Full Moon party, Ko Phng Ngan, Thailand

The Bucket People
Full Moon Party on Ko Phangan

Part 2

Once upon a time, in the 1960s, a young generation in the western hemisphere, that came to be known as the hippy movement, grew their hair, stopped washing and began protesting against the traditional order of things. They were apparently dissatisfied with the materialistic culture that had emerged in their countries after the Second World War. They had strange ideas. Wrong or right, for a brief moment in time, people experimented – not least on themselves.
Soon rock music and the Vietnam War were rallying cries for a new generation and gigantic rock festivals in the US and Europe attracted thousands of young people who tuned in, turned on and dropped out.
But the freaks grew up and became bankers and presidents. Rock festivals became corporate business. Their alternative insights sharpened their business acumen – they dreamt up the post-modern pop-corporate rubbish that fills our lives today - franchises, Part 2s and corporate brand logos that are more globally recognizable than Jesus.
And it appears to work. In the United States, people spend an average of two months a year in front of a television.

The drugs have changed too – the kids no longer smoke weed from around the world, but cultivate hydroponic poison grown in their bedrooms. LSD, the elixir of chemical enlightenment, has been replaced by Ecstasy, a drug so innocuous, so shallow and vapid, it makes you like everyone. Just think of that.

Dance music, made by machines, is the catalyst for the new leisure drug industry. Locked in illegal warehouses in Detroit and Devon for a few years, it soon came out in the open and destroyed what was left of live music, creating the lowest common denominator in music since human beings beat their heads to a rock chanting.

Nowhere more so than on Hat Rin Beach, a place so international, it’s culturally bland. There’s great future potential for global expansion. Full Moon Party Beach™ franchises may only be a few thoughts away.
All you need for the perfect party is a tropical beach crammed with hundreds of cheap bungalows, ten huge sound systems and a gang of fire-breathers – poor Thais hired to swallow paraffin all night, some of them children. It doesn’t sound sophisticated because it isn’t. Add several thousand soon to be unconscious kids from the suburbs of the Western world and you have – one of the biggest dance culture events on the planet.

The Full Moon Party is not really in Thailand, it is on a planet all its own, a kind of Interzone, where the only rule is profit.
The Thais control it - while they disapprove of our degenerate hedonism silently.
Most local people on Hat Rin Beach regard the Full Moon Party first and foremost as an incredible business opportunity. It’s a firmly established once-a-month feeding frenzy and the cash registers never stop ringing.
But the Thais remind us gently that we are not at home – while shop-owners ply them with cheap whisky, the police bust hapless kids for smoking a joint .
The danger of arrest and extortionate fines makes the consumption of weed, acid or pills too high a risk for most party people. The psychedelic happening is mostly myth. The legal poison – because poison we will have, no matter what – is the Bucket.

The Bucket is the perfect solution to the unruly mob – for just over 3 $, revelers can purchase a small plastic bucket with a quart of cheap Thai whiskey, Red Bull and Coke. A couple of those and you will feel like you want to die.
Even the pharmacies on Hat Rin Beach Road sell Buckets. The pharmacists, middle-aged professionals without a hint of compassion, sell and sell. But they don’t make eye-contact with their inebriated customers. Their own children are safely locked away from this madness.

Continued...

Read Part 1 of The Bucket People

Read Part 3 of The Bucket People

Photographs by Aroon Thaewchatturat (www.onasia.com) If you would like to read more about festivals in Thailand, check the following stories:

The Illustrated Kill Convention - The Phuket Vegetarian Festival,

The Chonburi Buffalo Race

Phi Ta Khon - Thailand's Halloween

Fat chance for the (Heineken) Fat Fest