Another week in the books in southeast Asia. What this one lacked in cultural and local experiences, it made up for in degenerate British people taking over an island.

I guess it’s part of the culture for them.

Until Thursday night, this was shaping up to be the most boring post of my trip. On campus, I was a hermit all week, just focusing on my classes and the startup. Students here are now in full-time grind mode.

Thursday I traveled to an island in Thailand called Ko Samui. Once again, I was ridin’ solo, although this weekend will probably be my last solo trip for a while. My social battery was running close to empty for a few days and I had to take a lot of down time to recharge while I was away from Singapore.

When I arrived in Ko Samui, I pulled my classic, go-to-the-hostel-bar-and-meet-people approach and approached these two British people. The first thing they said to me was not, “Hey,” or “What’s your name?”, but instead: “Mate, the Queen just died.”

Sure enough it was just that moment that Queen Elizabeth had passed away. Nonetheless, we rallied to have a fun night on the island. If only I knew it would just be a hint of what was to come.

We went out to a couple pubs and played some pool, them being British and all, but ended up at a club where I did indeed dance up on the stage for the better part of an hour.

One thing I love about going out in the backpacking districts of these southeast Asian countries is that you can wear shorts and a t-shirt to a club and everyone just assumes you’re a broke backpacker, not that you actually have no style.

I met some Thai locals and travelers alike and stayed out until 3 in the morning.

The next day however was when things spiced up a little bit. I took a ferry from Ko Samui to this even smaller Thai island called Koh Phangan.

My guess is 99% of people in America have never heard of this island, but it is famous in this region for throwing a massive beach party every full moon that attracts tens of thousands of people from around the world.

And it just so happened that there would be a full moon this Saturday.

In previous posts, I’ve talked about the types of different people who exist in hostels. There’s the “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” “I quit my job and I’m traveling until I run out of money,” and a few others.

I’ve met a lot of interesting people while traveling, but for every interesting person, there are 3 that have no ambition, no plan beyond their current trip, and generally nothing interesting to talk about.

The ratio in Koh Phangan jumped from 1:3 to about 1:10. This contributed to my social exhaustion, because while I was also here to party, I didn’t also want to spend all day drinking by the hostel pool and have meaningless surface-level conversation for 3 straight days.

There was one person who saved me from going totally insane. I met this guy Adam who flies fighter jets in the Air Force and did his master’s in aerospace engineering at MIT. Beyond these simple facts, he was perhaps the first person I met traveling that was genuinely on the same wavelength as me on the way he approaches his life, as well as his outlook for the future.

The first night in Koh Phangan (full moon party eve), we ended up leaving this party we were both at, just because we were vibing together and decided the party sucked. We ended up talking until 4:00am and it was the best conversation I’d had in Asia. I feel like I can sleep easier knowing that if we ever go to war, that’s the guy representing America, flying fighter jets into battle against the enemy.

On some serious Top Gun shit.

Now onto the main event, Saturday’s Full Moon Party. 20,000 people descended upon the island for this. It is an experience like no other. Think music festival, combined with a beach, combined with being in a foreign country…

Damn this is starting to sound like Fyre Festival.

The way it works is there’s this beach that’s probably 1/3 of a mile long, lined with beachfront bars. Each bar has their own DJ and live music setup, and you’re free to move about as you please.

I had a few goals for the night:

• Partake in the fire jumprope
• Party until the sun rises
• Don’t die

Everything on top of that was just a bonus. I ended up spending most of the night with people I hadn’t originally planned to—the thing with this party is that it’s incredibly easy to lose your friends and incredibly difficult to find them again.

The first thing I did was head to the fire jump rope. Here are the scintillating results from that:

I was killing it, until that other girl jumped in and tripped over herself. Then the guys swinging the rope yanked it away from falling right on top of her, and straight into my leg.

Fantastic. Here’s what my leg looked like after the fact:

In case you’re wondering, this happened to about 50% of the people who decided to do the jump rope. Regardless, I was just happy knowing that I did it once, and don’t have to do it again.

For a decent amount of the night, I was with a group of 6 girls from Texas, one of whom was celebrating her 26th birthday.

At some point relatively early in the night however, I split from them as they were gearing up to go back home. It was only 2:00am and now I was on my own. I was really tempted to call it a night, as I couldn’t see how I could make it 4 more hours, and I was wandering kind of aimlessly for about 20 minutes until I found some other people from the hostel.

This beach party was definitely a marathon. Resolving to stay up until 6:00am meant dealing with multiple low points of wanting to leave. Even around 5:00am I was so ready to go home, despite the sky already starting to get lighter.

But after hearing Pepas for the 5th time, finding way too many people passed out on the beach from drugs, and losing and finding my friends 3 different times, we made it to the sunrise!

I hope this depicted the highs and lows of the party: it was a lot of fun, but it was also a rollercoaster. I went to sleep at 7am and woke up at 11am to catch a ferry back to Ko Samui and a flight back to Singapore. The experience exhausted me, but it’s also not one I’ll soon forget.

I wish I could say that I really immersed myself in Thai culture during my downtime, but that would be a damn lie.

I did do one Muay Thai training lesson which was both a good workout and a ton of fun. I’ll be back in Thailand before I leave Asia though, so hopefully then I’ll be able to learn more about the culture in a less touristy setting.

If there’s one thing I learned this weekend it’s to never count on others in order to feel satisfied with what you’re doing. This doesn’t just go for partying, but for anything you do in your life.

I definitely had to look inward during the couple days on the island to enjoy myself when the hostel partygoers weren’t the most enjoyable people to be around.

At the full moon party itself, I continously lost, found, joined, and rejoined groups, some good, some bad, but not letting those external factors affect me too much allowed me to make it until sunrise.

It’s simple enough, but try not to let others control the way you’re feeling in the present moment.

Answers I’ve recieved to the question “If you have one piece of advice you could share with the world, what would it be?”

You have two ears and one mouth for a reason - Jack from the UK

Trust the fucking process - Adam from US

Adam also said the following at another point during our conversation and so I’m including it here because I thought it was really good:

“Most people, most of the time are doing the best they can with the information they have.”