Careless Whisper

rag

As you can imagine, I’ve met some good people on my travels…Robin Gibb is now Robin Gidd albeit he’s a bit of a God Squad type whose enthusiasm for the lord almighty is equaled by his equal opportunities opinion on downing shots and buckets all the while having a better beard than me and a spherical pal called Wilson. 

Another Robin I have met is a Swedish guy who works at my day job that reminds me of Chet, a guy I lived with for 4 years that would go to a club in Speedos and work out in public, Muscle Street doesn’t have the same ring to it as Muscle Beach when you think about it but that’s how I met him and the reason he’s my friend…he can play Careless Whisper on the Saxophone and takes no shame in putting his weight bench out on the street on a sunny day or getting his Dad to reinforce his bed with steel. 

Robin talked me into doing a ‘photo shoot’ with a girl he had been conveniently riding on the side who looked a lot like the girl from the Nickelback Video for How You Remind Me.  My wife was understandably appalled at the thought of this girl, who was in her eyes sexy as France writhing about the surf gien it big licks with her chebs oot.  In reality, she turned up at 9am for her shoot on the beach with a (pure blaggin it) ‘professional photographer’ looking like she had just got out of Auschwitz but with a worse hangover, bruises and everything.  The sun wasn’t really shining and I tried to tell her that it wasn’t worth it as she was simultaneously applying makie up and vomiting in the bathroom.  I gave it a bash and Robin turned out way better than her, as he has been a model, a dancer and also a contestant on Swedish Big Brother (either 2004 or 2006) and knew how to pose and the likes.

So, I’m on the beach giving it the whole ‘oh, the light’s not right’ chat while he is telling her to ‘unleash her inner tigress’ and get sexy ‘like the movie wild things’.  When she still didn’t look like much he promptly told her that she ‘looked like a cow’ in Swedish, which made me like this guy even more.  Robin, as I mentioned is professional dancer and he is most at home in the bar at night when he incites the crowd to join him in the ‘Cha Cha Stomp’ which for those of you unaware is a song much like the Macarena. 

He somehow gets them all going and even more surreally manages to look good doing it.  I love to watch the faces on the crowd when it gets to the bit where he sings “Charlie Brown’ as if it’s a dance move every one should know like ‘Stomp to the left, 2 times’. I put it down to the particularly peculiar night we were having, not only had the drains been cleared out and the whole place smelled of rank excrement but it was also the offical ‘SUPERMOON’ – the point in which the moon is closest to the Earth in more than 2 decades.  It actually was a really big, bright moon and quite impressive but what was more impressive was the effect it seemed to be having on the tides and the weather.  The tide would come in and out by a good 200 yards every 20 minutes…some say all the natural disasters are due to the supermoon but I’m not sure.

I’m writing this blog after the ‘what’s your favourite fish?’ couple incident.  I tried to interject with a wee bit of comedy only to be met with an icy response.  The male of the couple’s answer to the fish conundrum was ‘the yellow one’, ‘that’s Skype’ she said as I interjected with ‘no. that’s the blue one!’  Once again, wit has not prevailed but I need to consider that I am sitting by myself in a bar surrounded by people in shorts while wearing a denim jacket.  There can be only one.

I’m away to wind up a guy I don’t like the look of that’s playing pool in the bar I’m in, to me these are the best kind of wind ups.  My favourite on this trip so far was almost convincing a guy he should call his band ‘Ghostbusters 2’, everyone already knows it and no-one will expect it, he was almost convinced.  I am a dick.

Fuck You Izzard

“Excuse me” said a very chirpy looking fellow from Denmark as I was working the other day.  “Aye?” said I, “Should I beware of Monkey Thieves?”.  At this moment I was thinking he might have been a student who had overdosed on Eddie Izzard in 1999 and still thought it funny to see humour in putting incongruous words together and putting on a funny voice.   But, alas, no, he was serious!  He informed me that an ape had been coming to his hotel room at the same time for the last two days and he had been warned that people train monkeys to steal cameras and wallets for their devious owners.  I was as polite as I could be and told him that he should always beware of everyone, especially with his valued possessions but I still really wasn’t buying it.  It turned out that he was just an unrealistically happy man and was indeed being stalked by an ape, his wife showed me a video they had taken that day of the simian in question trying his best to pry open his patio door, the funniest part about the whole thing though was hearing him saying in the video “oooh noo you ditnt!” in his best Hoochie Mama/Danish tone as the monkey brushed off his shooing and pelting of the glass.  I guess you had to be there, and I guess I wish I had been, even if only to see if the monkey was taller than me.

There is absolutely no chance Holly and I will fall victim to any such aping around as we have now moved to a new gaff with a, wait for it …’Mountain View’!  I’m quite a fan of a wee embellishment of the truth here and there but when your mountain vista is a pane of glass with a sheer rock face one inch apart you have to concede wan tae you and just laugh about it.  We live above a Bike shop and have to raise the noisy shop shutter every time you enter then run the mosquito gauntlet to the room.  Our landlord seems a funny chap that may have been a victim of a shark attack.  The reason I comment is that I see him sans tap practicing his golf swing with a weighted putter and he has an awesome (in my mind) shark enduced scar on his torso.

Tonight I went to work at the nighttime job after working all day and it turned out I wasn’t needed, as the island is getting quieter.  Common courtesy comes into play when you see a staff member sitting there for an hour and a half and your response when he storms out is ‘were you wanting to work?’.  ‘No, I love hanging out in restaurants on my own’. 

In a moment of slight revenge but really just desperation I went to a bar doing 150 baht buckets for Happy hour when I was overcome by the strongest compulsion for a shite.  This bar, as you have probably guessed by the prices doesn’t have the nicest of cludgies so I found myself using a check pad from the night job to wipe my derriere with. Not the most glamorous I’ve ever looked but in comparison to the toilet I was in I was Shirley Bassey on her throne singing ‘kiss me, honey, honey, kiss me’.  The lack of toilet roll or even a ‘Thai Style Bum Shower’ must be apparent to you by now but it gets even worse.  The bottom of the cubicle door seemed to have teeth where it has been kicked in or rotted away that looked like the warnings on cigarette packets.  Strangely though there was one brief convenience for this inconvenience in the form of a rusty nail for hanging your coat, or breeks on…it was a strange kindness in some way and I am thankful for that in some way.  Maybe Buddha is getting to me?

Anyway, the world still looks like it’s going to shit.  After the Japan thing I didn’t watch the news but when I did take a sneak peak I saw that the world seems to have invaded Libya promoting what looks like WWIII.  I guess that’s what happens when you let Mickey Rourke run a country, he was good in Angel Heart and The Wrestler but he seems to have went more aff his nut this time than when he turned down a career getting his head sooked in soft porn with Kim Bassinger to getting his head pummeled in a boxing ring.  I hope Stallone takes his place.

Enough for now, I need to get back to some ‘proper’ writing and ignore the couple beside me asking each other ‘what’s your favourite fish?’ and set about meeting the most Scottish, not Scottish guy in the world and Robin Gibb with the best beard in the world for a light refreshment and ‘beard off’ under a kerosene coated skipping rope.

More to come soon as my good friend Dan and I are planning a wee trip around South East Asia with a crutch each.

Crag

Cock Tales

My internal misery has been brought to my attention more times than I care to mention by my other half, but if I’m honest I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking.  Imagine a shorter, bearded version of Rodin’s sculpture with a drink in his other hand.  I proffered to myself that it might have been the lack of a good vista from our insanely blue cell of a room or possibly the lack of a good, healthy, smiling visage on my part.  As mentioned prior in my ‘downer’ of a blog…I’ve started working here and now I have started working two jobs.  The point in all this is not only to offset the cost of living but also to offset the boredom.  I realized that I haven’t been in the sea or indeed the sun for over two weeks now and the tan I gained from frolicking on the beach and suffering in the shade has completely faded to a shade of white not far from ‘eggshell’ or whatever that hairy Patrick Bateman dog from Dulux is currently calling white.  At least I’m the only one here without a tan which does set you apart from the hordes of Swedish Gigolo dancers that vie, topless, fruitless and mindless for the attention of any girl with a heartbeat and a risk of a slipped nipple.

