Muay Thai boxing and the Full Moon Party

We're at the Muay Thai stadium in Chiang Mai, waiting for the fight to start. Our seats are in the front row, and we expect to be sprayed with blood, especially during the heavyweight match. For this main event, an American fighter is pitted against a Thai.

Muay Thai is a nightly happening here, so the small arena is filled mostly with foreign spectators. Most of the Thais are just there to gamble. They're clamoring and laughing in the corners while the westerners fidget in their seats. Music comes from the speakers, a non-stop needly meandering punctuated now and again by a honk.

Muay Thai kickboxing, if you don't know already, is one of the most powerful martial arts. Fists and feet are used from a distance, but the strongest blows are usually delivered with knees or elbows. Thai people have told me that every Thai male, since childhood, is well acquainted with Muay Thai technique. Like soccer is for the English or whoever, Muay Thai is just part of their motor memory.

The music in the arena has swelled to fill the room. Judges and spectators tap in time on hard surfaces, watching the empty ring. In flecks and pulses, violence slowly populates the air.

FIGHT 1: Baby-boy beat-down

Finally, the loudspeaker crackles on with some garbled but excited announcement. The first fighter enters the ring. He's a child of about seven, slight in build, wearing a green robe. He bows to the four sides of the ring and takes a seat in the red corner.

The next fighter is a full-sized brawler, about two hundred pounds of hard muscle. Grinning broadly, he rotates in the center of the ring and sweeps his upturned hands toward the crowd.

Just kidding. The next fighter is a child of the same size, maybe lankier. Unlike red, who is compact and expressionless, he is awkward-looking, with a long face, wet eyes, and a slack mouth. He wears the blue gloves.

The boys do this routine in the middle of the ring, a sequence of movements that appear half spiritual rite and half showmanship -- down on one knee, twiddling the fists, moving in lunges. This sequence is meant, in part, to honor the fighters' lineage of Muay Thai teachers and also to allow each fighter to gauge abnormalities in the floor of the ring.

The fight begins. Red dominates early on, driving blue around the ring with kicks to his midsection. Blue is able to parry some kicks, but then red wraps him up. He whirls blue around, lifting knees into his ribcage. Blue's face as it passes me seems to plead with the crowd.

The bell rings and the fighters go to their corners. Their coaches pour cold water over their legs, massaging and slapping the muscles. Here blue's abuse turns to a seed of strength which he nurses during the break.

In the second round, he makes use of his longer reach to keep red at bay while keeping his feet in red's face. He launches a foot thrust at him, and red tries to catch it but the foot goes right through to his diaphragm.

Blue keeps this up in the third round, and in the end the ref raises his glove into the air. He's dripping with sweat. He looks more than anything like a kid who just got out of the wading pool.


FIGHT 2: Bloody

The fighters are young adults now. Blue looks dangerous from the beginning. His posture is low-slung, and his deadly eyes watch red from under lazy lids.

Still, these two fight more tentatively than the children. A kick from one of those long, lean legs is not easily absorbed. They feint for a while before blue connects a swift kick to red's mouth. Red tries a midsection kick, which blue grabs, holds against his hip, and returns with a roundhouse to red's chest.

Blue follows red into the corner, and they wrap each other up. They strike with knees until the ref separates them. Immediately blue kicks red over sideways with his right leg, then knees him in the face with his left. Red totters, blood flowing from his nose and dripping off his upper lip, and falls to the floor.


FIGHT 3: Worth the admission

At the beginning of the fight, the fighters bob their fists and knees to the music, moving like some sort of killer dancers. The opponents are well matched this time.

Blue makes the first attacks because his kicks are longer and quicker. At first he connects quite a few, and seems to be dominating the fight. As his opponent retreats, he takes gazelle-like leaps across the ring, with lifted knee, moving midair into a flying kick.

Red dodges the next one and lands a coil-and-release kick into blue's gut. Blue puckers, then comes at him again. But red catches his momentum and slings him against the ropes. He wraps blue up, and the two exchange knee blows to the ribs, red hitting the lowered side of blue's bent ribcage. With each blow, opposing crowds of Thai bettors alternately cry "Oi!" from their respective corners.

As the fight goes on, the fighters gain respect for each other. Red dodges back, his body forming a crescent around the blur of blue's swinging foot. Blue responds by raising a glove in the air for red to tap. The crowd starts to get disappointed as more and more often the fighters high-five each other when they could be striking blows. At the end of the match, they throw an arm around each other's shoulder. All the fighters have done this, but these two are both grinning.

FIGHT 4: Is America ashamed or enraged?

The American steps into the ring. He's a big black brawler, covered with tattoos. A German man behind me reports, "He's from the Bronx, I know it."

His Thai opponent comes out, and no one can believe it. He's a big white marshmallow. Rolls hang from his belly and thighs. Either this is the only heavy Thai person they could find, or something is amiss.

A man comes to our section holding a fistful of bills and, for the first and only time that night, tries to take bets. I decline because it seems too easy to work.

The fight starts, and the American comes at him like a mad street fighter. He's winning, but the Thai marshmallow is certainly making him work. His kicks seem frightened but still more measured than the American's. When they entangle, the American throws a few knees up, almost formalistically, but he's mostly punches.

