It alarms me that Parts 1 & 2 of the Blog took around 6000 words to cover the first 18 hours. And we have two days to go. By the time I’m done we’ll have about 20 000 words, only vaguely relevant or interesting to those of you who have met us and pretty dull for everyone else. Well, let’s be honest, perhaps partially dull even if you do know us. Anyway, you’re now reading this entry so, welcome to Part 3.

Perhaps more alarming than the volume of words is that I realised last night that I had left out two tiny pieces of information that need to be recorded.

Firstly, Alasdair lost his team cap as our tuk tuk bulleted down Surawong Road on our way back to the hotel. Given that they only cost about R10 it wasn’t the biggest financial loss, it did mean that Brian and I had to exclude him from the team a bit until he had re-conformed. We have pretty strict rules. The second thing I should have mentioned was a late night phone call Alasdair made while we were sitting in our hotel room. It was about 4:30am and went like this:

Alasdair: Is that room service?
Thai Person: No
Al: I want chocolate
TP: This not room service
Al: Chocolate. Now.
TP: I not understand
Al: Is that room service?
TP: No
Al: Why not?
TP: Housekeeping
Al: What?
TP: This housekeeping
Al: Do you have chocolate?

And so it went on for an agonising couple of minutes. We never got any chocolate. But our sheets were neatly ironed the next morning.

Day two started in the usual way. The sun came up and we were hungover. Alasdair spent the day in bed so we’ll exclude him from the narrative for a minute or two. I woke up and decided to go for a swim, which I did and then spent a happy half hour listening to my iPod next to the pool. Until I received an SMS from Brian who was watching me from the window of his Deluxe Room (Poolview) telling me that I was ruining his morning. He said something about a copper pistol that I don’t fully understand.

Brian wanted to buy a camera and an iPod, and I knew just the place. We took a variety of public transport to the massive MBK shopping centre – 7 floors of traders selling everything from cameras to clothes to cellphones to steak knives, more cell phones, some cell phones and a couple of cell phone shops sprinkled in between for good measure. And, more importantly for two hungover South Africans, a Pizza Hut. After lunch we found a shop and Brian bought his camera (side note: why is it that, unless there’s drinking involved we sound like the most boring people on the planet?). We also bought Al some chocolates and made our way back to the hotel (see what I mean?).

By this time the evening was upon us, Alasdair was back and feeling strong and it was time to rejoin the fray. Brian had decided that Sukhumvit Road was to be the focus of our attention that evening….fewer girlie shows, more girlie bars (will explain how those work in a second) and the same amount of beer. So off we went on what was becoming our regular Tuk Tuk which deposited us at the end of the main road.Our first port of call, naturally, was a bar where we discovered an innovation that should have made Bangkok famous and probably would have done if Murray Head hadn’t come along first. In the men’s toilets, partially hidden from view, is a porcelain basin with an extraordinary large plughole. It’s a little higher off the ground than most basins…rather than being at waist level its around chest height. The basin itself is also unnaturally large and contained just one tap. All a bit mystifying until you glance at the sign above it…it reads “Vomit Basin”. Brilliant. Genius.

After some light shopping and a drink in the obligatory Irish pub, we decided to pop in to one of the girly bars.

Now let me explain the difference between a girlie bar and a girlie show. You were introduced to the concept of the show in the previous blog entry. The bar is more subtle and takes the idea of commercial sex to a new level. The bar itself looks like any other, but one of the first things you notice about it is that the clientele comprises three distinct groups. First there is a large number of single Thai ladies wearing short skirts. Then there are couples comprising middle aged Western Men with young, gorgeous Thai girlfriends, and finally there are groups of leering yobs. We were in the last category, obviously. The idea behind the bars is a simple one. Customer walks in, buys himself a drink, young lady sidles over takes a seat next to him, asks if he’ll buy her a drink. Moments later they’re chatting, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. Then they fix a price, the man pays the stern lady behind the counter (the Mama-San) and off they go to the movies or whatever it is that young people these days do on their first dates.

So we arrived at one such bar. It wasn’t that hard – you only have to take two steps down the road and you’ll be met with cheers, whistles and “Hello how are you where you froms” from a knot of girls on the pavement. If you make eye contact, you’re committed. We did, so we were.

And, wouldn’t you just know it, in seconds we had been joined at our table by two girls who wanted drinks. So we ordered cokes for them, and Jagermeisters for us (well, for Brian and I. Alasdair was sticking to his Rum & Coke, classy guy that he is). Here, then, is a photograph of us knocking back the Jaggies while the girls look entranced. Sort of.