At work I have been working a beach bar by myself during the day which I really quite enjoy to be honest, although, not once have I felt like Tom Cruise in Cocktail (maybe I should call this blog ‘Cock Tales’??) when he moves to Bermuda or wherever it was. 

When the bar is a hut on the beach you don’t get the amenities you would expect of such an establishment, e.g. a sink or an ice machine.  A Swedish guy owns the place and all the staff seem to be Swedish so I’m not sure how they are taking to me yet.  On the plus side, I get to play my own music all day with a perfect, postcard view and I always strive to provide table service in the pursuit of the elusive ‘tips’ of which I’m allowed to keep in this job.  In the other bar I work for around 3 hours a night notching up about £6 for the whole shift and all the tips go to the Thai staff as they work the whole day and night for even less.  This is understandable I suppose, but equally depressing as you can imagine.  So, in the place you get to keep your tips I’ve found myself to be quite an outgoing wee character, much to the surprise of myself and no doubt to my friends from home.  Racking up 1000 Baht in tips in one shift shows me that I’m changing my ways a little bit and after all I suppose that’s what travel and experience should do to you. 

There is still some abject misery in my soul however when I think that I’m doing almost exactly what I was doing ten years ago for a fraction of the pay.  I get to meet some nice people though, I always say that manners cost nothing and you should treat people as you wish to be treated yourself and you would think that the ‘travelling community’ would be a bit more self aware when it come to this sort of thing but I soon realized that there seems to be no community at all here, only Japanese holidaymakers insanely taking pictures of themselves draped over items as exotic as a wall near a beach or a sign advertising ‘PIZZA!!!!’ and then the aforementioned ‘call me rude boy, boy’ types that are here to spend and be spent.

Back to the strange suggestion that I’m being a bit more outgoing and talkative…the night-time, nightmare restaurant job I have needs someone to stand on the street with a menu offering up the services and special offers and I’ve found that I’ve actually quite enjoyed it.  The funniest thing for me is imaging if I was standing on a street in Glasgow shouting ‘Hud Yur Dinnnerrrrrr hen??’ would be absurd, down right cheeky and would be responded to with a swift kick to one’s coupon.  For those of you that aren’t Scottish, I’ll enlighten you to two things…firstly, one’s coupon is an affectionate term for one’s visage and secondly asking a lady if she has ‘had her dinner’ means ‘Have you had sex?’ and even more obtuse is asking someone if they ‘want their dinner?’ something you couldn’t get away with at home but I take great pleasure in presenting the ‘special offers’ while I’m here.

We will be ‘flitting’, or moving home tomorrow and I’m planning on spending a little more money to have a nice sea view and a bit of sunshine to wake you up in the morning, maybe it’ll make me feel a little better about the world and I’ll be a shiny, happy person.  Until then, I’ll keep to my introverted ways and ponder my surroundings as best I can.

Will do a new blog soon as this one has been short due to distraction.  I’ve met some nice people and had some new experiences that will surely keep you amused.

Crag

Downer

So yesterday I turned the grand old age of 29, a day not many people really look forward to but at least it’s not as bad as the grand ole’ 30.  If I said I had a nice enough wee day, I’d probably be lying.  In the morning I had some excellent presents from the wife.  I’d asked for Strongbow, a foursome and some Berocca and it turns out Strongbow is the hardest to source of the trio.  I got some some crackers though.  Magners for breakfast, Berocca for lunch, an AC/DC vest, a cowboy shirt and some books, which I’d already read but with my booze addled brain I figure it’s not a big problem to read them again then trade them for some new ones.  That was a good start to the day, even if the Strongbow and the foursome never materialized.

We went out for some birthday cocktails with a spring in our step and they had CNN on all the TV’s with the volume up. This is quite a rarity for where we are as you can imagine, it’s hard enough trying to figure out what day it is when you’ve lost your phone and there are no newspapers in English etc…  It turned out that there had been a massive earthquake in Japan and a Tsunami that followed and totaled everything in its path. 

I already knew the world was going to shit and that was one of the reasons I moved away from home anyway. Since I’ve been away there had been the Earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand…pretty much one of the last places anyone would have expected it and now this in Japan.  I got to thinking of the Tsunami that wiped out where I’m sitting right at the moment in 2004, I think??  You see, there are no news channels on here, nobody watches the news and no one seems to read the papers so there was no early warning at all.  I can imagine 2 wee Jimmy Thai guys sitting on the beach and one asking “Does that look like a big fucking wave to you?” and the other guy going “aye, it does like” and then next thing you know they’re all dead.  It’s nothing that anyone would expect and probably a sight no one had seen the likes of before so to say they were surprised is undoubtedly an understatement.  I saw on the news how fast the wave in Japan was moving and was just lifting trucks, houses and boats along with it and that shit really is scary.

The reason I was so worried was because one of my best friends has just moved to Tokyo and had already been in an accident the week prior and was on crutches, had a broken nose and 2 black eyes that made him look like the Hamburglar.  It wasn’t that I was worried the anniversary of his death would forever mar my birthday but for once in my life I was really, really worried and all communications were down in that neck of the woods so I had the whole day with that on my mind.  To top that off my family called to wish me well and also that my Mother had suffered a stroke.  She’s OK now but has been told to take it easy which is not as easy as it sounds for my Mum…she has and always will be a pure grafter.  I told her it was time to retire, she said she was too young to retire, I said she was too young to be having fucking strokes!  It seems like my family are falling apart and although I never really go home to see them when I’m in Scotland I know how easy it will be if ever I need to.  Now though, getting home is not so easy so she better start taking it easy or I’ll do her in myself.  Mum, I know you read this so take heed, afore’ yer deed.  Enough said. Holly had also taken on a new job and was working 4pm til’ 10pm also and I had some time to kill aswell.  So, all in all not the best start to my 29^th year!

In a moment of lighter relief a couple from New Zealand we had met a couple of days earlier that had a taste for the bevvy not too dissimilar to my own sent me a text wanting to meet up and get me a birthday drink.  I took them up on this and spent the rest of the day drinking beers, buckets and shots with them until Tanzi got a sudden case of ‘heat stroke’, I’m no doctor but I’d call it ‘bucket stroke’ any day of the week!  We went to a few more bars and I got a ton of free drinks and buckets until Hol finished work and we went to see a live band play in a rock bar. 

Around midnight I got a call from Dan, the friend who lives in Tokyo saying he was alright and the worst thing that happened to him was trying to fit his chin under his work desk then having to walk 9km home on crutches.  At this point, in a mixture of relief and inebriation I got quite joyful much to the distaste of my wife who couldn’t handle me changing the words to every song to ‘Cowboys from Hell’.  Lassies, pffft.  We both have the night off on Sunday so I’m sure we’ll make the most of that one.  Cowboys Fae Hell!!!

I decided to call it a night at this point as I was only gonna get more annoying , and she would get subsequently more annoyed as the night progressed so hit the sack and fell straight asleep and missed my scheduled Skype date with my friends at home.  I woke up with a jolt in the morn though and went for a proper Skype wank with a wee tert called Div who lives in Brighton.  Was nice getting some decent patter again but people in the bar were looking at me like I had 3 heads or something with the fully ‘Scottish’ patter we were having about locking guys in bin sheds and waking up surrounded by dead pigeons.  Again, enough said!

