Escape from Eight Hours of Techno Torture, to Sanctuary at the Macaca Beach Bar

We came to Khao Takiab for a peaceful night by the sea. Softly lapping waves reflecting the full moon, a light breeze, a swim in warm water. Instead, we found ourselves with a front-row seat at a deafening eight-hour Full Moon techno slash EDM party we had not planned on watching from our balcony.

From our fourteenth-floor room the bass reached parts of me usually only accessible via MRI or possibly, Heineken. The sliding glass doors and half the room’s contents vibrated ominously. The hotel had thoughtfully listed the prices of breakable items, should the evening’s physics experiment go wrong: 5000 baht for the balcony doors, 5000 for the shower partition, 3000 for the mirrors. A sort of DIY earthquake insurance.

The entire building shook to the pounding bass like a washing machine on its final spin cycle. Sleep was not a concept with any practical meaning.

It turns out the Full Moon electronic music scene in Hua Hin is alive, well, and apparently trying to contact the International Space Station. I had never heard of EDM before last night either. Had I not googled it, I would have guessed it stood for Eardrum Destruction Mode. Or possibly Everyone’s Deaf by Morning.

I posted a 30-second clip to YouTube, only for it to be instantly blocked for copyright. Imagine claiming ownership of that racket. Bold.

Eventually we made a strategic retreat, wandering around the Khao Takiab headland, guided by nothing more scientific than the absence of tremors in the ground and the assumption that even EDM could not penetrate several million tons of rock. And there, on the quiet side, we stepped straight into a parallel universe.

⸻

Macaca Beach Bar: The Anti-Techno Sanctuary

Gone were the seismic shockwaves. Gone were the DJs attempting to collapse the ionosphere.

Instead: calm.

Macaca Beach Bar was everything the party was not. Cheerful, gentle, human.

A singer with warm, bluesy, jazz-soul vocals in an Amy-meets-Withers style – soft, smoky, effortlessly relaxed.

Cocktails mixed with pride.

Free salad and BBQ chicken because… why not.

People who value tranquillity over decibel warfare.

It was the sort of place that restores your sanity within minutes. Proof that much of humanity still remains unconnected, conversational, and perfectly capable of not shouting.

On the other side of the headland, EDM was still competing with Voyager 1 to become the first audio signal detected by extraterrestrial life. Yes, I am aware sound does not travel in space. However, EDM appears to be a new scientific phenomenon that operates on quantum principles. It can be detected simultaneously in every corner of the known universe and possibly in one or two unknown ones.

Amazing what a short walk can do for your faith in humanity… and your will to live.