Dead Man's Party

On the afternoon of the world's most epic rave, Betsy and I hike up to a nearby convenience store for big beers at half the cost charged by the resort. She tells me about two female guests she met who were walking along this exact same spot after a night of partying when a thief on a moped snatched their purses and sped away. A brutal fact: beautiful Koh Phangan is a robbers' paradise of easy pickings, and the reveling, self-impaired Full Moon horde itself is infiltrated by predators of every stripe. So, into the office safe go laptop, purse and other valuables; at the party, my zippered pockets will protect cameras and wallet, I am certain.

The Full Moon Party is in full swing when we taxi in to Haad Rin around 10:30 ... but you'd almost never know it. So adept are the locals at staging this riot, there is virtually no traffic jam; the taxis have it all perfectly coordinated. Past the front gate, along the lane that leads to the shops and eateries, we hear almost nothing but the muted boom-boom-boom of bass speakers in the distance. We see a fair turnout of people, but not the crushing horde I expected. And then we take a side path down to the beach.

I am instantly glad I came.

Picture tens of thousands of undulating, day-glo painted, bucket-carrying, hands-in-the-air party-goers, bouncing up and down to the 19 different mega-sound systems blasting dance mixes out across the Gulf of Thailand. This spectacle of laser lights, fire twirlers and youthful incandescence extends for three-quarters of a mile in either direction, covering all sand from surf to tree line.

Fuel for this party rocket is sold literally by the bucket: For anywhere between 100 and 300 baht, you get a child's sand pail that contains a pint of vodka or whiskey, two cans of Red Bull, a splash of Coke or Sprite, and several straws for sharing. One bucket is enough to keep you cranked up till sunrise; hardly anyone stops at one.

Everyone makes friends easily at the Full Moon Party. Betsy and Warren run across some people they met a few nights ago, and everyone dances and parties together.

Even I make a new friend: an attractive Thai woman wants to dance, and she is very friendly: she plants both hands on my ass, pulls me in close and we start doing some nasty bumping. Hey, this is a lot of fu--

Both hands on my ass! I reach around to my back pocket. Wallet, gone!

Instantly I wrap my other arm around this thief's waist to keep her from bolting. She drops to the ground and scrambles madly in the sand for something, but I get there first and snatch back my rattlesnake-skin wallet, a gift from dear friends.

"Nice try, doll!" I growl as she disappears into the crowd.

I stand up, clutching my wallet in one hand and my now-empty bucket in the other. "Hey, you o.k.?" someone asks. I must be pop-eyed with adrenaline. I fight my way out of the mob to a nearby convenience store, where I feel safe enough to put my wallet where it should have been all along: in the money belt stuffed securely down the front of my pants.

That is the end of buckets, beer and all other libation for this evening. But I will have no trouble staying awake. For hours I replay this close call, and shudder. The only thing that saved me was the zippered pocket; it caused her to take too long, and I caught on.

A while later, another young nubile wants to dance up close, but this time I feel her fingers probing the zippered front pocket that holds Betsy's camera. I check the move and she darts off. Amazing!

If I ever attend another Full Moon Party, I intend to have a decoy wallet in place for the first Artful Dodger cutie-pie who wants to play grab-ass. I'll grab, too. Later, when she opens the wallet, she can read my note: "Dear Evil Pickpocket: I totally felt you up tonight and you got nothing. Thanks!"

---

The rave has lost its magic, so I wander back up to the shops along the lane that leads to the exit. It is close to 3 a.m. by now, so I buy a fruit crepe, sit down on the sidewalk and observe the March of the Inebriates. Some are staggering, others are supported on either side by friends, a few are carried out feet first. At one point I head for the shuttle buses myself, ready to call it a night. But no -- I don't want to leave without Warren and Betsy, who I lost in the crowd a long time ago, and I kind of want to make it to the sunrise. So I walk back down to the beach.

The party is getting old. Many bodies collapsed on the sand, presumably picked over by the carnivores. I watch a fist fight, which spectators break up quickly. The sun comes up, I catch a taxi back to the resort and get ready to check out for the long ferry and bus ride back to Bangkok.

