The Bangkok Blog – Part 1
(In 2007 my family and I spent two months living on the beautiful island of Koh Samui in Thailand. While there, we avoided writing generic “one size fits all” emails to our friends by posting, instead, “one size fits all” blog entries onto a site we created, and hid from Google. I feel the statute of limitations has now passed, so here are the entries re-published for the world to see….)
Part 1 – In which the boys meet up, get familiar with the city and get mistaken for the floor show.
“Come and visit us when we’re in Thailand”
“OK”
“We can spend a few nights in Bangkok”
“I thought one was enough to make a hard man humble”
“Yes but we’re really hard”
“OK”
“But we’ll need Alasdair”
“I’ll phone him”
That short conversation between Brian and I some months back planted the seed for an interruption to the island paradise portion of our holiday, and set the stage for a few memorable days in the country’s capital.
Jayne and the kids dropped me off at Koh Samui airport in the JDT, just in time to catch my flight to Bangkok which, in turn, would be just in time to meet the boys as they stepped off their marathon Johannesburg-Dubai-Bangkok flight. It took a while for them to emerge at the airport. We were all a little disappointed – them because I wasn’t holding up a little sign with their name on it, me because the cavity search I had arranged for them with the customs guys didn’t materialise. We put our disappointments to one side, though, and folded our three bulky frames into a taxi and headed for the city.
Bangkok is a city that forces you to do bad stuff. You arrive full of good intentions – peruse the odd museum, stroll through the ancient temples, engage in a gentle haggle with a friendly soft-furnishings vendor and sample the local cuisine while drifting down the Chao Praya river on a mighty riverboat. But none of that stuff actually happens. Especially not when you’re with Brian and Alasdair.
Brian and Alasdair (not in that order)
Perhaps at this juncture I should fill in some gaps for those you who don’t know the context of the three of us, and who maybe haven’t met Brian and Alasdair.…..the two of them grew up in close proximity to each other (although some would contend that they’ve never grown up, but that’s a whole other blog). I entered the picture a few years later, and we’ve been friends for 20 years this year.
Brian is a city Corporate type with Eastern Cape roots. This makes his personality a strange combination of homespun down-to-earthness and yuppie, thrash money around the place aspirations. Alasdair has no such delusions and epitomises the What-you-see-is-what-you-get character one associates with dairy farmers in the Eastern Cape, which he is. He is an arch negotiator (as we were all about to discover) who tends to get what he wants through a combination of brute force, charm, and no small dose of quasi-ballroom dancing style moves. He and I also do this weird thing where we pass a mouthful of beer between each other (yes, via the mouth, not in a glass) until its so warm and foamy that one or other of us has no choice but to swallow it before it erupts like a sherbet balloon. I’m not sure why either.
So now you understand the players, let’s return to the story….
Our taxi driver wasn’t just a taxi driver. He told us proudly that this was just his day job and by night he was a karaoke king. So we didn’t have any of those awkward silences one usually gets with taxi drivers after you’ve refused their offer to drag you to the nearest girlie bar – he just filled the gaps by launching into his own personal renditions of the Thai classics, using his taxi’s CB radio as his microphone. He was dreadful but he did keep touching my knee looking for affirmation, so I gave him plenty. I got the sense that he started each day with a little prayer that Simon Cowell would step out of Bangkok airport and into his taxi, recognise his talent and whisk him away to global fame and fortune. Instead, today, he picked up three tone-deaf South Africans who clearly didn’t appreciate his talents. I suspect his day was also getting off to a disappointing start.
The three of us – late at night – in our team dressing gowns at the Menam. Not sure why Brian made us wear them…
We arrived at the hotel – Menam Riverside – and checked into our rooms. Executive Suite for me and Alasdair and, um, Deluxe Room (with Riverview) for Brian. I don’t actually remember the coin toss although I’m assured it happened.
Anyway I was perfectly happy with my roomie. He doesn’t smell too bad. He sleeps a lot, although I could live without the snoring and the half asleep crotch scratching. I got around the first by putting my head in the lavatory and the second by moving my hips a bit to the left. And he gets cross when I don’t put the lid back on the toothpaste. Plenty of scope for taunting and abuse.
We started off in the pool because it has a bar, naturally. Although at 150Baht (R30) a beer we knew were going to get caned on the bill, but we’d deal with that on checkout. Or rather Alasdair and I would deal with it by going to find a taxi leaving Brian to settle up. Genuis.
An aside – in celebration of this particular “tour”, Brian decided we needed team caps so now we look like three dorky South Africans in matching outfits. He also decided that he and Alasdair would stop shaving to try and look more like me. So they’re doing that (not very successfully but bless them for trying….)
I don’t think you need a blow-by-blow account of the next couple of hours. In any event I’m not sure I can reconstruct it 100%. So I’ll just give you the highlights package. If there are any gaps, simply insert “The boys sat around drinking some more” and you’ll soon have a full picture.