In other news, working 2 jobs and having to stay on the same Island for a while is getting me a bit down.  I’m doing all the exact opposite things that people come to this island to do, sunbathe, relax and taste the delights of the worlds women.  I have had a wee bit of time to do some writing and catch up on the photography bit, which helps.  I actually got one of my pictures used as a magazine cover for one of the tourist magazine that goes out to all the islands around here, a pretty good first step which has brought a few wee sneaky ideas to mind for me.  The walking wounded and official Tsunami survivor is supposed to be coming to see me the first week in April, so if he can make it I’m looking forward to some good times and a bit of time off with ma pal.

This has been a bit of a downer of a blog but as I’ve said before I want it to be a bit of a diary for myself as well that will capture this highs as well as the lows.  Bear with me though, I have some funny stories to tell and I’ll be a bit cheerier later.  It’s raining like hell here today and I’m the only guy on the island with a hat and a jacket so I’m gonna enjoy a good bit of rain before work.

Crag

‘You know when you’ve been Thatchered’

I’ve been pretty busy of late looking after my terminally ill wife during the day and working at night.  I’m starting to think she may have caught something from my pee.

I’ve started a job as a waiter at night times, it was originally to keep myself busy while Holly was doing her dive course.  I didn’t really think I would get work so easily so I started immediately and have been working every night for pretty much pennies. 

The way I look at it is, what else would I be doing between 6 and 12 at night apart from spending money and getting drunk in some bar.  I might as well offset that with a little bit of money, a free meal and free drinks.  I don’t know if you’re aware but it is illegal for me to work here so you always have to be on the lookout for the polis.  Although I’m getting paid hee haw, the thais get even less and work harder hours than the Farangs.  It has to be said though, the amount of nationalities that come through the door are hard enough for me to deal with and English is my first language so I don’t think it would work too well with the Thais front of house in this place. 

If they had such lax laws at home I think it would be a much better place.  In the UK you need a licence to fart and even then you have to specify which type, silent but violent, eggy and runnin’ doon’ the leggy or at the very worst throwing your boxers out of the bathroom window!  I think all the controversy started with Tango and Shell Suits. 

A bold Statement I know but please give your protagonist a minute to explain.

When I was young there was outrage and uproar about the wearing of a shell suit (google it if you’re under 20) in the vicinity of a radiator to the point that we had to change how the school assembly was laid out.  We all sat on the floor you see and if you were near the sides then you were of course, near the radiators and if you were unfortunate then you would self combust and it would be an investigative matter for Mulder, Scully and probably Jimmy Saville. 

I was rocking a JJB Sports or a Naff Co number at this point, as were most of my cohort’s pre 1990 and we liked to ‘lean’, just like in Grease when the T-Birds are wearing their leather jackets, look closely, they are always leaning.  I guess it’s just a thing guys in cool outfits do! 

So, the shell suit thing already gave me an idea of how the world was turning.  Thatcher had already taken the free milk away from the classroom but that didn’t bother me and now I come to think of it, that may be the reason I’m barely pushing 5’6”.  Actually fuck you Thatcher, I always thought you were OK cos’ you made me last that extra minute or two but now it’s game over. 

Some years later there was the issue with Tango, not only a spirited dance but an orange flavoured beverage favoured by the youth of Scotland back in the day.  They had an advertising campaign that stated ‘You know when you’ve been Tango’d’ and you certainly did as unsuspecting children were slapped directly on both ear drums by all and sundry followed by a ringing in your ears and a faint ‘Tangoooooooo’d’ from every kid in the playground.  The press went bananas over all this, which in my opinion should have made them bring out a banana flavour and the act replaced with throwing bananas at folk but, as controversial as that is, the racists had already used that one I suppose.  Back on topic, the world is crazy!  As much as I love home I really don’t like the way the government are getting new money for old rope with all the new exercises in licensing laws and the like.  The whole world looks like it’s falling apart and that’s the main reason I wanted to escape.  While I’m here all I see on the news is ‘Iffy Cairo’, earthquakes in New Zealand and the cost of everything going up so the recession will hit even harder.  Too depressing for this blog.  D.U.N – Done.

Last night I made a wee mistake with the Thai lady manager/chef and she took the complete nip with me.  There are certain boundaries that Thai people have,  like touching their heads, showing the soles of your feet or slagging off the royal family.  It’s basically the equivalent of calling someone’s newborn baby a prick…you just don’t do it!  Anyway, the lady in question has a boyfriend, a big Swedish lad I think that looks like he would split her in half.  My boss commented that she was walking funny, maybe because she was tired or even drunk. That one flew until I commented that it may be due to the extraordinary (as in, not ordinary for her 5’ frame) girth that her muscle bound partner no doubt had and then done my best John Wayne impression. 

She didn’t really get the comment until I performed ‘the walk’ and then once it sank in, all hell broke loose.  Menu’s flying everywhere and crying in the toilets and the like.  I’m pretty used to mad lassies as I’m sure you can imagine but this one just wouldn’t accept my apology then when she did she got drunk and let loose her vendetta once again, although this time usually with her Hulk of a boyfriend in tow.  I was already in a mood from the horrendous patter coming from some English guy whose birthday it was so arguing or scrapping wasn’t an issue (especially as I had met an American Marine with the frame of a smart car 5 minutes prior). 

To be fair, he brought some persons to the bar but my instant impression was that I would like to take a bar to his person.  The island is full of these types, you see more species’ of, for want of a better word…’shite’ guys on this island than you see of fish in the reef. 

You get the just turned 18 traveler types who are as high on buckets as they are on daddy’s money, the slightly more refined travelers who are here to dive (they just can’t put ‘Scuba Muff’ on the signs), the ladies men/model types who come here to work on their tan and cunnilingus before returning to London Town looking like the opposite of their paler peers.  Now, imagine all these types, from all corners of the world and all the shades of tan in between and then think about the worst. 

The most refined, the consummate gentleman, the educated and the over 30 but not quite 40 specimen.  He spends his days at the beach competing in team sports, draping his manhood over his shoulders and if that’s not enough there’s always a gym workout to sweat out last nights decadence and tone up their last Christmas dinner.  To me these guys are the worst; how they can spend so long here is beyond me…actually it’s not.  These guys get laid every night, swap numbers, facebooks and emails then converse at board meetings after fat free dinners flaunting photos and swapping sex manuals.  Maybe I just don’t like them because they have no interest in talking to me (a wee hint of boob but just a bit too much boab) as I’m the only married man under 30 on the whole island.  I can’t really hold it against them though, I imagine the winter of their youth has been more fun than my actual youth was and as everyone knows…men get better looking with age and chicks just dig an older guy.

Before I talk myself into divorce and a career in Beach volleyball I’d better change the subject.  Sleeping has been a bit better, still sweaty as always but you can buy Valium over the counter here for 10p so if you’re really struggling, like I was last night, then it’s an easy option.  That stuff gives you crazy dreams though. 

I woke up feeling like Allen Ginsberg but less gay.  Or maybe not actually, I just remembered that I was dreaming about being hugged by Manta Rays, but they had heads like angels with dreadlocks!  That’s pretty lavender I suppose but by no means the strangest of the dreams I’ve had of late.

That was a 15 minute brain fart and I need to start work now.

Adios.

Pagger wi a Swagger

Since I’ve been away I’ve been relatively well behaved with the ole’ bevvy and trouble and the likes but the last couple of days I’ve had a wee hankering for a bit of patter so I set about finding some.

First we went to a place called the Reggae bar, which has a boxing ring in the middle of the bar, and really cheap booze filled buckets.  I didn’t go there with the intention of fighting as I had already had a fight the week before but after a bucket or two a scrap was on the cards.  A wee guy, who we’ll call Jimmy (as everyone is called in Thailand) walks around with a big sign that asks for fighters to come up, if they do they get a free bucket.  I was pretty into the idea of a free bucket as we were getting a bit worried about cash so I thought I’d give it another bash. 