Get this party started

At the height of every waxing moon, the Thai island of Koh Phangan, especially its southern coast, is assailed by an invading horde of young, white, scantily dressed barbarians. Wave after wave of backpack-toting twentysomethings pile off the ferry at Tongsala and are met by a gauntlet of touts who divert them to the countless resorts and guest houses that line the island's beaches.

I shoulder my way through the jabbering natives who thrust brochures and taxi-service placards at me and go searching for Betsy and Warren, who arrived a day earlier. I know the name of their lodging, Phangan Beach Resort, but not its location. A taxi driver offers to take me there, for 100 baht. So I grab a seat in the crude covered back of his pickup -- that's what passes for a taxi on Koh Phangan -- and off we go. Not 30 seconds later we arrive! I could have walked it in five minutes, but naturally the pirate did not tell me this.

This resort, like virtually every other halfway decent tourist accommodation in Thailand, is run by Westerners, in this case Brits and Germans. The bungalows are no-frills functional but clean: private open-air toilet and shower, a bed, electric fan and not much else, roughly $25 a night. But the covered dining porch has a lovely ocean view of Koh Samui, the next island over, and free wi-fi.

I meet up with Warren and Betsy, and we taxi in to nearby Haad Rin, where the action happens on Sunrise Beach.

Haad Rin is the world's most fortunate party village. Where Rio has its annual Carnivale and New Orleans its Mardi Gras, Haad Rin's high holiday happens every single month, sometimes drawing up to 30,000 revelers. As if that's not enough, the Full Moon Party has begotten the Half-Moon Party, the New Moon Party, the Gibbous Moon Party, the Sun Myung Moon Party, the ... but you get the idea. Permanently drunk on tourist dollars, Haad Rin has surrendered itself utterly to one purpose: putting on the most outrageous continuing mega-rave on the planet.

Friday morning the three of us escape to a much more placid beach to the east at Haad Yuan, accessible only via water taxi. We eat lunch at the wonderful Bamboo Hut -- where I will return on a future visit -- and while away the afternoon soaking up WAY too much sun.

---

Back in Haad Rin for chicken sandwiches and beers, I see a sign for a nearby massage parlor, and an item on its list of services catches my eye.

"I'm going for that," I announce.

Betsy knows I've been looking for a little special pampering, but Warren is taken aback.

"Oh, c'mon," I say. "Dude, we're in Thailand. Like you've never wanted to try it?" He shakes his head.

So we agree to split up for an hour and then meet back at the chicken joint. As they wander down to watch the fire twirlers on the beach, I trot back to the massage joint for a long, luxurious $6 pedicure. That brave woman earns her 25% tip.

South it is!

Warren and Betsy are adamant: "Dude, you have to come with us. Say you'll come with us."

We're all standing out front, where a taxi is waiting to take them to the train station for a trip south to the notorious Full Moon Party on the island of Koh Phangan. After that, they'll meet up with other classmates near Phuket. I only came down to see them off.

But already there's a problem: neither Warren nor Betsy knows the Thai phrase for "train station," and repeating these English words slowly and clearly to the cab driver is not helping. By coincidence I have already translated "train station" into written Thai script for a different rail excursion I was planning. So I run up to my room, grab the slip of paper and bring it back down to the driver. His face brightens and he nods and smiles. "Hualamphong," we both say at once, which is the name of the main station. Betsy takes my intervention as an omen.

"O.K., now you really do have to come," she insists. "We need you there. Promise me you'll come. Promise." She makes me shake on it. So, uh, I guess I'm going to a Full Moon Party. Read all about it here. And then try to picture me in the midst of it.

North? South? East? West?

My final two teaching sessions are put off until a new CELTA training cycle begins next week. As you'd expect, the red shirt uprising scared off a lot of registrants. Whereas our class attracted 18 students, the next one might muster six.

This leaves me with a week to do pretty much whatever I want ... and here I sit, paralyzed with indecision.

I could follow my classmates south to the laid-back party beaches near Phuket and on the way back meet up with my German friends in the expat town of Hua Hin. Or, I might head north to Chiang Mai and eat nothing but amazing curry noodles and chicken, khao soi gai, for three days. For sure I will take a day trip west on Thailand's old-timey railway to see the famed bridge over the river Kwai near Kanchanaburi. Classmate Roslyn made me promise to go east to the sin-city town Pattaya and meet her American friend who has lots of useful connections for me.

