You are dancing under the blazing full moon on the island of Ko Pha Ngan, your arms flailing about wildly, your bare feet turning around and around on the white sand, your legs doing things you didn’t know they could. Electronic music stomps it’s way up and down the crescent beach, and the Gulf of Thailand seduces the party people successfully with its warm, foamy waves. You are surrounded by thousands of travelers from around the world; backpackers, worldrompers, budget tourists, fire-twirlers, old hippies, new hippies, artists, hedonists, jugglers, dancers, musicians, deejays, and wanderers. It is mere minutes until the fireworks show, and many, many, hours until dawn. The night has just begun.

Are you smiling? Scheming how you can get a ticket to Thailand? Already Googling “Ko Pha Ngan Full Moon Party?” If not, then maybe you shouldn’t go to THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BEACH PARTY.

Or maybe you need to go the most of all.

Celebration is universal; having fun is essential to human happiness. Some of us even make it our priority in life. Humans have been dancing bare-footed to drum beats around fires for much longer than we have spent our days in pursuit of big-screen TVs or the newest car or diamonds or whatever else we use our money on in place of experience, which is worth exponentially more than anyTHING you can buy.

This indisputable truth, that humans need to celebrate, is manifested every month during the full moon as anywhere from six to twenty thousand travelers converge on a white sand beach in Southeast Asia, take off their shoes, and straight GET DOWN. Thailand is a dream for travelers, easy and cheap to navigate, with killer cuisine and the chill energy found in Buddhist cultures. American citizens don’t need visas for stays of less than 30 days, and round trip air tickets from the West Coast of the U.S. to Bangkok right now are about $1000. The giant music festival takes place at Haad Rin Beach, and accommodation can be found as low as $2 per night (for a beach-side hut with shared bath). There are also plenty of luxury digs for those of you who crave a private pool or outdoor shower. If for some reason you actually plan on sleeping during the Full Moon party, be sure to book your room OUTSIDE of Haad Rin, and take one of the all-night taxis back to your bungalow.

Full Moon parties go off the hook every month; if you can’t make it to Thailand that day of the month, no worries: there are also Half Moon and Black (New) Moon celebrations. All the parties are free and stocked with food, drink, black light artists, flaming lanterns, fire twirlers, and craft vendors. During the rest of your stay you can snorkel, dive, wakeboard, rent a moped, explore natural caves, and swim at pristine beaches all over Ko Pha Ngan and her sister islands of Ko Samui and Ko Tao.

Festivals and celebrations are are part of every culture on the globe, and whether you like all-night dance parties on the beaches of Asia, man-festivals on the dusty plains of Mongolia, or sugary skulls at the Day of the Dead in Mexico, HAVING FUN is the perfect excuse to travel!

So what are you waiting for? Someone to remind you how short life is, to tell you that if you are really really lucky, in the blink of an eye you will be old, wrinkly, and not that into beach dancing? You don’t need ME to clue you in; you’re reading this blog which means YOU have already taken the first step: admitting that you want to travel and have fun and experience everything you possibly can- and you will accept nothing less in your amazing life.