They're separated, and they exchange a few kicks. The American ducks and the Thai kicks him in the head with a strong one. He's bent over. The Thai drops two hard elbows onto his back and neck.

The ref steps in between them. He waves his hand in front of the American's face a few times, then brings the marshmallow to the middle of the ring and raises his fist. The crowd erupts with boos. The American looks confused, but in a lucid way, as though he expects to be fighting and can't understand why he's not. A tall, lean American, the fighter's coach, steps toward the ring shouting to the ref, "Get the fuck out!"

The announcer tries to calm the crowd, explaining why the fight was called -- something about the American's mouthpiece. The booing shrinks to a grumble, then to a hard leer across each of our hearts.

Imagine there's no countries, just one blasted day-glo hive

The bus from Chiang Mai brought us to Bangkok at 2 a.m. Three hours later, we took a bus to Surat Thani, a small town on the Malay peninsula in southern Thailand. At these latitudes, foliage covers every surface like the blob would have if it weren't for human intervention, and if the blob was dark green and leafy.

Our destination was the beach, though. From Surat Thani, we took a midnight freight boat to Ko Pha Ngan, the prime spot for Thailand's famous Full Moon Party. We arrived at 6 a.m. the day of the party and checked into a bungalow on the beach.

We hung around on the shore, kicked a soccerball, tried to make up for three sleepless nights by sleeping in hammocks, essentially killed time before what was to be the biggest party in the entire solar system that night, the biggest that December for that matter, and possibly all year because this month drew especially big crowds.

At around 10 p.m., I got separated from Mike and Jeremy. I wandered around our bungalow complex, wondering what to do. A Thai woman, middle-aged, dark, and meaty, with a shock of yellow hair over her scowly face, asked me where I was going. I said I guessed it was time to get ready for the party. Do you know where I can do that? She said, you come with me.

I got on a motorbike with her, and we rode deep into the dark, mountainous interior of the island. At the top of the highest hill, we pulled over by a side road in the jungle. Up the road were a few small huts and two large elephants, fidgeting in their shackles.

The woman woke a man from one of the huts. Groggy but pleasant, he sold us a bag of food which we used to accent our two bowls of noodle soup. The woman had prepared the soup -- packets of Ramen from the 7-Eleven -- with fresh lime juice and spices. It tasted like an expensive meal. When I return to America, I will prepare my Ramen noodles the same way.

It had been about an hour, and I urged the woman to bring me back to the bungalows so I could find my friends. But she insisted on another bowl of soup, for she was getting ready for the party tonight, too.

I paced back and forth, stepping over huge dollops of elephant dung. Elephant dung is similar to cow dung, with a lot of the same organic properties, except of course that it is greater in quantity and potency. It stinks, all right.

"Do you mind, lady?" I said. "Can we go now?"

She looked up at me with big round pupils.

"Let's get out of here!" I said.

We got back on the motorbike and set off down the hills. Down the third curve, the view opened up to the sea below, whose horizon was lined with lights and whose waves wore capes of moonlight. She wound around and brought me back to the bungalow, but not before she tried to fellate me in a dark meadow. I told her we should go directly to the bungalows instead.

Back at the beach, Mike and Jeremy were still nowhere to be found. The party was ten kilometers down the beach, and there was no finding each other once we were there. Did they go already without me? Did they pass out somewhere down the beach? I was feeling pretty low, as we had been talking about this party for the last few weeks. That's not to mention that Mike had my debit card.

I went into the room and tallied my assets. After the trip to the elephants, I had 170 baht. The taxi ride to Haat Rin, site of the Full Moon Party, was 100 baht each way. I didn't expect to return for at least ten hours. I set off walking.

A motorbike taxi pulled over and offered to bring me to the party for 200 baht. I told him my sad story. I think speaking Thai helped because eventually he accepted my price of 50 baht, which barely covered gas for the trip to Haat Rin. That left me with 100 baht for the return trip and 20 baht for water.

Once I arrived, I fought my way through the barstrip's throng of people, which is what I imagine the gates of Hell to be like if all the madmen and demons were fighting their way in instead of out, and I walked out to the marginally less crowded coastline.

Rolling up my pants, I waded out into the water to be alone and survey the strip. At ground level was the gradient of human bodies, condensing away from the coast and toward the line of bars, DJ booths, and whisky-bucket stands. Above each bar there was a light display bigger than the bar itself. The highest was an abstract form that looked like a peacock's plumage or a weird blue hand. The flames of a fiery sign on the beach spelled out "Amazing Thailand." The strip was about one kilometer long, flanked by two cliffs. Orange orbs floated up from the northern cliffside and disappeared into the air. This Internet cafe is closing soon, so please take these details as just an indication of the whole, as if I told you a pineapple had a couple of spines and maybe a leaf on top.

As I often do, I'd missed what was right in front of me by gazing into the distance. An endless line of drunk men and one black dog was pissing into the water from the shoreline. I darted back inland.