My opponent, to my surprise was around the same height as me (so he’s the one!) which suited me fine as tall people with a much bigger reach punching down on you does nowt for your beauty, or your confidence.  I asked him if he was a boxer and he told me he wasn’t.  You see a lot of guys fighting up there that really take it seriously and most of them are in Thailand to train at the Muay Thai Gyms with the best in the world, Tong Po and all that.  So, he tells me he doesn’t box, which may have been true,  he didn’t speak a lot of English but then he started warming up doing high kicks well above his head height.  I found out from his pal that he was a Karate instructor in France so I got a bit worried but didn’t want to give too much away.  Around 10 years ago I studied Tae Kwon Do and got to a really good competitive level at it but 10 years caning it with the best in the business seriously degrades your skill, stamina and confidence to fight a French Karate expert.

I kept it quiet and tried to stretch my legs as best I could under the table so I could at least kick him in the head then we were called to the ring.  They play Eye of the Tiger and The Final Countdown when you’re getting in the ring and between the rounds so I hammed it up a bit and did a wee dance in my Thai Boxing shorts which surprisingly got a good round of applause from the audience, I’m a wee dick.

The last time the bell rang for the first round the guy I was fighting came out like a whippet on eccies so this time I wanted to come out fighting.  To my surprise I landed 2 head kicks straight away and the rest of the fight went really well.  My balance isn’t what it used to be but the Frenchie got a kicking.  I was pretty pleased, 2 out of 2 but I can almost guarantee I’m gonna get my teeth knocked out by a Russian Mafia Don or a pre op transsexual with an attitude problem next time I decide to go up.

I spent the next day taking some photographs, which was quite fun, if not a bit lonely. I spent at least half an hour chasing a dragonfly trying to get a good picture of it in flight.  I managed to get a few but I realize that I don’t really have the equipment for it so the results aren’t exactly up to national Geographic standards.  Another thing I notice from walking around this Island all day and night is that there are only about 5 bloody songs on repeat in every bar, club or restaurant.  This can get a bit grating after an hour.  I also decided to get myself a wee haircut so found a guy we’ll call Jimmy Barber who was pretty much the best barber I’ve ever seen and would put anyone in the UK to shame.  He gave me the exact haircut I wanted, a shave, a massage and cracked my neck, which had been giving me hassle for a wee while…all for 4 pounds!  I highly recommend him

 That night we went for dinner with my better half, where we met a couple of nice English girls who had just arrived on the Island so we took them out to some of the good spots.

I don’t really know what got into me, apart from buckets of course!  I also had a day of boredom while Holly was diving which won’t have helped matters.  We went to some beach bar called Slinky’s and there was a policeman with a gun keeping an eye on things. 

I deemed it a good idea to stand behind him making ‘gun gestures’ with my fingers to the back of his head and the like.  As if that wasn’t bad enough…some burly Dutch guy with his shirt off and some UV paint on him started hitting on the English girls and I thought it would be a good idea to start hitting on him! 

He tried to shake my hand and I obviously refused and went for the more refined gesture of getting him to kiss my hand.  As you can imagine he wasn’t really up for it so I proceeded to plant a wee smacker on his cheek.  Holly and the other English girls feigned lesbianism to detract attention from themselves while I kept up the camp pretense and claimed his prey as my little sister, forbidden fruit of course…but I assured him that my cherry was fair game.  Half way through the charade I forgot to keep up the gay tone to my voice and went to my usual Scottish accent and he caught on to the fact that I was taking the piss.  For some inexplicable reason…one of those things that only happens when you are extremely inebriated we ended up standing on top of a fucking table and arguing!  He was a good foot taller than me and the pair of us were well above the rest of the crowd so we must have looked ridiculous squaring up on top of a table while an armed policeman was prowling the bar.  Somehow, I managed to get away with it and didn’t get my head kicked in from this Beowulf meets Victorian bare knuckle boxer sleazeball and we moved on from the bar.

On the way home, I must have had a look about me that attracted trouble and another foreign guy gave some comment about my wife’s derrière and I obviously couldn’t let that one lie either.  I stopped and spoke to him and stated quite simply, in my mind at least…that I wouldn’t batter him as long as he let me tap him on the head with my packet of sweets (kinda like a packet of fruitella) and that would be it, just a wee tap. 

As one can surely imagine he didn’t like the sound of this but I gave it a bash like any Glaswegian would and my arm was promptly batted away.  I tried twice and finally thrice then commented to the girls he was with that he must have been scared of a wee packet of sweets.  They laughed at him, he got embarrassed and instead of beating me up he said another very rude comment about my wife so I threw the whole packet at his head.  I don’t think I actually hit him and I’m almost certain that I hit one of the girls.  The stars must have been in perfect alignment or the Buddha’s luck was shining on me because we simply just walked away and that was that!  Wan tae me!

When we got back to the room Holly went for a shower and I was still in the mood for a patter so I barged in and took a pee on her.  Not the best or most, genial thing to do to your wife but it was funny to me at least.  As any guy will tell you, when you start pissing it’s real hard to stop so Holly is screaming and pushing me away while I’m getting soaked by the shower while I’m fully clothed and pissing all over the whole bathroom while laughing my head off and pee streaming out of me like some 90’s Mr. Bean sketch

Holly commented that the hot pee mixed with the cold shower water was the worst part, but for me it was the fact that my wallet, my I-Phone and my Thai Phone were in my pockets and were now covered in water and piss. 

Still, it was a good laugh regardless.

Phi Phi Continued and a day of opposites

After a day long freak out about our finances I decided a few things had to change.  If my wife was going to do her Dive Master course then she would have to officially clock up at least 40 dives and subsequently hold up about 40 7-Eleven stores to fund it.  It shouldn’t be too hard as there are about 300 of them per every acre of Thailand! 

Doing the course is an investment in a way as she will get work and I can hopefully be a kept man in some of the worlds most beautiful locations, but for now it means spending a good whack of our budget on her qualification, accommodation, food and of course booze for little ole’ moi.  The main thing that was bothering me was where we were staying.  Although it was beautiful and only 400 Baht a night it was so remote that we had to take a long tail boat there at a cost of 150 Baht per person each time.  I don’t mind walking through the jungle in the daytime but at night, with all the snakes, spiders and tree dwelling ladyboys it’s not as desirable.  The solution seemed to be to move into town, get an apartment for a month and for me to get a job. 

The town of Ton Sei is a lot busier than at Shark Point (the end of Long Beach) so there is more to do and there is much cheaper food and amenities on offer.  If Holly is diving every day then I am either going to kill myself with boredom, alcohol or simply melt under the sheer unwavering heat of the sun.  I went for a wee jaunt and surprisingly I had a glimpse of a couple of jobs in about 15 minutes, but as you may or may not know, it is illegal for a Farang (a non-thai) to work here unless it’s something specialist like teaching English or catching Haggis.  An Irish owner of a decent bar was telling me that he had met a Russian broad and wanted to take a week off from running the bar every day and night and run off with her to the Mainland for some International Relations.  Another bar offered me some work flyering but I know I’m not really cut out for that with a sunburned face like a Chicken McNugget and the fun-loving, outgoing personality of a Victorian Grave Robber.  Apparently there are a lot of Police on the Island at the moment, which is unusual but it does mean that you have to pay a fine or do the time if you get caught.  The bar would pay the fine but it’s rare to get work as the Thais apparently only get 200 Baht for a whole day but Westerners get at least 100 an hour.  It’s still working for pennies but it’ll help and keep me out of trouble and boredom.  If you flyer then you get free beer and buckets all night so I might give it a bash with a stagger and a swagger at some point!