We empted the mini bar in the hotel room, asked reception to re-stock it and took advantage of the hotel’s “Executive Happy Hour” (although Brian was just in “Deluxe” they didn’t seem to mind him joining us for the free drinks….I think they could tell which side their bread was buttered). After re-emptying the minibars it was time to venture out into the darkening night.
The three of us about to launch off in our Tuk Tuk.
Our first tuk-tuk experience was always going to be an adventure. Picture the scene….we aren’t small chaps. Between us we weigh, well, a lot. We’d probably give the Springbok front row a run for their money (but then who wouldn’t these days?). So every time we sank into the back seat of these modified motorbike taxis the front wheel would lift slightly, the driver would shift all of his weight forward in a frankly useless attempt to make contact with the road, Alasdair would tease him by leaning back further and we’d cough and splutter our way into the mayhem that is Bangkok traffic, the driver having even less control than he normally would. That doesn’t stop the driver from trying to sell us the best girlie shows in town, coincidentally run by his cousin/sister/best friend. But instead of turning to show us his photocopied pamphlets of suggestive pictures he’d focus on the road instead and just fling them over his shoulder onto Alasdair’s lap. It’s a city that doesn’t have rush hour. They’re always doing it – the roads are as congested at 2am as they are at 4pm. The drivers of the thousands of tuk-tuks and motorbikes seem to have written their own rules, which go something like “If you see a gap, it’s yours. Even if there isn’t really a gap because everyone else knows that if there was one it would be yours and if you go fast enough they’ll make space for you. Except when they don’t, in which case gaps are overrated and you should look instead for the spots where you feel there should be a gap, even if its under a bus.” It’s pretty simple, really, and Alasdair decided early on that he could do a better job. Fortunately for everyone involved no-one, including the tuk tuk driver, agreed and his feeble attempt at wresting control of the vehicle was thwarted in the starting blocks. My personal view is that he should have used his ballroom dancing skills to persuade the bloke, but that’s just me.
We got off at Patpong Road (doesn’t everyone?) and decided the first order of business was dinner. So we found one of the few places where the staff were fully clothed and had a surprisingly good seafood feast served up by a gender-confused young person who was an instant hit with Brian. You should have seen the size of the tip. And the amount of money Brian left behind.
Brian has a thing for Irish bars, which meant that O’Reilly’s at the end of Patpong was going to be the next stop. This was to become a rather incident-filled stop: Alasdair showed a lady of the night why he made the Alexandra golf club’s “Strictly Come Dancing” final, I downed my first Jagermeister of the trip (and stole the shot glass – photographic evidence on the way). And there was the Guinness incident. I see from elsewhere on the blog that my wife has already mentioned the latter, but allow me to give you a bit more context….in South Africa, when you order a pint of Guinness they draw a little shamrock in the foam on top. Guinness purists like John Robbie hate that, but I’m new to the stuff and so quite like it. So there we were in Patpong Road, I order a Guinness in an Irish pub and it comes with no shamrock. Remember that by now we’ve emptied the mini bar in the hotel. Twice. Both rooms. Twice. We’ve also bliksemed the pool bar and drunk our way through Brian’s flirting with the waitron (never been more appropriate to use the gender-neutral term). What else would I do but draw my own shamrock? I mean, who wouldn’t? But my hands were a little grimy and I didn’t want to spoil the taste of the beer, so I used my tackle instead.
It all made, and still makes, perfect sense. Or it did at the time and, I can’t be sure but I think there may have been a round of applause and frisson of excitement around the room. Someone also thrust 100Baht down my shorts. And, might I add, it was a mighty fine shamrock. It had little leaves and everything.
What doesn’t make sense is what happened as we left the pub. Unknown to me the crafty little imps I had chosen to expend the last 20 years of best-friendship on had hatched a cunning plan while I was in the toilet washing off the Guinness. And so, as we stepped onto the pavement, I was attacked. Brutally and without provocation. Four hands – two with the aroma of cow dung still buried in the pores, and two smelling faintly of Body Shop lotion (where did Alasdair get it from?) – proceeded to turn my second favourite shirt into the contents of a rag lady’s rag bag. They ripped it to shreds, while I was still wearing it. Why? I have no idea. They muttered later something about the pocket tempting them, but that makes even less sense.
Fortunately if you’re ever in a position where your shirt has been trashed there’s no better place to be than in Patpong Street in Bangkok. Wouldn’t you know it but there are at least a thousand people selling a hundred thousand varieties of shirt. And only two that will fit me. So I buy one of them – a rather fetching powder blue golf shirt – and, after leaving my pile of J Crew rags on the corner of Silom Road in the vague vicinity of a dustbin we carried on.
For those who are interested, the much talked about Blowjob Bar in Patpong has, um, changed hands. It’s now just a bar, because they clearly needed one more. Anyway, we had no time for that….it was time for our first girlie show…..
To be continued……
In the next part: Brian gets confused and inadvertently makes the girlies very happy, Patpong experiences the beer game, Tony & Alasdair stay up until 5:30am and Al sleeps it off the next day….
