Editor's Note: Over the next little while I am going to share some stories told to me by a girl I met in 2017 at a bar in Koh Pha-ngan, an island in the Gulf of Thailand just north of Koh Samui. Koh Pha-ngan is famous for its Full Moon Party with attracts upwards of 20,000 party-goers, sometimes more, every month. I met her in a bar on the outskirts of Thongsala, persuaded her to leave the bar and travel the length of Thailand with me from Surat Thani to Hua Hin and on to Chiang Mai. In that time, I got her to share some of her stories. These are her stories, and my understanding of them. I remain in touch with her to this day.
Full Moon Party
On the island of Koh Pha-ngan where my bar was located, there is something called the Full Moon Party, held at a place called Haad Rin. Foreigners go there in droves, as do Thai girls looking to hook up with customers. The girls flock to the island from Koh Samui, Surat Thani, some from as far away as Hua Hin. I was there one night with other girls from my bar. I was wearing the usual Full Moon Party gear: a cut-off T-shirt with no bra and a skimpy bikini bottom. There is no way I would ever have been seen in public dressed like that back home, but I was transitioning to the life of a bar girl and I didn't look out of place at all. On the way there, riding in a songthaew -- a covered pickup truck with rows of seats in the back - I found myself sitting beside an Indian fellow named Raj. This was a few weeks after I had started working in the bar, and by now I had picked up enough English to make basic conversation. When we got off the bus, my Indian friend took me by the hand, paid for my entrance fee, and that was that: I was his... and I didn't mind because he was good-looking, dark-skinned and strong. He was also sweet. I guessed his age to be mid-forties; perfect for me. What I didn't realize then but came to understand later was that Indian men come in droves to Thailand because it is very difficult, culturally, for them to casually pick up a woman like that, so for him, it must have taken a bit of courage to be so bold, and also a bit thrilling when I complied so willingly.
For those unfamiliar with Full Moon, try to imagine Haad Rin beach, a big long beach with maybe 10 or 12 big bandstand-like structures, each one blaring EDM or techno-rock or something like that, with 20,000 people or more gyrating to the music and drinking liquor concoctions served in plastic buckets. Raj and I danced and we drank, and the more we drank, the more his hands wandered. They wandered inside my cut-off T-shirt to cup my tits. They wandered down to and eventually inside my little bikini bottom. My hands wandered too, inside his swimming trunks to play with his stiffening tool. I didn't object. I sensed that he was getting hornier and hornier, and that was fine by me. So was I. I'd never been with an Indian man before. I wondered what he'd be like.
Anyone who's been to a Full Moon Party knows that rooms in the vicinity are all booked in advance and it is not easy to find a secluded part of the beach on which to fool around, but eventually he led me to a darkened area off to one side where we proceeded to start making out. It is important to understand that Thai women are traditionally very shy. We were raised in a culture that frowns on public displays of affection, and I was, until just a few weeks ago, very much a product of that culture. So it felt uncomfortable to be standing there, in the moonlit shadows, making out with a stranger from another continent... but I had been transitioning to a new bar girl culture for the past few weeks, and I did, after all, come here with the other girls to find customers and make money.