Word: ko
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...time Alex Garland used it as the setting for his 1997 novel about young travelers in Thailand searching for the garden of Eden, Ko Pha-Ngan was already a legend on the Asian traveling circuit. Garland's The Beach has taken on a talismanic quality here: waterlogged paperbacks pass from bungalow to bungalow. It is the founding myth of this place: you come looking for paradise...
...than the one laboring in that cubicle in San Jose, Calif., or pouring drinks in that Surrey pub. "Elsewhere your time is spent playing a role--work, family, career. You don't push the boundaries spiritually and physically," says Backyard Dave, a deejay who became globally renowned through playing Ko Pha-Ngan rave parties. "Out here you can be who you really want...
...sense that she had broken through to discover what she calls "this new sense of freedom"--came on a Thursday (or was it a Friday?) in November when she first indulged in a hit of Ecstasy, a drug that is illegal in the U.S. but quite plentiful on Ko Pha-Ngan, and got lost in the orgiastic besotment of one of Ko Pha-Ngan's legendary Full Moon parties, where trance music blares for days and thousands of foreigners lose it on Hat Rin beach. While she was dancing with friends she had met on the boat trip over...
...Thais who have been living on Ko Pha-Ngan for five generations--since their forefathers migrated from Hainan island off the coast of China--the notion of Western kids coming here and convincing themselves that they are pioneering a new civilization is further proof that these farangs (foreigners) are as clueless as they look. For one thing, Thailand is a real country, with real laws that it expects tourists to abide. "I don't know about any 'new civilization,'" says police captain Suthat Phronakson. "What they seem to be doing is smoking a lot of dope, having sex with each...
Foreigners have been dying on Ko Pha-Ngan at the rate of about 10 a year. They overdose. They drown. They crash motorcycles. Captain Phronakson throws a few Polaroids of corpses onto his desk: an Englishman fished out of a well; a German who was attacked by a shark, huge gouges taken from his arms and legs. Phronakson arrests about 10 foreigners a month, usually for drug possession. The word among foreigners is that for a 70,000 baht fine, about $1,800, the Thais will deport you rather than imprison you. As for the Canadian currently being held...