Down they go….

…you know these girls are thinking “What fine catches we’ve made tonight…”

After that we realised that we weren’t in the company of great conversationalists. Once they’d taught us a couple of handy Thai phrases and we’d had one too many lulls in conversation we caucused. Clearly no-one in our party had any intention of taking the girls home with us and Alasdair’s in-built-nice-guyness meant that he was sitting there wallowing in guilt – if the girls were talking to us three non-prospects, it meant that they couldn’t try their magic on other customers with real potential. We were stuffing up their cash flow. Once he’d explained that, we all felt the same guilt pangs, gave them 1000Baht for their time and sent them on their way. See – what nice guys we are.

And then something happened that never happens. As we were leaving the bar, having paid off the staff and satisfied that we were leaving with everyone’s dignity intact, we heard someone calling after us. We turned, and one of the girls from the bar was chasing us down the street holding a plastic bag full of shopping. I had left it behind in the bar, and we had found the most honest hooker in Thailand.

On the way home Brian wanted to experience the Patpong eatery we had found the night before and couldn’t remember. So we got off the Tuk Tuk in our usual spot and went off for a snack. After that, we were naturally a little thirsty. The problem was, however, that come 2am everything shuts down to a complete grinding halt. Flourescent lights get switched off, tables and chairs packed away, bar counters hosed down and customers ejected. Everything stops. Everything, that is, except for one lonely little side street. I don’t know what it was called but it was a sole strip of light and thumping dance music in an otherwise blackened Bangkok. We went down it, and found ourselves in the heart of Gay Bangkok.

Rows of bars on either side of the street with names like “Throb” “Cruise” and the less subtle “Hot Boys” called to us. Suddenly a different dynamic was at play, one not entirely foreign in its form but disconcerting in its content. There were still people calling out for us, there were still hands patting us on the bottom and “accidentally” brushing our arm as we passed. But these voices were deeper (just) and the hands bigger. Me, Brian and Alasdair were the hits of the street – fresh tourist meat ripe for the picking. Now we knew how the girls in the show felt.

The principle behind these bars matches that of the girlie ones…everything is for sale, and everyone is on the take. We scurried our way to the end of the street, trying to look as suave and butch as possible, only to find it was a cul de sac and the way to get out was to turn back the way we came. We needed some strength for the journey so slipped in to the first available door. That, your honour, is how we found ourselves in “Fresh Beach Boys Bar”. On entering, and realising that we were the only customers, we all did what we do best. I went to the bar. Brian hid in the toilet. And Alasdair froze. Returning from the bar with three beers in hand I found Alasdair sitting next to the one “Fresh Boy” who hadn’t yet been picked up. Admittedly he didn’t look that fresh but then nor did Alasdair, who was focusing on the beer mat in front of him, refusing to make eye contact, shoo-ing the guy away with his best Thai accent saying “I don’t want sex just a beer”. The message eventually got across, if not through the words then through the body language, so old stale meat slid to the end of the couch and sat there sulking and SMSing his friends.

I think we drank those beers faster than any other we’d had since arriving in Thailand, and moments later we were back on the street, time for a quick photo in front of the bar, and then with heads down marched ourselves out of there.

Looking neither fresh nor beachy….

Back on the tuk tuk, back to the hotel, emptied the minibars again, got to bed at 6am, and we were done.

I’m not going to drag day three out, but it went something like this:

11am Woke, had hamburgers for lunch and went on a boat cruise of the canals around Bangkok. Saw man play with Cobra in the Snake Park.

Tony & Brian on the boat

3pm Went back to the MBK Centre where Brian, flushed with his success from the day before, bought a second camera.
5pm Walked through the huge Lumpini Park to the Night Market where Alasdair displayed, yet again, his extraordinary negotiating skills. Something like this:

Alasdair: I’m buying ten t-shirts, discount?
Bemused Thai Lady: For you, special price. 4000Baht
Al: I’ll give you 1000Baht
BTL: (breaks into hysterical laughter, touches his arm and shouts to her friend in the next stall whatever the Thai for “I’ve got a nutter here but look how hot his red-headed friend is”)
Al: OK, 1200Baht
BTL (picks up calculator, bashes away at it doing long complicated sums, obviously working out where her profit margin starts) 3000Baht, for you, my friend price
Al: Look how many shirts we’ve bought
BTL: Yes, 10, I sell you 3000Baht
Al: 1500Baht
BTL: 2800Baht
Al: 1600Baht. Get a packet and put them in.
BTL (Counts shirts) You got 12 shirts, not 10
Al: OK, 12 shirts, 1600Baht, where’s that packet
BTL: (Wiping the tears from her eyes she’s laughing so hard) Give me 100 Baht more, 1700Baht
Al: OK

Transaction done. Everyone happy.