So, with a spring in our step we went on the hunt for long term digs, which is pretty hard to find during high season as the proprietors obviously make more money per night than they do per month.  After checking out nearly every guest house a wee guy caught wind of our search and followed us down the street and led us down a back alley where some women were playing cards.  It all seemed a bit shoddy as we were led down the back lane of some restaurants where they cut off fish and chicken’s heads, industrial fans expel hot air and the flies buzz aimlessly through the air to a set of stairs that were so steep that I hit my shin on the higher step each time I ascended.  The room we were led to was amazingly clean looking and had a big bed, air conditioning, a fan, a fridge, cable TV and a private bathroom.  The price she offered us was very good considering it was high season, about £300 for the whole month and only 100 Baht more each night than what we were paying to stay in an shed on the edge of a cliff.  The deal was done and some much needed smiles returned to our weary faces.

Over the last couple of days Holly has been off diving and I have been saying goodbye to friends, the Aussies Mike and Ally and Hello to a new couple Austin and Emer all the way from Ireland.  We only knew the Aussies for a week but I can honestly say I’m really gonna miss them.  As many of my friends know, I’m not the most tolerant person and there are only a few less irritating people in the world than Australian guys, controversial I know but the bottom line is that I never really thought I’d hit it off with them but in the end they have opened my mind and lifted a bit of the worry I had about leaving home and hating everyone I met.  A big thank you to them and the best of luck, they are actually gonna hook up with a couple from Glasgow who are staying in Melbourne and show them a right good Jewish knees up.  Mazel Tof!!

The Irish Gent, Austin was on a dive course too so his girlfriend Emer and I decided to spend the day together.  I think I drunkenly told him the night before I was taking her Dogging but, more innocently we met up and went on a 4 or 5-hour walk around the Island swapping each other’s life stories and how much we detest smoking.  I actually had a really nice refreshing day meeting someone new who was the same age as me and was willing to here me warble on all day.  She was also the victim of some kind of killer insect and had an amazing bite on her leg that kept swelling into a ball and oozing puss all day, I got to watch her Lance it so that was pretty satisfying and beat Dogging any day of the week.  That night we had to say our goodbyes to them also, so we had a really nice dinner, a bit of Thai Boxing and had a lot of chat about movies over several 2 for 1 buckets.  We had an early night as Holly was diving in the morn so retired to our boudoir for an air-conditioned viewing of a terrible pirated DVD.  By the way, if you’ve seen Coyote Ugly then you don’t need to see Burlesque…although Cher would still get it , even at 64.

Today on the beautiful Island of Phi Phi has been one of opposites for me.  Yesterday was the first overcast day we’d had and I was quite thankful for it, it was also the first day we had the luxury of air-con so I took the opportunity to slip on some jeans, as I really do hate wearing shorts.  Today though, the sun was beating down hard and I was struggling, I didn’t want to sit in the room all day watching TV…although, the only channel with cracking reception is Fashion TV, which any young man or teenager will know is the only channel you can see sexy models with their baps oot on TV at any time of the day.  Also today, I had almost literally no money on me at all as we had to pay for our Room and for Holly’s Dive Course.  You can only take out a certain amount each day from the ATM so it was a bit shit having a whole day with nothing to do, scorching sun and no money to do, eat or drink anything.  I bought a small kettle the other day so I was able to make some 8 baht noodles (about 10p) and boil off some water to put in the fridge and drink.  I had to go to a café to use the Internet and buy a single scoop of ice cream for 30p so I could use their wifi and do a bit of research online to keep myself sane.

Then, as if by magic the whole day kinda changed for me when I realized I still had some Singapore Dollars that I could trade for Baht at the Currency Exchange.  I also asked them if I could withdraw more from inside the branch than the ATM.  Apparently I can, as long as I bring my passport, so I just needed to wait on Holly coming home with the card and we’re back on top.  I had one beer in the fridge that I was saving for Holly coming home so decided to have that and start a bit of writing.  I had the air-con on full but I could still hear a very strange rumbling sound so I looked out the window and realized that full on Monsoon rain (Gene Hackman circa 1998) was falling from the sky.  The back alley that my looks down onto was flooded almost instantly and the posh private pool of a fancy resort that you can see from my window was almost overflowing.  There were very well to do Japanese girls in bikinis hiding their cameras under towels to catch a snap of them doing that 2 finger thing in the intense downfall. 

It’s only rained here once since I’ve been away and although we moan about it in Scotland, I think we secretly love it.  I got out of my jeans as quick as I could and put on my swimming shorts and went for a walk around the deserted streets with my sunglasses on and a cheeser of a grin getting looks from the people huddled in the bars and shops like I was looking for a ‘special’ bus window to lick.  I headed for the beach, which was almost deserted too, apart from some guys quickly taking in the deck chairs that line the beach.  I dove straight into the sea which was deliciously warm and swam just on the surface so my ears could hear the dull patter as the rain pelted off the surface of the water.  As I was saying, today has been one of opposites…I am sitting here happy as Larry after a bit of dancing in the rain in nothing but my shorts when this morning I was hiding from the sun in my jeans in a foul mood because I couldn’t even afford a fruit shake. 

In other news, I hired the worst guitar in Thailand from a Bamboo Tattoo Artist but at least it gives me something to do.  My fingers are aching already, so it doubles up as something to moan about too…everyone’ a winner!

Phi Phi Island - Feb 2010

I am now on the Island of Phi Phi and in many ways the game has completely changed.

After we left Bangkok we returned to Phuket and found that the lovely chaps at the Last Paradise Guest House had organized a room for us even though they didn’t know when we would be back or if indeed we were still alive.  I am very thankful for that and even more thankful that the taxi driver who took us from the airport managed to stay awake.  Holly and I could see his eyes in the rear view mirror and he kept falling asleep, at one point he had to stop and pour a bottle of cold water over his face.  We sat in complete silence gripping each other’s hands until the ordeal was over.  It reminded me of the first time I ever properly drove a car when I was in LA a few years back. We had had a fairly wild night out somewhere and my American friends’ Mother came to pick us up in her frankly massive SUV that was made all the more worrying by the fact that they had put on oversize wheels so the speedometer didn’t give you the right reading.  I had tried to learn the basics watching Chris drive it earlier in the day and he let me drive it round the block with his help and I was pretty pleased with that.  So, I was telling their mother this when she came to the bar to pick us up and she offered to let me have a shot of driving the car home, it was an automatic and she would be sitting right beside me so thought it would be fine.  What she didn’t know however was that I was just sick all over a toilet cubicle, Robbie B and my own shoes following a day long alcohol binge and a particularly nasty shot of something or other.  The rest of the boys, of which I think there were at least 6 of (that’s how big this fucking car was!) didn’t really catch on to what was happening until we got into the car and realized that I was the one who was backing the car up and heading off down the street.  From this point I have never heard a group of Banff Boys (Scotland and California divisions, respectively) at the end of a night out so completely silent.  Because it was their Mother in the front seat telling them it would be OK they pretty much had to deal with it.  The look of utter fear in their eyes as we crossed a bridge was only trounced by the look on my face when a Police car began to follow us as we were coming off the bridge.  I was told to ‘stay cool’ and to my surprise the following car exited down a side street after a minute or so.  The warm breath from the sighs of relief completely negated the cars air-con and made the whole other business of parking all the more sweatier.  Although I in no way condone or promote such dalliances with the law and the safety of my friends, and myself it will always be a fond memory…for me at least!

