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Weekly updates


If you’ve ever found yourself as a wide-eyed young traveller in South East Asia, thinking you’ve found enlightenment because you’re wearing a hippie headband and are sleeping in a non-airconditioned hostel, you’ll be familiar with the Full Moon Party: a night every few months on the Thai island of Koh Phangan where revellers descend upon a beach and dance all night to the melodic sounds of repetitive psytrance and other tourists throwing up their cocktail mixes.

By the sounds of it, Adelaide’s AsiaFest is about as far removed from the mass alcohol consumption, questionable fluro fashion, and general seediness of Full Moon Party as you can get. The 10-day festival in Rymill Park is a celebration of Asian cuisine that has been billed as a family-friendly event for parents and children to create wholesome foodie memories together. The closing night of the festival—which is tomorrow—was set to be an homage to the famous Thai party: an adults-only music concert featuring a lineup of Australian techno DJs.

But stories of the actual Full Moon Party are causing many Adelaidians to worry about the type of debauchery that could occur, and liquor licensing authorities are now cracking down on the 4,500 plastic buckets that were set to be a part of the closing night. The plastic containers are an iconic symbol of nights out in Thailand, where street stalls sell them with cheap mixes of alcohol, energy drink, and soft drink. In this instance, it’s unclear whether they were meant for festival-goers to put their drinks in or not. I mean, I guess there’s a chance they could just be very life-size and very functional ornamental props.

But punters looking to recreate a bucket-filled night in Adelaide will have to look elsewhere, with the holes set to be all drilled in by the time concert kicks off.

Juliet Mentor

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