7pm: Still at Night Market, ride on 60m high Big Wheel. Alasdair doesn’t get to see too much of the view because he’s buried under bags of t-shirts.

The food section of the Night Market

9pm: Stop at the Irish pub that was the scene of the Shamrock incident two nights ago for a nightcap. They fail to recognise me, but recognise Alasdair from his dancefloor moves. I’m devastated.

11pm: Back at the hotel. Alasdair and Brian try on their t-shirts, they don’t fit. Mine does. Private moment of celebration. The pirated copy of Borat we bought doesn’t work, so we rent the world’s worst movie from reception. Brian gives up halfway and goes to bed. Alasdair and I persevere and get zero reward as it plummets from bad to worse.

The next morning its breakfast, then off to the airport to catch our plane to Samui. A word on the taxi driver. On getting into the cab it is clear that this man speaks less English than I do Thai. That doesn’t deter him from gabbling away like a nutter, though. All we can make out is two words: One, he tells us that he is a Muslim. No great shakes there. The second word came as some other driver nearly ran us off the road and, giggling hysterically, our guy leans out and without skipping a beat from his Thai babble, yells: “F***K YOU”, comes back in and continues his nonsensical rantings. Then, when we get close enough to the airport where we can see the aeroplanes taking off and coming in to land, he makes a little gun shape with his finger and blows them out the sky, giggling like a schoolgirl. He doesn’t get a tip.

And so, my friends, that was Bangkok. I think we can safely say that a good time was had by all. Koh Samui is a whole other story that we’ll get to. Jayne was there for chunks of it and will write it up, Brian has offered to do a guest blog to fill in the gaps. Until then, I’ll leave you with some clues: Look out for stories of late-night Jenga playing with prostitutes, an unwise teddy-bear purchase, Vodka shooters with strange English chaps, a cabaret show performed by a troupe of transsexuals (that is the right collective noun isn’t it?) and a bar called Huggies. Right now, its 12:15am and I’m going to bed…..G’night. But first, to tempt you to read more later….here’s a pic from the Transsexual show in Samui. Brian & I posed with the entertainers after the show…interesting to note that there is not a single person in this picture who was born a woman. Strange but true. Not even the one sitting on my lap….

(If you havent yet read part one of the Bangkok Blog do so now so this all makes sense…..)

OK so there we were. Three against three thousand. Standing at the end of Patpong Road, swaying a little and at least one of us wearing a brand new golf shirt. The time had come to either fish or cut bait. It was time for a girlie show.

Now we’ve all heard the stories – rows of seedy bars with flashing neon signs and squat no-necked bouncers waiting to pounce on anyone who hesitates, throwing them into the bar. Once inside the tourist has no choice but to sit for hours and mingle with dozens of scantily clad (and in many cases not clad at all) young ladies with about as much attention span as clothing. The girls contort and offer up their wobbly bits to the twin gods of dollar and baht. The stories go that these women allegedly do extraordinary, almost unnatural things to themselves (and, it must be said, to their friends). They put things in, extract them, hide them, shoot them, and twist them about with the sort of vaginal muscular dexterity that one would normally associate with the fingers of a calligrapher. Entranced by the magic of it all, and bearing a disposition weakened somewhat by the hours of drinking beforehand, the predominantly male audience lift their wallets and empty them into the eager hands of the nymphs. Sometimes the ladies get friendly with the audience and sit on their laps, accepting outrageously priced drinks as gifts, giggling coyly, whispering sweet Thai phrases into the eager ears.

It’s all true.

Well, except for the sweet Thai phrases part. What they’re actually saying are the stock phrases found in the “Bat Po Yang Showgirl Etiquette & Grammar Guide”

“Where you from?” “What your name?” “Buy me a drink?” “You want Thai girlfriend?”

And sometimes they do more than just sit on the laps of the guests. They tickle, caress, stroke in an endearingly coy fashion, all the time giggling to themselves and pretending that this is the best five minutes of their lives. All around them drunken yobs are “Whoooaaaarhh”-ing or “Yeeehaaaa”-ing if they’re American, pretending that this is the best five minutes of their lives. Which, let’s face it, it probably is.