And now, back to the present.  We stayed at the Last Paradise for a few more days so we could sort out the particulars of our new plan to explore South East Asia.  The plan was to buy a second hand Motorbike and get a custom built sidecar made (they are everywhere here, people carry their whole families on them) with a lock box and a seat on it so we could both travel around the country with our bags in tow.  We had pretty much got it all sorted for a pretty good price and had planned a basic route around the country and I was very excited about the freedom doing it this way would provide us.  Then I did what I always do…I ‘googled the banter’.  This is a surefire way to freak yourself out, if you get bitten by a bug then suddenly you read on forums and websites that there is a chance it could be a fucking killer ninja spider and you would turn black and die within 3 days or your ears will fall off.  Anyway, I got to reading about all the Thai laws and the regulations of the roads and access to countries like Vietnam and Cambodia and freaked myself out.  If you are in Thailand in on a tourist visa then you cannot get the right papers.  The vehicle comes with something called a ‘green book’, which outlines the vehicles history, and must correlate to a ‘blue book’ that is attached to a Thai property and name.  Without these things you cannot get road tax or insurance for the vehicle.  If you go through all the websites on bikes, ex-pats and the forums from people who have done it all before then you get a 50/50 split between ‘you can bribe anyone here and get away with it’ or ‘I’ve not had any paperwork or a licence and have been here 20 years’ and ‘if you get caught you are fucked’.  The resounding thought that I had was that I wouldn’t even consider doing anything like this in my own country or America or even most of Europe so why would I show such little respect as to break the law here.  Common sense prevailed and disappointingly we figured it wasn’t worth the risk. God forbid any kind of accident would happen but if it did we would be seriously shafted, so now we’re gonna do it by bus and I imagine it will make the Glasgow to London for a Tenner trip seem like flying Concorde. Pfft.

At the start when I said that everything has changed now we are on Phi Phi I am not kidding.  We got the ferry out here and immediately there was a breath of fresh air.  The ferry itself was filled with younger people (and even a guy who was the spitting image of old Leo DiCaprio, Holly sneaked a photo) who seemed to have a little lighter step and a more optimistic view on the world.  After about 10 mins on the boat we bought some beers and got chatting to a lovely young Aussie couple on their holidays and an Irish guy with some good patter who had been teaching in Taiwan for 8 months.  We had been staying in Yanui and hanging out with much older people for the last couple of weeks and apart from Natalie and Mike (who is 42 but acts 22) we hadn’t really hung out with anyone our own age so this was quite surprisingly, to me at least, really nice.  It turned out that the Aussie guy, Mike and I had a ton in common and he was very much not your stereotypical ‘Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy, Oi, Oi, Oi’ kinda guy and his girlfriend Natalie was the same age as Holly so they hit it off no problem.  I also got a much needed dose of patter from James, the Irish guy who would hold his own without a hitch with any of my friends at home.

We got onto the Island and to our surprise the place we had booked to stay at (the night before) had arranged for a longtail boat to come and pick us up from the pier.  We didn’t realize that there are pretty much not cars or motorbikes on this island and the only way to get about it by boat, walking through jungle, swimming or customizing a kids bike or BMX into a Hello Kitty themed fanny magnet.  If you’ve been anywhere else in Thailand you’ll appreciate how refreshing this is, although the boats are pretty expensive.  We had booked to stay at a place called Phi Phi Hill for 700 Baht a night, for that we got our own spacious Bungalow with a sea view, a toilet, shower, deck with chairs and a solitary fan which was a pretty good deal.  The place was right at the end of Long Beach which was a hell of a lot quieter than the other beaches but still had a few bars, restaurants and a couple of dive centres.  As it was so secluded and chilled out it was the premier spot for going topless, which, excuse the pun has it’s perks!  With the bungalow, the clue was in the name…it was indeed on a hill, a very steep one so you have to ascend steps that are themselves like a hill.  Imagine each step is like a ramp so you’re constantly leaning back as you walk up them, which totally kills you!  Luckily they had a pulley system like you would see in a coal mine to take our heavy bags up to the top of the steps but after that we had to go to the other side of the hill (a cliff) to get to the bungalow.

That afternoon we went and met the guys we had hung out with on the Ferry trip and drank some buckets, played some pool and had some laughs.  We had heard that there was a bar that had a boxing ring in it and let tourists get up and have a go at Muay Thai Kickboxing so thought we would give that a peek.  We were all pretty blootered by this point so the others convinced me to get up and fight.  I thought fuck it, When in Rome and all that and gave it a bash…you also got a free bucket for fighting whether you win or lose.

Luckily we had arrived quite early and I hadn’t seen any of the other fights, some of which were very scary indeed with big guys from all over the world who had come here to train in the many Muay Thai gyms.  I got pretty lucky as I was fighting an Irish guy about the same size as me who didn’t have a Genghis Khan complex.  They provide you with gloves and headgear and you go at it for 3 rounds.  I spoke to the Irish guy beforehand and we decided we would take it easy, then the bell rang and he came out like a fucking hurricane pelting me with punches!  I was quite taken aback but managed to give as good as I got swearing to myself that he was getting a hiding in the next round.  Unfortunately, he threw in the towel after the first round and that was that.  I won the match but it didn’t really feel like it as we’d only had one round.  The next night Mike from Oz and another Mike from England signed up to fight but for them it was a very different story.  Mike from Oz had done a lot of Martial Arts in his time and was still pretty limber with the kicking etc… he was to fight a French guy who looked like a more handsome Ashley Cole with a dazzling smile.  Surely he was a lover, not a fighter so we thought Mike would have it in the bag.  When it came time to fight he had his shirt off and revealed a build not too dissimilar to Bruce Lee’s!  He also said that he’d never fought before but when the bell rang he knew exactly what he was doing, Mike held his own and it was probably the most even fight I had seen all night but in the end the ref awarded Ashley Cole the victory.  Now, mike from England, a very handy looking, tall, well built Cockney Geezer was up next and his opponent was friend of the last guy, also French but this guy was around 6’2, black as 2 in the morning and built like a brick shithouse.  This guy knew exactly what he was doing and Cockney Mike got a leathering.  Most of the other fighters moved their heads, ducked and dived but this guy just stared ahead like Shadow from the Gladiators not moving his head once while he relentlessly pummeled poor Mike.  I saw him a couple of days later sheepishly wearing his sunglasses at night to cover his black eye.  A wee shame.

Phi Phi Island is definitely the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life, I’m not even exaggerating when I say that, I was actually taken aback by how amazing it looks when we arrived.  There isn’t really much to it, some parts are busier than others and that suits us because you can choose to go to the bit with all the bars and people or juts hang out on the quieter beaches..  I think the thing that makes it look so good is the water, it is crystal clear and because most of the area is shallow you get a kind of emerald green, turquoise glow coming from it and you can see right to the bottom with all the fish and even sharks in between.  The view all around you is off steep cliff faces with green trees all over the top and vines hanging down.  The horizon is nothing but sea and the smaller island, Phi Phi Ley which has no-one living on it but you can get tours around it, which is what most people actually come here for.  This is the place that they filmed the movie the Beach, so if you’ve seen that then you’ll get an idea as to how beautiful it is.  I could go into more poetic descriptions of the beauty here but I always feel that kinda ruins it for me with things I read, you know when people can’t talk about harmonies without them being ‘transcendental’ or the heat ‘searing’ or the pain ‘exquisite’!  Quite simply this place is ‘pure braw’, enough said.  I’ll set aside some time to go and take pictures so you can see for yourself.

