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SNOWING IN BALI

Did you go to those parties?

Yep, all of them. All of them. You could buy ecstasy in any single nightclub, and cheap new pills all the time — the white dove, the blue McDonald’s, the green Batman — they were so good. Bali was flooded with ecstasy. There was massive consumption of real strong drugs, like ecstasy and MDMA powder . . . and cocaine, but more for the end of the party. There were lots of parties on the beach, in hotels, lots of drugs.

No one worried about the cops busting them?

People had a bit of worry, but weren’t super-paranoid. They weren’t selling freely but it was a scene that if you want to score drugs, all you had to do is talk to someone who’s been living in Bali or coming to Bali often enough. You would be able to buy drugs at any party back in those days.

- Alberto

Drug parties were rampant. The paradise isle was rocking to the techno beat of the world’s best DJs, with strobe lasers frenetically crisscrossing in the skies, music blasting out of huge speakers on clifftops or the beach, face painters, fire dancers twirling flaming sticks. Many of the crowds of thousands at the full moon parties at Nusa Dua, Gnan Gnan, Canggu or Uluwatu were on psychedelic drugs, as were those at the other wild parties at Ku De Ta, Blue Ocean or Double Six, on the beaches, in the bars and hotels.

Alberto, Rafael, Marco, Ruggiero, Fabio, Andre, and Tota were often at the parties, joining in, selling a bit. Rafael would often slip into the girls’ toilets and share a cubicle with some babe, to do a few lines together on the closed lid.

One night Rafael rode his Harley to a party on the clifftops

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