We must go further!

Dana and I each picked out our own tongues scrapers - mine is copper, hers silver. Our Neti pots are identical white plastic. The rock salt, which we dissolve into water and flush through our noses with the neti pots, was purchased at a very clean and quiet organic grocery in Tong Sala, with five employees that studiously ignored us, their only customers.

Thus we began our purification practices, an important part of our yoga program. This was also the day of the full moon, around which the completely impure, but very famous, Koh Panang Full Moon Party revolves. So I rinsed my eyeballs with cold water, Dana thoroughly scraped her tongue, and we set off in an open-backed covered truck that served as a taxi, to balance our purity with a little partying.

On the outskirts of Haad Rin, the southernmost tip of the island where the infamous monthly Full Moon party is, our taxi stopped and filled with English girls in tiny skirts, sipping alcohol from sand buckets, their bodies painted with fluorescent paint. They griped about the 50 baht fee, and when the taxi stopped, one of the girls vehemently exclaimed, "No, this is unacceptable, for 50 baht you must go further! Further!" The weary driver finally got back in and began to drive. Dana and I couldn't help but find this irritating show somewhat adorable, because "further" just sounds so great in an English accent.

As it turns out, English accents were not in short supply. The beach was teeming with the British, boys in tiny swim trunks and fedoras, and girls in Koh Phangan tank tops and little else. Dozens of other nationalities were sprinkled in the mix, everyone in some state of undress and fucked-up-ness. One tall, pale man stood in place, swaying gently on his feet like a palm tree, starring at nothing. A cluster of Asian women in sports bras undulated wildly on a platform stuck in the sand. Vendors lining the beach yelled about the quality of their "Buckets" (sand buckets filled with ice, a flask, and a can of soda, to be mixed by the buyer). Everywhere was music - trance, drum & bass, techno, and pop dance tunes - and everywhere was neon. The beach was thick with people.

We were on a mission (and here comes a moment of full disclosure, so Mom, don't be mad). We were looking for mushroom shakes.

The last time I ate mushrooms was in college and spent the night adventuring through the woods, swimming in Lake Champlain. It sounds trite, but, glancing through the trees at the stars beyond, I saw in threads in the fabric of the cosmos. Since we've been talking about cosmic energy and alternate states of consciousness in our yoga lectures, I've been thinking about my mushroom experience, and vaguely craving another. It's a short trip to Samadhi if you have 500 baht.

The shakes were hard to find, and we had to ask a lot of people (as with nearly everything else here) before discovering that we had to go to the end of the beach and climb a stone staircase to a bar called Mellow Mountain. Fortunately, when we pooled our brightly colored bills, we did have 500 baht, and we sipped our shake in the open air bar, making friends with New Zealanders, dancing, and looking out over the bamboo railing at the crowded beach bellow, a film set to the throbbing beat that was all the different sound systems combined. Water taxis swayed gently in water that also served as an impromptu urinal for drunk men and swimming hole for other enlightened beings, wading out with their arms outstretched and their eyes on the moon.








Jered, this song goes out to you...




View from our first home.