Half moon party

Don't worry if you don't know how to dance. The music will do the dancing for you.
Don't worry if the dancing being done on your behalf is little more than ill-timed spasms: everyone will be way too drunk to notice one more body flailing around in the dirt.

A Half Moon Party is nothing more than an excuse to have yet-another-party. After all, the Full Moon Party can only happen once a month. In an effort to fix that travesty of nature, Dark Moon Parties are held each month as well, but this would still leave a desert of sobriety lasting two weeks. If there is going to be a party every week the the obvious answer is to celebrate the Full Moon, No Moon and the two Half Moons. Of course there is some risk in this logic. What if a party each week is too much? What if no one comes?

After a quiet dinner on the beach I watched the half moon rise over the trees and I pondered this logic. Could this little island on the east cost of Thailand possibly support a party each and every week? It was only when I felt the bass of a distant subwoofer rip thought my sternum that I understood the unequivocal answer to this question. The party was most certainly on!

Waves of sound slammed into me, pulsating and sending my arms and legs into convulsions. My bare skin gave birth to a great green and orange dayglow dragon as body paint and black light granted new identities to all comers. Plastic buckets with a mix of Thai whiskey, Red Bull and toxic waste sloshed across the bar, only to be sucked down through a forest of straws and triumphant screams for more.

Great arches of flame shot across the stage as fire dancers dressed in dreadlocks, and naked flesh pulsated with thrusting hips to the music. An orgy of flesh filled the dance floor broken only when couples gleaming with sweat and passion stumbled into the distant bushes, their cries lost in the omnipresent beat of techo rock.

The air took on its own sultry texture as sweat mixed with smoke and sound giving birth to a feverish freeze demanding more: more buckets of whiskey, more fire, more body paint, more music. The glowing dragon on my arm began to melt under the strain and still the thrusting of the music held my body go; my feet, arms, and chest convulsed with the crowd. Somewhere sitting high in the trees overlooking this throng, Dionysus jumped and sang "Let the ritual of madness live. Let the ecstasy thrive." And then in with a sneer to an unseen and distant Puritan, "I have your children and they love it!"

Sense, logic, and dignity, none of these things existed until the sun rose and the countdown began to the Full Moon Party when 30,000 instead of 3,000 people would find a time and place for Freud's Id to run free even if that freedom lasts only an evening.

Pick your battles

-If you fight with a 50kg bag of rice for leg room you will lose.

This truism holds if you wage war for one minute, one hour or all day.
A tuk-tuk has a lot in common with an under-developed pickup truck where the bed has been encased in a steel cage, wrapped in a vinyl tarp, and lined with once padded wooden benches. Nothing can make a tuk-tuk comfortable. This is true if you are an over-fed American with a soft ass, a pony tail and a mono brow or you are 5-year old Lao boy dressed in your best overalls and kung-fu t-shirt.

Prior to my last tuk-tuk ride I might have believed that the 5-year old boy had the advantage in this situation. After all, instead of fighting an never ending and losing battle with the rice bags he simply flopped his body on top of one and promptly fell asleep. When the truck bed lurched forward slamming myself and and the 8 other people on the same bench against the cab this little boy briefly awoke only to conclude that we weren't there just yet. This same jolt that barely woke him initiated a game of musical chairs in my spine. (L-4 never found a seat when the music stopped.)


What this boy did not know as he slept: Little men get no respect for their gear and this was going to be a miserable ride for him too.

When he had to pee mom whipped out a water bottle, dropped his overalls to his ankles and rammed the boy's little pecker inside. This is a great method on smooth roads but we were not on a smooth road. Half way between needing to pee and complete relief the tuk-tuk again lurched. The hard mouthed plastic water bottle cum urinal went one way, the little boy went the other. I cringed, the boy screamed, and the clutch of assembled woman laughed. Suzanne helpfully noted "Its not like he has much to hurt yet." I suppose all men learn to look after themselves at some point and this little boy started learning early.

Fortunately for all of us where stagefright had not been a problem pain prevented a loose fire hose from becoming an ultimate protest.

In time the shrieks of pain and the accompanying laughter died down and my fourth lumbar vertebrae logged formal complaint, "If you don't allow me to sit next to my friends L3 and L5 you're going to wish you were that little boy with the bent penis"

I have always found negotiation with my spine to be particularly difficult, "I'll get you a nice massage when we get to Pakse."

"You're a cheap bastard, I don't believe you." And for emphasis, that little PIA, L-4 sent a bolt of lightning through my groin to my foot.

"The massages here are cheap!" I protested, "Its like buying a large latte at Starbucks." Under my breath I added "You little shit.", forgetting that when arguing with your own spine it can always hear you.


"If you call me a little shit one more time and if you renege on this massage promise I'm going to take up gymnastics and start working on my floor routine. I wonder if you'll still be willing to insult me after a few back hand springs."

I make it a point to only cave into blackmail when it's the easiest way out of a situation, "Suzanne, I need to get a massage once we get to Pakse." At this my loving wife rolled her eyes.

"This will be your 5th massage since we left home." I tried to interrupt but she kept going, "Let me guess: your body is insisting on it and if you don't get one you'll suffer terrible and never-ending pain and suffering." Again I tried to interrupt only to be silence again, "Perhaps if you weren't so cheap we would be riding in a VIP air conditioned bus and you wouldn't NEED a massage."

In a brief moment of complete honesty I faltered, "I would probably need a message then too but a good Lao massage is so nice."

I got my massage and got my spine all straightened out. I doubt that the little boy with the crooked penis got so lucky.