We done the tour of the smaller island with the Aussie couple via a long tail boat driven by a charming wee man called Mustapha who looked a treat in pink.  We swam in the famous lagoon and at Maya Bay and also went to Monkey Bay.  Monkey Bay was pretty dirty with a lot of rubbish lying all over the beach and the apes were sifting through it looking for food.  I thought this pretty bad at first until I realized the reason for it.  Holly was feeding them water from a bottle, this all seemed fine and was infact pretty amazing seeing all these wee monkeys grabbing onto the end of the bottle and drinking from it, one of them even had some of my beer!  All was going well until an older monkey came up and jumped up on Holly and tried to bite her face.  I stepped in and another couple jumped up and hung off my arm scratching me. We had to hot foot it into the sea before they really hurt us, wee bastards.  So, that’s how it gets so messy, people come and give them food then attack them and they have to run away before they can pick up the rubbish.  Again, wee bastards but they were pretty cool to see.  Later that day we all came to the beach that Holly and I are staying at and got to kicking a ball around with a couple of the diving instructors that were hanging out on the beach as there were no customers that day.  Later on one of them, Jay, a guy from Puerto Rico came and joined us for a chat and a drink.  Now, this guy is pretty much the sexiest man I have ever seen in real life!  He is 37 but looks younger than me, has a perfect surfer body, dreadlocks to his ass, Spanish skin and accent, perfectly straight and dazzlingly white teeth and even fucking blue eyes, which you don’t often see on Central Americans.  I asked him if he wanted a beer and he said no, I asked what he drank and he said in his smooth, slow Spanish accent ‘I driiiinnnkkk wiiiinnnne’.  Holly just about slid off her seat!  Despite all this he is actually an extremely nice man that has been travelling the world surfing and teaching Scuba Diving and decided to settle here in Thailand for a while.  That night we met up with him for a drink in the bar on the beach and we all had a really good time. We ended up limbo dancing under burning poles and doing that fire stick malarkey that everyone seems to do at night around here.  There are twins at the beach bar closest to us who look the absolute double of Cedric and Omar from The Mars Volta, afros and everything and they are amazing at the fire stuff.  We got to talking with some of the other dive instructors (including a cracking lad from Wales) and they explained how easy it is to get your Dive Master certification and get work all over the world in beautiful places.  Holly has always loved the sea and has dived in Australia before so this idea planted itself firmly in her head.  She got hopelessly drunk that night, fell off the path back to our Bungalow and doesn’t remember swimming in the sea at 1 in the morning so I said we could discuss it over the next day or so.   It seems like a good idea and she really wants to do it so I agreed to stay here for as long as her course takes and fork out the money for her to do it.  Maybe one day I’ll be a kept man as she teaches diving but for now I’m gonna have to amuse myself while she is learning to dive with the sexiest man on the Island.  Bastards, aw ae them!

Holly has started her course and we have moved to a much more basic bungalow, a hut really that at home would be classed as a sauna but only costs us 400 baht a night.  I have just spent the morning gaffa taping up all the holes in the walls so that insects can’t get in and devour us in the night.  As I said, it’s really basic but it’s all we need really.  I just wish it wasn’t so fucking hot!  There is a communal shower and Asian style toilets (a pure whitey by the way) and we even have our own crusty Berlin punk as a our neighbour who sits outside drinking Chang Beer all day with his bleached blonde double Mohawk.  A real classy joint I’m sure you’ll agree.

So now my days will consist of drinking copious amounts of fruit shakes in the morning, avoiding the intense sun in the afternoon and proclaiming ‘Fuck it, Geez a Bucket!’ at night.

It could be worse.

Crag

Udon Thani & Bangkok - Early Feb 2011

A’richt loons, I figure that the last blog was a bit boring so I’ll try and save on some of the actual details of where we were and what we were doing and focus on the more interesting stuff.  This blog takes in Bangkok so I’m sure it won’t be hard.

We drove across the border back to Udon Thani after watching the sun go down with the intention of just coming across a place to stay for the night.  It turned out that there were a lot of celebrations going on for Chinese New Year and there was a massive street party going on.  The street was cordoned off for about 3 or 4 blocks and had stalls up and down each side of the street selling food, clothes and blessings, tables all the way up the middle filled with people eating and a massive stage at the bottom end with a big screen and a light show.  There were lots of areas where monks would give you blessings and you could give your offerings to the Buddha’s and the like, the locals were all going daft for that.  One of the strangest things I saw was an apparent ‘race’ between 3 pigs who were just spread out on the ground with flashing, colourful bows on their heads hardly moving.  People were standing behind them with back scratchers and what looked like betting slips encouraging them to move forward, hence why I thought it was a race.  I don’t know if the pigs were drugged or not but they did look pretty zonked.  When I saw them later there was what looked like 3 whole bins of scrap food were emptied out in front of them and they hadn’t budged an inch.  The stage at the end of the street was actually pretty impressive, when we arrived there was what looked like a Thai teenage version of Girls Aloud (nae bad) doing a fully mimed and choreographed show.  Later on there were different versions of this, both male and female groups as well as solo old men crooning out the old Thai hits.  The teenagers were all decked out like they were at the disco in Terminator when he goes to batter Sarah Connor,  it was called Tech Noir or something, one of those places that conveys the future or the 80’s if you know what I mean?  It turned out that it was a talent show for the town and it seemed to be being filmed for TV.  We trekked on past all this to find a hotel that we had heard was a good deal. We found it and it seemed like something out of your worst nightmares, totally run down but not in a charming way. The girls went in to use the toilet only to be met with a dog that was close to death chained up inside a dark wardrobe and an ex-pat with the social skills of a cannibal.  The cannibal gave us some directions and shouted at the people in Thai and we eventually found a hotel that had space.  The place was enormous, pretty nice and very cheap.  It must have been the place to stay in the 70’s as there was a device at the side of the bed that apparently played tapes, I half expected Charles Bronson to be in the bathroom advertising Brut but sadly he wasn’t…probably cos’ there was nae hot water!

All was good the next morning, we had an early flight to Bangkok so got 2 tuk tuk’s to have a race with 3 of us each in them, we lost.  The two older guys Mark and Giles had went out in Udon Thani the night before and got pretty drunk and don’t remember coming in, well Giles didn’t.  Apparently Giles had came in, stripped naked and jumped into bed with Mark (the long haired one) while he was sleeping.  I suppose there nothing wrong with two grown men lying naked together and having a wee cuddle is there?  It was funny nonetheless.  The flight to Bangkok was cool and we had booked a nicer hotel than we were used to in the city.  It was only £37 for the night and the place was massive, a full on studio apartment with a king size bed, balcony, kitchen, bath, telly, sound system and a private swimming pool with a bar at the side.  We took a well needed and longed for bubble bath before meeting up with the others for a spot of Indian food.  Holly wasn’t feeling too well at this point so I went for a bit then found a Pharmacy to get her all the medicine she needed.

That night she was feeling a bit better so came out on the town with the rest of us but stayed off the booze.  We hailed a tuk tuk and talked the guy into taking all 6 of us on his tiny tuk tuk, a couple of us tried to hang off the back but that wasn’t allowed.  We managed to squeeze us all in somehow, Christ knows how as there was easily 65-70 stone crammed in there.  It was one of those things you have to do while in Bangkok I suppose…among others.  We went to the seedier bar area with me clutching on to my wife and my wallet for dear life.  We sat at a bar and ordered a beer while Mike and I went asked where the gents were.

