Room for a View > Letter from Thailand
Wild, Wild East: Sex, Drugs, and Pyrotechnics
in the New Thailand
by Josh Robinson

Every 28 days, on the night of the full moon, thousands of people from around the globe converge on a tiny peninsula on Ko Pha Ngan, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand. Young and old, drugged, drunken, and sober, clothed and naked, Thai and farang (a vaguely disparaging Thai term for non-Asians), they come to party. The party on Hat Rin, which has beaches on its east and west sides, starts before the sun goes down and lasts until it is up again. But this is definitely not the only place to party on Ko Pha Ngan.

Across the island, on an otherwise deserted beach, is Narnia Bungalows*, a scene of almost continual decadence and depravity. Drugs, prostitutes, and illegal pyrotechnics are offered and even encouraged. Some find the place so alluring that they come for a few days and leave a month later, and many return year after year. In fact, drugs and parties are the main reasons most people (almost exclusively young backpackers) choose to visit Ko Pha Ngan in the first place. But even Thailand’s more “mainstream” destinations cater to pleasure-seekers.

Off the opposite coast of southern Thailand lies Ko Phuket, a world-class resort and center for regional culture with a well-known seamier side. While it offers some of the finest diving, sailing, and food on Earth, it also has hundreds, if not thousands, of prostitutes plying their trade from open-air bars on Patong Beach. Alcohol is everywhere and powerful pharmaceuticals are readily sold over the counter in dozens of chemists’ shops, as they are throughout Thailand.

Though fully aware of Thailand’s fame (or infamy) as an international party destination, and not being at all averse to a good time, I made my first trip to the Kingdom for a reason even my grandmother approved of: to obtain my certification to Teach English as a Foreign Language (tefl). For just 6500 Bhat (us$148: us$1 = 43-44B) per month I rented a room at Le Tong Beach Hotel at the sleepy north end of Patong. For most of the time I lived in Phuket’s most popular beach town; it seemed much more a sleepy seaside Muslim village than the center of sex-tourism it is often portrayed as being.

I saw a much different side of Patong at the festival to celebrate the start of the tourist season on November 1, 2002. It took place during the evening hours, and though I had invited everyone in my class, all but three of the twenty other students stayed away, fearing a repeat of the Bali attacks just a few weeks before.

This stands in stark contrast to reports by tourist authorities around that time, which showed dramatic increases in visits to Phuket, as vacationers changed plans at the last moment to avoid Bali. Thai daily the Nation reported on October 20 that www.Phuket.com had seen a surge in reservations since the attack on Bali. According to Neil Cummings, the Web site’s director, the surge in reservations was “influenced [by events in Bali.] People are still thinking they’ll go away at Christmas, and they’re looking for an alternative.”

This makes some sense. Thailand, unlike Indonesia even before last October’s bombings, has been relatively free of militant groups in recent decades. The sole exception being occasional attacks by the Patani National Liberation Organization (pulo), which seeks independence for several Muslim majority provinces along the southern border with Malaysia. Until annexed by Siam (now Thailand) early last century, the provinces were under the sovereignty of the king of Patani. Largely dormant of late, the group has typically targeted Thai security forces and government officials, not foreigners.

In the heart of Patong the night of the festival, most people seemed unconcerned about pulo or travel advisories. The streets and bars were packed, and most people appeared to place a low priority on maintaining the clear head that would be needed to keep an eye peeled for suspicious packages or persons. The Thai government has made overt attempts to assuage the fears of potential visitors, although warnings from their counterparts in, for example, Australia, urge their citizens to stay away.

In the days and weeks after the attack on Bali, the authorities here touted their increased security measures at every opportunity, and at least on Phuket, the stepped-up police and security presence was obvious even to casual observers. The numbers of uniformed police and security officers on the streets and outside tourist-oriented establishments gradually increased, and roadblocks suddenly became a common sight on the road leading to Patong from Phuket town.

The night of the festival, it quickly became obvious what many people come to Phuket for. Western males, from teenagers to senior citizens, drank beer in the company of Thai bar girls. These prostitutes proved particularly aggressive, often physically grabbing us in an effort to obtain our business. Once we reached Soi Bangla, the heart of Patong’s nightlife scene, we eventually settled on a very flashy nightclub, which seemed less given over to the night trade. It closed at 2am as mandated by law, but we soon located a spot that openly ignored the law, and stayed until after 4am.

Just over a week later, with my course successfully completed, I headed for Ko Pha Ngan with a recommendation from a classmate to stay at Narnia. My bungalow cost 100B (us$2) per night. It had a porch, double bed, toilet, cold-water shower, and a nice mosquito net which assuaged my fear about the poorly-drained ground under and around my room, which, being the last bungalow available, was the farthest from the beach and least desirable.

But this is not all Narnia had to offer. Almost as soon as I checked in, the owner let me know that he could get me “ganja” (marijuana) whenever I wanted it at a cost as low as that of most things in the Kingdom. That evening, around the almost-nightly fire on the beach, I met some of my fellow guests. For one of them, an Englishman named Thomas, Narnia was like a second home: the proprietors are his relatives, and he has been visiting every year for sixteen years, or fully half his life.

According to Thomas, Narnia’s guests can party with impunity because the family that runs the place is also related to the head of law enforcement on the island. “The police know exactly what goes on down here, but they also know they can’t do anything about it,” he said.
Immediately after this revelation, Thomas offered me a dose of “magic” mushrooms and went on to explain that the owner could also get Ecstasy and methamphetamines, or ya bah. Without police protection, all this would be quite risky business. While paying a “fine” of 50,000B (us$1,136) on the spot will often prevent jail time for a simple pot bust almost anywhere in Thailand, it might prove difficult to escape a sentence for possessing “harder” drugs.

