hot, sure is hot...” A young elephant trumpeted its return back to camp, mercifully cutting off the Aussie, and causing a cacophony of birds to erupt from the nearby treetops. Our rides were here.

Our guide informed us that there were 17 elephants in the park, (13 females and 4 males, who were kept separate) they weighed about 3000 kg each, ate 250kg of fruit a day, drank 200L of water, and lived up to 70 years. With all this in mind, we met our elephant driver, or manhout, whose ancestors rode these animals down from the lowlands of Nepal, below the foothills of the Himalayas, through the dense jungles of Burma, into Northern Thailand and on to Khoa Sok—a journey of over 4000 kilometers. Our trek that afternoon would be considerably less ambitious, but exciting nonetheless, as neither myself nor Mia had ever been so close to an elephant, much less ridden one through a tropical rainforest.

After climbing a wooden structure to board the beast, and some nudging from the manhout, we plodded off into the jungle, riding the slow swells of the animals giant steps. Behind us, the elephants footprints filled with water from the saturated soil, leaving a trail of muddy puddles the size of dinner plates. It couldn't get much more Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom than this. I had an elephant, a little Asian (who had recently been to Shanghai), a jungle, and someone who was deathly afraid of snakes. Not to mention the fact that I was carrying an authentic 1930's canvas book bag embroidered with the words: “MARSHALL COLLEGE ARCHAEOLOGY DEPT” (A gift from a sister forced to endure repeated viewings of said film on Beta growing up.)

Our elephant stopped mid-stride at one point, took a few steps off the path, and pissed. Was it toilet trained? The awe of our elephants fine manners was matched only by the sheer volume of urine it expelled. It was like a faucet on full blast. Once our elephant had relieved itself sufficiently, we continued on, overtaking the Aussie, whose animal had decided to deviate from the trail, tear down some vines, and eat them. (Later, we'd see elephants munching thick bamboo canes like stalks of celery.) Eventually, we came to a clearing—a sort of Lost World jungle valley—took pictures, and turned around.

After a short jeep ride, we were dropped at our riverside jungle house, which, to our surprise, turned out to be just that. With a group of monkeys whooping next door and a banana tree growing outside our bathroom, an interesting stay was virtually guaranteed.

That night, we dined by candlelight on the upper level of the main tree house. The food was good, the setting ideal, but the atmosphere seriously compromised by the owners decision to play top 40 hip hop. It reminded me of my first days in Korea, when, browsing through a corner grocery store, I noticed they were playing hardcore gangster rap—rife with foul language, sexist expletives, and racial slurs—and everyone, from old ladies to toddlers hand-in-hand with their mothers, was completely oblivious. There is a time and a place for rap, but grocery stores and candlelit tree houses are definitely not it.

Waterworld

We awoke to rain, no electricity, a few weak feathers of light filtering in through the curtains. So much for seeing the sunrise. With some effort, we wriggled out of our comfortable cocoon of silk mosquito netting and crawled up to the window to take a look outside; bleak grey skies, mud puddles, a wet dog. Mia returned to the cocoon, and with no major plans for the day, I couldn't blame her.

I ate alone amidst the clicks of geckos stealing glances from behind beams. Mia slept, while I read. Shortly after Mia woke, with the tide then low and shallows long, we had a swimming lesson.

Though she grew up on an island, Mia can't swim, and in fact, she's afraid of water. As a child, her younger brother had nearly drowned, so their mother told them that if they ever went in the ocean again, a ghost serpent would eat them. This proved so effective that, to this day, Mia fears sea monsters, and therefore, doesn't swim. But she gave it a shot—treading water, a few simple strokes, holding her breath—and did just fine.

Later, under a graphite sky, we kayaked to an uninhabited island, and paddled its perimeter. We scoped out the coast and eyed its nearest neighbours, but between ill-fitting life jackets and dark clouds rolling in, decided against going into deeper water, and instead made our way to the nearest point to follow the shoreline back around to the beach.

Our tandem kayak cut through waves past disused docks and backyard barramundi farms, fleeing growing thunderheads. All color drained from the Andaman. Bone-colored ships with masts like the tips of fish skeletons passed silently in the distance. We pressed on, navigating a mini mangrove forest where fishermen staked nets in receding water.

Back on our beach, we enjoyed some excellent seafood spaghetti and vegetable tempura. After dinner, I got 4 beers, a bucket of ice, and wrote until it was rude to stay on the computer any longer, then read. After some preemptive packing, I laid down with a little Legend of Zelda (A Link to the Past) but, instead of defeating Trinexx—the three-headed keeper of Turtle Rock—I fell asleep with my earphones and glasses on, the DS resting on my chest.