Mermaid hunting

The idea that I might pay money for the privilege of dunking myself underwater four times a day for 4 days only because SUCBA diving is fun and all tourists like to do it is inexcusably lame. If I am to maintain my my bloated self image as a cross between Gulliver, and a Nietzscheian Superman, (no cape thanks) then finding another reason to go diving rested at the top of my priority list. If I had gone diving simply because 'it's fun' then I would be no better than the mindless masses of lemmings who flock to Thailand to experience diving at its absolute finest. So with the threat of becoming part of the herd hanging over my head, I sought, and then found a solution to my crisis.

I could board a diving boat, eat boundless piles of flaming-hot Thai food, spend every waking hour diving and reminiscing on the beauty of it all if I did these thing in the quest for something greater. So I set out to find the legendarily illusive and seductive mermaid. For generations, sailors have scanned the waters hoping to catch a glimps of these fish-women who have the torso of a young full breasted woman, long flowing hair, deeply seductive eyes and of course the legs and pelvis of a slime-covered and scaly fish. (What these sailors of old hoped to do with the fishy end of a mermaid I cannot say.)

While my 30 boat companions wasted their time marveling at an enormous stingray as she glided along the bottom like an alien space craft before crashing in the Nevada desert, I watched the blue depths for my mermaid. While everyone else on my boat found a sense of perfect calm and security as a giant sea turtle leisurely grazed the reef's fire coral, my frustration began to grow. Then, breaking the surface for air, my dive master expressed something close to religious rapture as he recounted the masses of circling barracuda and the lone leopard shark hunting on the bottom. I wanted nothing more than to scream in frustration: 13 dives and 4 days later my mermaid remained beyond my grasp.

Unlike the searchers of old who longed to find a mermaid, and yet had no comprehensive plan for her, I knew full well what I would do with the fishy end: Sushi!

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.