What I cannot do is sit here marking time in Metro Park. Because that's exactly what we all did last week, and it drove us literally to drink.

---

By Sunday troubles in town have abated and we can safely venture out again, so the Metro Parkers taxi over to Wat Pho, the largest Buddhist temple in Bangkok, which runs a training school for traditional Thai massage. My stressed-out classmates can hardly wait for their glorious hour-long kneading.

I should have warned them that Thai massage is not like a spa treatment. Think of it more like yoga being performed on your body by a trash compactor. You wear what looks like karate pants that are loose enough to accommodate the moves and stretches they put you through.

At one point Betsy lets out a yelp. The masseur is working on the hand that she broke in two places when she was drunk at a party one time and punched a dude.

I get the impression that no one enjoyed Thai massage very much. "Gonna be sore tomorrow," someone mumbles.

On the way out of Wat Pho, my classmates get snared by a tout who offers to "help" them plan their tour of the sights. I stand back and watch. The tout asks to see our admission receipts from the temple and then makes a show of marking each with a purple felt pen. This grants us free admission to all the other sites, he says, "and these drivers right here will take you around, just 20 baht for each."

By "drivers," he means tuk-tuk drivers. I do my best to keep a straight face. A tuk-tuk is a three-wheeled transport that seats two or three vict- I mean, passengers. Every last tuk-tuk driver in Bangkok is a demon dispatched from Hell to prey upon clueless farang tourists. He will take you everywhere EXCEPT where you want to go -- to a tailor, a diamond seller, an antique shop, anyplace that will pay him a meager commission for delivering fresh white meat.

So we pile into two tuk-tuks and away we go. The drivers are on good behavior at first, whisking us to some ornate temple or other. Our next stop is a clothier. The driver begs us to at least go in. "They give me voucher to pay for gas," he pleads. But inside, the owner stops us at the door: "You need to buy membership card to look around." Betsy, who is 6'1" and towers over both tuk-tuk drivers, wheels back outside and informs them: "We're going to lunch now."

The villains carry us hell-bent on a roundabout course NOT to the food court we requested but to a nondescript restaurant with fancy prices -- yet another commission opportunity for the tuk-tuks. So we cut them loose and get on with our lives.

---

It is Belgian Erwin's last night in town before returning to his home in Cambodia, so we stay up way too late at Warren's apartment playing a card game that Betsy teaches us, a drinking game called Presidents & Assholes. Just about every card combination requires that someone, or everyone, take a drink (or at least pretend to). Warren, who is 23, doesn't catch on to the "pretend" strategy and pays the price the next morning, I'm sure.

These people might be a very bad influence on me.

School is over, but not really

Because of the troubles in downtown Bangkok, my class misses its entire final week of CELTA training -- fully 25% of the course. The school's solution is to throw a week's worth of lesson plan notes and quizzes at us via email for completion by next Friday. This feels kind of like being in a movie theater when fire breaks out three-quarters of the way through the film, and the ushers shout out how it ends as we're rushing for the exit.

Students who absolutely, positively must leave town this weekend have emailed their final coursework and are bugging out. But I have more flexibility and will be around to teach two final elementary-class lessons next week.

---

Dinner out with (clockwise from lower left) British Mike who dropped out, Betsy, British Warren, Erwin from Belgium, and Anton, who is talking to his Thai girlfriend.

---

Thursday evening the Metro-Parkers are invited over for beers with Matt, one of our trainers who lives in the complex. Matt is a scrappy-looking Brit with a rugby-player build, living his "beer, babes and 'ball" life in the bachelor Heaven that is Thailand. We are joined by Graeme, the school marketing manager, who himself enjoys a very good time in the Land of Smiles. On the student side, it's just me, Aussie Brett who bails early, and Kiwi Mike.

Mike has a way of pushing people's buttons.

Early in training, Mike had an altercation with one of the front-desk girls at school. As the story goes, another trainer, Danny, made him sign a contract that he would be respectful to the help. Mike has been doing a slow burn ever since, and tonight he starts in on Danny-this and Danny-that. Graeme steps up to defend his fellow trainer and soon he and Kiwi Mike are shouting at each other.