The authorities are certainly aware that Ko Pha Ngan has become a haven for drug use and stories abound of drug-search roadblocks on the way to the Full Moon Party. The authors of the Lonely Planet guidebook for Thailand have received a number of reports about travelers being offered and sold drugs by restaurant or resort operators and then promptly being busted by police officers who somehow knew exactly where to look.

Guests were not only using illegal drugs, either. On my second day at Narnia, Celio, a Portuguese twenty-something-year-old, announced his plan to go to the pharmacy in town for some Xanax (a powerful anti-anxiety drug which is often used recreationally). Danny, a middle-aged American who spends several months at Narnia every year, told us that Xanax costs 130B (us$3) for ten 1mg pills and that Valium and diet pills containing stimulants were also available.

The night of the Full Moon Party kicked off at Narnia with an illegal, professional-caliber fireworks display that likely posed more of a danger than a random terror attack on any much larger crowd we might have happened to be in. Later, a songthaew (a pickup truck with two benches in the bed covered by a roof) ferried us to the party. Despite warnings to the contrary, there was no sign of a police checkpoint along the way.

Fragile Tourist Economy
This omission was telling in several ways. A terror attack in Thailand could do tremendous damage to an economy still feeling the effects of the Asian collapse from 1997 to 1998. While the government continues to focus on exports as the primary source of foreign exchange, the $6 billion-a-year income from millions of visitors equals that from textiles, the single largest export earner. As the Full Moon Party would be an easy target (though, due to its remoteness and the close-knit nature of the island’s small community of full-time residents, not as easy as some), the government’s apparent decision to shift police attention from the island to more well-known locations seems to underscore their belief that the terror threat is under control, and the government merely needs to put on a good show to keep the tourist dollars flowing in.

The Balinese learned last year how costly a miscalculation on this point could be. Tourism is the third-largest earner of foreign exchange for Indonesia. Tiny Bali, which covers only 5,620 of the archipelago’s 1,900,000 square kilometers, is the most visited of that nation’s more than 13,000 islands. Its economy is closely linked to tourism, and has been hit hard in the aftermath of the bombings. Almost immediately after the blast, news reports from Bali’s main resort, Kuta, showed the spectacular white sand beach preternaturally deserted. Some observers fear it may be years before things there return to normal. While Bali is the most popular spot in the country for foreigners, many other parts of Indonesia draw visitors and dollars from overseas as well.

On the other hand, drugs pose perhaps a greater threat to Thailand’s security than does terrorism. In the north, the United Wa State Army, which controls an autonomous zone in neighboring Burma, often makes incursions into Thailand to smuggle nearly one billion ya bah pills each year into the Kingdom from manufacturing plants just outside Thai territory. Skirmishes have led to lengthy border closures in recent months, and allegations that the Burmese junta shares in the profits from the drug trade keep the historically poor relations between the Thais and Burmese at a low ebb.

At the same time, a serious crackdown on Ko Pha Ngan’s drug trade could drive away the islanders’ new-found fortunes. The Full Moon Party has become what is generally described as the best beach party in the world in an amazingly short period of time. Little written history exists on the subject, but legend has it that a small group of backpackers with a guitar and car battery-powered stereo were the first to celebrate the full moon on Hat Rin in 1987, when few outside Thailand had ever heard of the island.

The event as it is now known was founded around 1992 by the owners of Paradise Bungalows, which is located on what is referred to by farang as “Sunrise Beach.” The average attendance has increased 1,000 percent in the past decade, and the millennium celebration on Hat Rin, according to an abc News report, “drew more people than possibly any single event in Southeast Asia” and attracted “20,000 to 30,000 revelers a night for two straight weeks.” Drugs and parties are what bring the backpackers and their dollars to Ko Pha Ngan, and, like Bali, the island’s economy has come to depend on its visitors.

The Ostrich Mentality
We reached the eastern beach on Hat Rin at about 2am. The scene was almost unbelievable. Thousands of colored lights and other decorations gave everything an otherworldly look. Dozens of all-night bars and clubs lined the beach, their music pouring out into the beach and into the water.

People staggered, stared, skinny dipped, urinated into the water, and danced wildly. One had to take care not to step on any of the revelers who had fallen asleep, passed out, or decided to engage in lewd and lascivious behavior. Many partygoers sipped straight from small buckets full of ice, rice whiskey (or local rum), and a mixer, most often Krating Daeng (Red Bull), an “energy drink” loaded with sugar, stimulants, and vitamins.

The police were nowhere to be seen, though undercover officers have been reported to patrol the beach on full moon nights. On the other hand, possibilities for devastating mayhem were everywhere. Nothing I could see would have prevented a well-conceived plot to drive explosives into town on a truck, or onto the beach in a boat. And while the huge crowds would ensure the effectiveness of such an attack, no one, local or visitor, seemed too concerned about this possibility.

The Thai attitude toward the possibility of one of its many tourist attractions being targeted was perhaps summed up best a few weeks after the party, when Deputy Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh reacted to a cnn report that al-Qaeda had used Thailand as a safe haven in the region. On December 8, the Bangkok Post reported his denial and stated, “Thai officials had adopted an ostrich mentality by denying any existence of terrorists in the country.”

“We are not trying to side-step the problem. The truth is the truth. We have adopted preventive measures and they are very meticulous,” Yongchaiyudh was quoted as saying. For now, visitors can only hope they are more meticulous than efforts at controlling drugs and regulating night spots.

—Edited by Lorna Tychostup

*Names of establishments and individuals, descriptions, etc., have been changed as needed to protect the identities of those written about.