I tried dancing to the music -- mostly psychedelic trance beats -- but I wasn't in the mood, so I went wandering. On the beach right outside the bars, the crowd was as thick as it could get with Europeans, Africans, Indians, Arabs, Israelis, East Asians, Latinos, Australians, Canadians, and here and there maybe an American.

On the seaside fringe, there were people whose dancing was too frenzied, or too personal, to mesh with the crowd; there were people who walked around like zombies; and there were those who just sat in rapturous wonder, who were, say, sinking their hands into the moon-shone mud and watching them with mouths agape. (I had heard before that some tourists, probably those from mainland Europe, take hallucinogenic drugs before coming to the Full Moon Party.)

On the fringe of this fringe, there were the desperate ones, the flotsam of the Full Moon Party. They had lost their money, their friends, or in the case of those who were ill-suited to party drugs, their minds. These were the ones who interested me, for just hours ago I had found myself with no money (almost), no friends, and no comfort. I slipped into the persona of possessionless, wandering Samaritan, or smiling monk what have you. I couldn't offer them food, water, or money, though in my current state I would have given them half or more, but I could tell them my story and listen to theirs.

There was the Canadian who had gotten on a two-way boat from Ko Samui but blacked out before waking up here. His money and return ticket were with his absent friends, and the ticket woman wouldn't hear his pleas. I kept him company as the boats left one by one. There was the drunk Australian, sitting head in hands, whose pockets had been picked clean after he strayed from his group. It seemed that I heard the same stories again and again.

I went back inland and danced for a bit, but I couldn't help that I felt more lured by the dark sky and dark sea. I went looking for a quiet place where I could comfort the swollen night, and maybe vice-a-versa. I walked out along the rocks at the edge of the beach. Here there were more sad cases. And the music from a dozen DJs, which as I got further away overlapped into a mad clamor, ebbed and blared as I ducked behind and moved past broad boulders. A ways out there was a stony ascent and atop it, a rim of rocks by which some ladyboys lurked.

It can be exceedingly difficult to distinguish a ladyboy from a handsome or even a lovely woman, but on this jetty I figured out how. You can't tell by the body or the face, but from the way they look at you. Thai girls are shy, but ladyboys stare with an aggressive gaze that tries to hook you by the eyeballs.

I nodded to them as I passed, then stopped to rest on a rock. A young Thai man sitting close by spoke up to me in a mincing voice.

"I'm scared of there. I see people going in. It's so dark. I don't know what's inside."

"What happens in there?" I asked.

"I don't know. I think bad things."

He wore a striped T-shirt, two earrings and had a high pomp of bristly hair. His name was Nai. He too had lost his friends. He said he was scared, and he wanted to tag along with me until his boat arrived at 8:30 a.m. We returned to the beach, danced at a few of the bars, then walked by some food stalls. It was about 5 a.m., and I was starving. Nai offered to buy me something, and I could refuse only half-heartedly.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to some sort of big egg rolls.

"This Chinese food," he said, worried. "I don't know what's inside."

I ate one anyway, and we sat against a fence watching fights break out. Then Nai picked up a shell and drew intricate, precisely carved images in the sand -- a dragon, a bird, and some naked lady parts that he tranformed into a cat.

We walked to the middle of the beach and observed the sky. The moon and its party were making a pretty impressive showing in the western sky. But in the east, the sun had had enough of sleeping, and waiting. It was preparing a quieter but admittedly more glorious celebration of its own.

We climbed across the rocks at the edge of the beach, rounded the corner of the island, and took rest on the eastern face of a boulder. I beheld in the sky all the colors of the spectrum, with the saturation turned up as high as human rapture can handle. In the rusty shadow on the horizon, I could make out the craggy forms of distant islands. Then the sun rose like a fireball from the sea.

"Do you like the sea?" Nai asked.

"Yes, I do."

"I don't like the sea."

"Really?"

"Yes, I think Thai people, about fifty percent don't like the sea."

"Why don't you like it?"

He seemed to taste something disagreeable. "It's salty," he said, "and so dark. I don't know what's inside."

After that, Nai left the rock to catch his boat. I took some journalistic-style notes on the sun's presentation, then returned to the strip. I don't know what it was, but I felt much more like partying. I mixed in in front of Zoom Bar and danced like crazy. With my sandals off, I danced a circular pit into the beach. I wondered whether Ko Pha Ngan has any problems with dance erosion.

After an hour, I took to walking laps across the strip. In the light I could see that the bordering cliffs were covered with jungle and punctuated by stone outcroppings. I met Tom, the Australian who was stranded earlier. He was dance-walking around, having had a nice sleep, and we went together to one of the hillside bars. From that height I could see that the water encircling beach boulders was perfectly clear and turquoise.

I bought a bottle of water and went back to the beach for one last stroll. It was late morning now. The drunks were waking up in the sand under the powerful sun. Still without full use of their bodies, they flailed about in discomfort and confusion. Others were leaping about to the music, taking strangers by the hand.

At 11 a.m., I finally got on a song-thaew and headed back to my bungalow. My wallet was empty, which seemed so mathematically perfect. I rode among punch-bloody Englishmen and two lovely Swedish girls, and I couldn't help smiling because it had been a most beautiful Christmas morning.