I try to defuse the situation. "You know, if either you or Danny were a woman, I'd suggest that this sounds like sexual tension between you two." Graeme just about falls out of his chair laughing, but Kiwi Mike seethes on in silence. For the rest of the night, whenever the conversation is headed for bad places, I steer it back to everyone's favorite topic, hot Thai women. Men are so easy to redirect!

The culprit behind all this drama is beer. Matt's kitchen is a loaves-and-fishes repository of liter after liter of ice-cold Sing-ha, bag after bag of potato chips and Bugles. Kiwi Mike and I do not stumble out until near daybreak. At the front gate to my building he takes me by the shoulders, looks me in the eye and says: "Jeff, you're a good guy. But you've got to let go of your anger."

---

For twelve bucks in Portland, I can get a basic haircut at Great Clips, where the corporate goal is to get the next customer into the chair within 10 minutes. On Friday at a suburban mall in Bangkok, the same amount of money buys me a meticulous hair-by-hair styling, complete with shampoo and scalp massage from a nice pretty lady, and no one is expecting a tip (but I leave one).

A taxi ride to or from PDX might set you back, what, $30? Our ride to the mall, for haircuts and shopping, cost us under $5, split four ways -- again, no tip, we just round up to the nearest five-baht increment. Labor in Thailand costs next to nothing, which keeps prices very low ... but it also fuels the resentments of the serf class that bubble up in the form of this red shirt insurrection.

How soon, I wonder, before the folks on the bottom rung start taking out their frustrations on all these unfathomably rich westerners?

---

Tangerine juice: I practically live on this stuff.

KA-BOOM!

I get a wonderful nine hours of sleep, because this neighborhood of Bangkok is so quiet through a night of curfew across all provinces.

Other areas, I see on the news this morning, not so much.

---

On Tuesday evening, just hours before the army begins moving into place for its daybreak assault, a handful of us Metro-Parkers venture out to feed our craving for big, greasy western food at a German restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 11, one or two kilometers outside hostile territory. The restaurant is doing a bustling expat trade -- you can't keep a Deutscher from his Schweinekotelett -- but the rest of Sukhumvit looks like downtown Portland on Christmas morning: vendors, hustlers, gawkers, all vanished.

At Anton's suggestion, we taxi over for after-dinner drinks on the rooftop of ultra-posh State Tower. Bangkok's notorious traffic is nil, but the driver takes a roundabout course to avoid the you-know-whats. State Tower is Beverly Hills glitzy, but we can only reach the outdoor bar on the 64th floor, not the 87th, because they won't let Betsy in with her cheap flip-flops. Never mind the rest of us in our scroungy blue jeans and t-shirts, women's footwear is a big deal in this place. But even the lower-level view is stunning. The lights of flat, flat Bangkok fall off the edge of the earth in all directions. Only the dark patches where authorities have cut off power to the rebel camps give any clue to the trouble below.

Next morning the crackdown begins -- on the red shirts AND on us, as all course assignments are due via email by 5 p.m. Some procrastinators have barely started, but they are the detestable sort who can bang out A-work in 20 minutes.

Wednesday evening the other Metro-Parkers walk a mile up the road to the seafood restaurant, but I'm tired of spending big baht on meals out and opt for wonton soup at the vendor cart close by. Walking back, I swing into 7-Eleven for a chocolate ice cream fix ... but it's closed. My 24-hour market has gone dark early for the curfew, and in that moment the enormity of this civic upheaval is brought home to me: I must go to bed without my ice cream.

Finals week

Communications between the two factions are increasingly tense -- one side is perceived as imperious and unresponsive while the other is letting its frustrations give way to irrational behavior -- and I am worried that this standoff might devolve into chaos by the end of the day.

I am referring of course to relations between IH Bangkok and my fellow students.

As the red shirt occupation forces yet another day's shutdown of the school, my classmates are beyond restless -- especially those who must leave the country this weekend, with or without their CELTA. But Cambridge cannot certify them until they've logged enough hours of observed teaching time in front of actual students.

