Dance Valley

I’m not allowed to say ‘Sorry for not writing for so long’. It has been forbidden. So I won’t say it. Instead I’m going to say ‘It seems that my life has got a bit too busy for me to post every other day, but I’ll try to post when I can’. So here goes, it seems that my life has got a bit too busy for me to post every other day, but I’ll try to post when I can.

Yesterday I went to Dance Valley. It was my first electro festival ever. You see, as far as I know they don’t really do these kinds of festivals in Asia. Not on this scale, anyway. There was something like 40,000 people there. About 39,999 were drug fucked. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration; I think there were two other people in our group who didn’t participate in that aspect of the party.

It was all sunglasses, rectus smiles, huge pupils and endorphins. There was also a great deal of vomiting, nonsensical mumbling and people who no longer knew their heads from their asses. Yes, even if you didn’t like the music you could still have a great deal of fun just people watching. In my case I consumed a huge amount of beer. I like beer. Have I mentioned that before? Well, if I haven’t, I like beer. Hmmm…. Beer…

Right, where was I?

Anyways, we decided that the weather was as shite as it was because otherwise the first festival I went to would have been too good and it would have made all the following festivals have to try to live up to too high a standard. It was better this way as then the next time I went to something like this I could look forward to a festival in the sun and out of the mud. Small consolation.

It was the worst just when we arrived. The sky opened up and drizzled us (it never really drenches outside the tropics – what ever the Dutch might think) just as we walked into the ticketing office. Then we walked onto the terrain and were made aware of one of the biggest problems with valleys, namely that water collects in them.

It was disgusting. There was only one entrance that everybody had to use. The result was 80k feet crunching up the sparse grass and the soggy ground underneath. It wasn’t even good enough for pigs.

Fortunately, we soon found a dance hill that was slightly more to our liking and stayed there for the rest of the festival. The sun only broke through once, but nonetheless it was spectacular seeing about 20 thousand people (there were several stages) enjoying computer generated sound. It made the parties we organised in Goa (which were quite big already) look like dinner parties.

Will I go again? I’m not exactly sure. The getting to and from the party was absolutely terribly organised. We ended up spending seven hours to get there and away again – while we were only at the party for a total of nine hours. Was the fun worth the price in travel time and ticket costs? Apparently for 40,000 people it was.; but then I’ve never really been one for going with the majority.