On the one hand it is sad, seedy and exploitative. On the other it’s all part of a game in which the girls always take home the spoils – the thought process being something like “hey, if these drunken yobs want to look at me and give me thousands of Baht to feed my family why should I complain?” And the girls aren’t beyond taking advantage of the situation themselves…if in the course of their wandering their hands should find a wallet, they’ll happily help themselves. Virtually full beers are whisked away by dangerously over-eager waiters, and new ones added to both the table and the bill. It’s a game, rooted in the age-old “willing buyer willing seller” principle of commerce, and everyone leaves satisfied at the end.

So into all of that we stumble, Brian, Al and me. While we have all the bravado of soldiers on shore leave we’re actually sadly inexperienced in the ways of these things. Which probably explains why Brian was dishing out 1000Baht notes instead of 100Baht ones. Which, in turn, explains why he was the most popular guy in the room. Seated next to him, Al and I derived the benefits by getting the best views in the house.

For the record – we were model gentlemen and remained with our clothing intact (apart from the previously mentioned shirt incident). None of us did anything we regret or wouldn’t mind telling our respective partners, and all three of us were together at all times. Yes, we’re that close.

It wasn’t my first time in one of Bangkok’s fleshpots (the first, strangely also with Brian, was a couple of years ago and my second more recently with Jayne). But it was the most frenetic, and I suspect the 1000Baht notes had something to do with it.

After about 90 minutes we could take no more, excused ourselves from our new best friends and left.

On the pavement, Brian’s favourite phrase was spoken: let’s have a quiet drink there. The “there” in this case turned out to be an innocuous looking bar called something like the “Pink Ranther” [sic] or maybe that was a sign we had seen earlier or possibly even dreamt about. In any event we went “there”, pulled up a barstool and ordered a drink. I excused myself briefly to find a 7/11 that would sell me some cigarettes (the young ladies in the previous bar having taught me a thing or two about chain smoking). On my return I found that Brian and Alasdair were working hard at justifying their status as “Friendliest South Africans in Patpong Road Tonight” and had found their way onto the dancefloor, where Al’s Johnny Clegg-meets-Torvil routine was endearing him to the locals. Brian was just looming and swaying mostly. A bit of shaking, bobbing and weaving later and it was almost time to go. We knew this because the girls were entering “transactional mode”. Alasdair, in true gentlemany fashion, wanted to thank the girl dancing with him for her time, and offered her cash. She misunderstood and thought he was making an offer for a “long time make you smile what’s your name?” so I think he gave up and lumbered over to where I was standing. At which point it seemed like a fantastic idea to play the beer game – where we pass a mouthful of beer backwards and forwards until one of us has to swallow whatever hasn’t dribbled down our shirts and between our toes. It was all going tremendously well until Al decided to go for the fountain effect – which should never be tried after 1am – thereby spilling the beer and eliminating himself from the game. We looked around. The dancefloor was empty. It really was time to go.

By now we’d worked up a hunger and needed a late night snack. Fortunately we were still in tourist heaven and a snack isn’t hard too find. Just one street down from Patpong stands a line of fast food joints. Not your regular KFC, Nandos and the like – rather nameless food vendors serving prawns, pork, chicken and noodles in various combinations. We pulled up a plastic chair and tucked in. The interesting part came when it was time to order a beer. Their system is this: customer looks thirsty and alerts the overly camp and charming waiter-person to their needs. He (the waiter not the customer) plucks a tiny megaphone out from under his arm and yells your order to someone at the dark end of the street, who emerges from the shadows moments later with your beer and a couple of condom-thin plastic cups on a little tray. I’d like to say that the reason we ordered lots of beer is that we found it all so entertaining, but I can’t. The reason we ordered so much beer is because we were drunk. So much so that Brian didn’t remember being there at all, so we had to return the following night. Oh, and the food was pretty good too.

Our late night hangout – and the waiter

A tuk-tuk ride later and we were back at the hotel. Brian took himself off to bed, which was for the best. Alasdair and I sat and finished what remained in the minibar – a few fantas and some bottles of water – and eventually went to bed around 5:30am, which was probably for the worst. But the conversation was good and even vaguely intelligent. I think.

Not a bad first night on the town. We had arrived in no uncertain terms. Bangkok was in trouble….but not as much as we were the next day…..more on that soon…..

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….