The inactivity is wearing, even on those of us who aren't time-constrained: instead of using these free days to tighten up lesson plans and finish assignments, students are sleeping in, watching movies, drinking beer and playing cards until all hours. After three weeks of high-octane intensity, the class is losing its mojo in the downtime.

And so the testy emails begin bouncing back and forth between disgruntled students and the school officials who are trying like mad to find a practical solution. Finally Roslyn breaks the tension with a long note telling everyone to chill. Roz is this daft but lovable old doll from Australia whose teaching style is best described as "demented mother hen." She will be forever famous in CELTA circles for the day she drilled her young students repeatedly in the proper pronunciation of "can't" ... but her Aussie accent turned it into, um, a different C-word.

At last, IH Bangkok gets approval for a plan that lets us email our remaining assignments, receive a bit of distance learning, and generally get on with our lives, certificates in hand. The arrangement comes with some tight deadlines that instantly refocus everyone's concentration. We might just get through this thing after all!

Casualties of war

The Thai Army posts the area around my school as a "live firing zone," which means no one can get in or out. Classes are canceled for a second day -- or a third, if you count the informal conference sessions that were scheduled for Sunday.

I am very glad that I chose to live way over here in Thonburi and not in one of the high-rise apartments near Silom, which are now under siege. Residents cannot even go out on their balconies for fear of being picked off by snipers. Water and electricity have been turned off in the red shirt areas, and businesses are shuttered.

Sunday evening a bunch of us hike up the road to a seafood restaurant for a wonderful sit-down feast that fills the table's lazy Susan. Conversation is all about the havoc that will ensue if the school remains closed. Most students have firm exit plans: jobs to get back to, visa limits, places to be. But Cambridge cannot issue our CELTA certificates if we do not log the requisite hours of observed teaching practice or receive key training. Will we have to complete the course somewhere else? If so, will it cost extra? A few students are running perilously short of cash already.

So much violent civil unrest, so many lives turned upside-down, and all I can think about is: "This stuff's not going to wreck my vacation plans next week, is it?"

---

A few of us agree to meet up later at Warren's to play some cards. I get there a little late and Aussie Brett comes down to the lobby to let me in. On the way up in the elevator he warns me: "Mike brought a girl. And then left her."

Sure enough, there's this scorching-hot Thai babe in tight jeans, a white thong peeking out the back and a low-cut black sweater that demands: "You must stare at these breasts." Warren offers her a beer and she promptly reaches for the biggest bottle in the fridge. Why did Kiwi Mike bring her here? And where did he disappear to? So we sit around the dining room table playing 21 until he gets back a half-hour later. He fell in a mud puddle, he said, and had to go home and change; his right arm is still caked in mud. The girl glares at Mike, but he ignores her and sits down to play cards. So she goes to the couch and pouts.

Finally Kiwi Mike is ready to go clubbing (which might be an idiotic thing to do in war-torn Bangkok). At the door, the Thai hottie says: "See you, guys. Next time I bring three friends."

"Bring four," I joke. But her eyes brighten.

"Oh, you like sandwich?" she says, not meaning the type you get from the deli.

Uhhhh. I look at Mike. "Do I have my fear face on?" I ask him.

"You should," he grins. "Her friends are high-end vampires."

They disappear into the night and I proceed to lose 60 baht (about two bucks) to Warren and Aussie Brett in Texas hold 'em.

---

The one silver lining in this whole school-closure debacle is that I get some breathing room in my schedule to complete assignments and polish lesson plans. And that is what this day will be about.

I see my first red shirts

I leave for school at 6 a.m. Friday, concerned that the Sky Train might be closed, throwing the morning commute into chaos. Happily, the train is still running, but only as far as Chong Nonsi, the stop before mine -- an easy walk.

The train is virtually empty, and so are the streets all the way to Sala Daeng station, near my school. Sidewalks normally choked with vendors and office workers instead are lined with police and military vehicles. And there are many soldiers.

The Jets and the Sharks are ready to rumble.

Taking no chances, the school closes for the day. Most of my classmates get word in time and do not attempt the commute. I stay and work for a while, then retreat back to safety across the river.

---

Friday evening I bump into Betsy, Kiwi Mike and Warren at the 7-Eleven. We all end up back at Warren's place (which is much nicer than any of ours). After a few beers, we tag along with Mike -- a brick-solid New Zealander with a taste for adventure -- who's meeting up with some mates at an expat bar in Sukhumvit.

At the bar, Kiwi Mike disappears to work the room, so the remaining three of us hang out playing cutthroat pool. Wisely I switch to club soda, but Betsy and Warren throw back a couple of shots with more beer. At 12:30 closing Mike wanders back to our table with a Thai bar girl in tow. Okayyyy ...

Mike makes proper introductions all around. Attempting to make small talk, Warren asks her: "So, where did you learn English?" Apparently this is considered a terribly rude question because she instantly turns on heel and storms away.

"Thanks a lot, Warren!" says Mike. "There goes my (uh, let's say "date") for the evening." Poor Warren has no idea what he said or did.

By this time Betsy's feminist outrage is boiling over at the Sukhumvit flesh trade. So Kiwi Mike delights in turning up the stove a little hotter: he leads us a couple of blocks over, along sidewalks packed curb-to-wall with whores, to "a place we can get a bite to eat" -- which turns out to be a McDonald's across the street from the girlie bar where he's headed in to meet a new companion du noir. Betsy goes ballistic.

"I hate this! I hate this!" she rages. "This is evil and wrong and I do NOT want to be here!" The moment is deteriorating badly. So Warren and I load Betsy into the very next cab, wish Kiwi Mike happy hunting, and head back across the river.

Or try to.

What we do not know is that the red shirt confrontation has exploded (literally) into violence this evening. We round a corner and are instantly halted at a military checkpoint, where soldiers search the trunk before waving us ahead into a chaotic, dead-end traffic jam. At one end of this road are the soldiers, and at the other end, a ragtag band of deadly serious-looking red shirts who wave us back the way we came. And so we ping-pong slowly back and forth between the two factions. Every so often our driver jumps out of the cab and runs down the road to holler and jabber at other taxi drivers. And the meter ticks on ...

Finally a side road opens up and we make our escape onto an adjacent freeway. We get home sometime after 2:30 a.m.

Hey teacher, leave those kids alone

Friday marks the halfway point in the training, so a bunch of us head one block over to O'Reilly's Pub for a celebratory pint or three. Fries and Heinz catsup washed down with Tiger beer is a blessed respite from Asian culture, and now I appreciate why expats need their small piece of home to retreat into. After a few rounds Anton, a nice young American fellow who teaches up north and speaks fluent Thai, leads us off to a terrific supper at a Middle Eastern restaurant just a few Sky Train stops up the line. We are long gone from Silom Road when a drive-by shooter on a motorcycle kills a policeman and wounds two bystanders later that night in front of Bangkok Bank, two blocks down from the school. I read about it the next morning online at www.bangkokpost.com.

Anton's restaurant is down a side street in the Sukhumvit area, a spectacle that makes Sodom and Gomorrah look like Mayberry. The seven us file past a gauntlet of massage parlors, girlie bars and other delights -- a colorful walk, and worth it for the massive Middle Eastern feast we are served. But at the end I am just about comatose ... possibly something to do with a week of minimal sleep, marathon study sessions and, oh yeah, those beers. As the die-hard partyers push on to the next venue, Erwin from Belgium and I drag ourselves up to the Sky Train platform and head home.

---

The pressure is building and a few trainees are starting to crack. One poor fellow, a Mr. Bean-like Brit, stumbles and stammers through his final 40-minute teaching practice of Week 2. At the end he announces to his stunned class of young adult learners: "Thank you. Now I am going to go have a drink and hang myself in the toilet."

One week down, three to go

Silom Road is back to normal, more or less, at least for now, as the main action moves elsewhere. The military presence is reduced to a handful of bored-looking young soldiers positioned on and around the sky train platform. Smiling office girls bring them treats, which is cute to watch.

My entire weekend is dedicated to sleeping and coursework, in that order. My first written assignment, due tomorrow at 6 p.m., is amazingly finished ahead of schedule! Huzzah! But I have not started a single page of textbook reading, nor has anyone else -- no time.

This week I will take pictures and introduce my classmates.