We were directed through some beaded curtains into a room that was teeming with naked Thai women all dancing on a big stage in the middle of the room to a DJ blasting out Enter Sandman and other rock favourites.  When we walked into the room there was a deafening ‘WOOOOOOO’ for the whole distance of the room to the toilets as they caught sight of two extremely handsome Farangs choking for a pee.  The pee turned out to be quite an experience too, I opted for the urinal and I think Mark opted to hold it in as there was a girl in a bikini standing by the sink then as I relieved myself what can only be described as ‘Wee Jimmy Crankie’ (An old woman, about 4ft tall, wearing a baseball cap tilted to one, a body warmer covered in badges and big Reebok Pumps looking like she was totally ready to go Rollerblading with the Tiger Club on her Butlins holiday) sidled up beside me and bought 3 packets of condoms out of the machine by the urinals.  This was one of the weirdest things that has happened to me but nobody batted an eyelid, I had a chuckle and a wee shake then joined the others at their prime viewing position for the stage.  All the girls were numbered and I think the craic is that you tell Wee Jimmy the number and pay her a set fee and you get the company of the lady for the night.  The girls were mostly good looking (obviously there were a few fatties and pensioners for the deviants) but only a couple of them could actually dance or at least look like they wanted to be there.  Two of the girls, who were the obvious moshers took a wee shine to me and gave it big licks whenever Guns N Roses or the like came on.  At this point Holly noticed a sign on the wall advertising ‘5 ping pong 100 baht’ or ‘50 ping pong 500 baht’.  With this being a ‘Ping Pong Show’ Holly and I figured you would chuck the lassie a ping pong ball, she would inhale it up her *insert colloquialism*and then ping it back at you.  So we bought 5, thinking that we would be here all night if we bought 50!  I don’t consider myself naïve but this was really one of my blonder expectations.  Holly is asking “what do we do?” and I assume we just throw it at the best looking one so she does.  The girls kinda scramble to catch it and I’m thinking, Yaldi, here we fucking go!  But alas, naw.  The girl simply handed Wee Jimmy the ball and showed her the number pinned to her G-String.  It was at this point that I realized that this wasn’t a ping pong show as I had adolescently imagined but actually a tipping system so that the girls got extra money at the end of the night by how many balls they accrued.  Sigh.  If it hadn’t been for the fact they played Def Leppard I would have fucked the bit.

We left this place to another destination that we happened to just stumble across, or so I thought.  Earlier in the day Giles had mentioned a place that had a glass ceiling above you filled with girls dressed in Japanese Schoolgirl outfits dancing around sans panties but had reasoned that it might be a bit too much for the girls and certainly not the kind of place I would want to attend with my wife.  So, as I’m sure you can gather, the place we stumbled upon turned out to be the place with the glass ceiling.  As everyone in the group looked upon our destination in a mixture of awe, disgust and in Marks case…excitement, I gave Giles a sly wink and a silent high five of approval of his duplicitous but cunning ruse.  The place was exactly as it was described, the lower floor had a stage with about 15 girls on it just like in the last establishment but above them were a further 15 or so girls dancing in miniskirts and white shirts.  At this point all the gear was firmly on but after 5 minutes or so, the scants were aff and one girl even dropped the curtains (ahem) as she got down and dirty with her ass to the glass for some R&B number.  Although there were a lot of naked and very attractive girls gien’ it laldy the whole thing was still very un-sexy.  It seemed a bit more novelty, like a circus show or something. 

If the last stop was novelty and circus like then the next destination was a full on Freak Show!  Giles went up an alley for a few minutes then came back and urged us to follow him for a ‘real’ ping pong show.  We were led up a very dirty, seedy looking close with broken fuse boxes hanging from the walls to a place called the ‘Queens Club’ that looked suspiciously like a shitey youth club in Clydebank I was forced to go to as a boy where we were greeted by a 5 ft tall Eskimo woman.  When I say Eskimo I don’t mean that she was Inuit but you don’t see many short, fat, completely naked Thai women carrying what was either a flute or a dart blowgun trying to give you a hug…if she was hairier I would have almost certainly have credited her in the story as an Ewok.

At this point we order some drinks and the real insanity ensues.  There was a square stage in the middle of the room with light up tiles like in the Thriller video; one of the tiles was on the blink, which made the whole thing a lot funnier.  Anyway, another equally unattractive Thai lady comes out brandishing a candlestick like that French dick from Beauty and the Beast, sets it down on the ground and lights the candles.  “This is romantic,” I thought, until she blew the candles out with one puff of her chuff!  Oh aye, this was definitely more what I had in mind when thinking about a Ping Pong Show in Bangkok.  Throughout the next 40 mins or so various women came out and performed some truly impressive tricks that all involved their vagina.  If the women were attractive it might have sent me over the edge but luckily, each one that came out was just as ugly, if not worse than the last.  One amazingly opened two bottles and pinged the caps at us using only her bits.  Another smoked a fag with it, one popped some balloons with a blow dart gun, one pinged a banana at the girls, one blew a whistle while another pulled a 10 foot long flower garland out of herself.  The Pièce de résistance however was the last girl sticking a marker pen up herself and squatting down to a piece of paper on the floor and writing ‘Thank You and Goodnight’ on it, then for added flare she asked Mike his name and changed it to ‘Thank You and Goodnight Mr. Mike’ on it before handing it to him as a shocking reminder of that one night in Bangkok.

By this point it was all getting a bit too much as I realized that Natalie and I were holding ping pong paddles and batting balls back at the girl who was spitting them out of herself at us.  I felt like Forrest Gump, not only was I a dab hand at ping pong but I had the overwhelming compulsion to run, and keep running.  Holly decided, quite fairly I suppose, to give one of the girls a tip. This on reflection was a bad move for it was at this point to the sadness of the whole situation came to the surface as all the girls came running up with their hands out desperate for money like dogs begging for a treat, pretty heartbreaking but I guess it’s just a different world our here.

We called it a night after that, a sleepless one, as Holly took very ill and spent the whole night ejecting the contents of her body through every orifice like the ping pong show that she is.  She was too ill to make it to the airport the next morning so we had to stay at the hotel an extra night, book new flights for the next day and try maybe even get her a doctor as we were scared that she might have gotten some kind of parasite from her wee splash in the filthy Mekong River.  As the day went on she gradually got a bit better but decided to get some bed rest so we could fly the next day. The only upside to this very uncomfortable (for Holly) and expensive (for me) bout of illness was that my good friend Kenny and his girlfriend Emma were in Bangkok for one day after a month around Vietnam and Cambodia and I’d get to see them.  We arranged to meet up via the internet and the plan was to check out the Muay Thai kickboxing at the Bangkok Stadium that evening.  I was pretty down with this as I was certain that it was the stadium that Van Damme’s brother got a kicking at in the movie Kickboxer.

I arrived there about 6pm to find Kenny and Emma on the steps with some beers being harassed by ticket touts who seemed to be the only people that seemed to speak perfect English in Bangkok.  Kenny was determined that we would be on the cheap seats as they were the best despite warnings that we would be behind a cage, in a cage and in a box with no air and recommendations that we could get good ringside for ‘cheap cheap’ seats because Emma was ‘very sexy lady’.  We opted for a wee catch up on the grass outside the stadium then bought the cheap seats.  It turned out that the place was massive and we were in fact behind a big fence on the top tier of the stadium with about 5 other people who must have also been daft enough to buy the cheap seats.  There was a wee stall outside that was selling cheap cans of beer but you couldn’t take them into the stadium so Kenny went and got one in a plastic cup and put two more down his shorts so he could smuggle them in.  When he got to the ticket man and turnstile the cans fell out of the bottom of his shorts and he spilled the one in the plastic cup all over himself trying to catch them.  The guys were so amused by this that they just slagged him off in Thai and let him in with the cans.  This was stage one in Kenny making the transformation into Jelly Minogue, his alter ego that has the power to accelerate while simultaneously destroy whatever situation you are in.  Gid lad.  We spent the rest of the boxing mostly talking, drinking and catching up and not really paying much attention to the fights that seemed to range from children to adults of different weights repeating pretty much the same fight every time.  The only moderately exciting one was surprisingly the one where 2 westerners were fighting, they gave a bit more it seemed.  By this point we had all had a few too many beers and Emma decided to climb the fence that we were behind, she got up about 5 feet while Jelly screamed at her to climb higher, she comlied and the whole crowd of Thai men that were on the other side of the fence turned round and gave her a massive cheer and round of applause.  She came down and not much was said.  Then Jelly decided to give it a go and we get assigned our own security guards to make sure that no men climb the fence.  They spent the rest of the night sitting beside us keeping an eye on us, if we even inched forward they would warn us to stay back from the fence. This is just asking for Jelly to bam you up though so he takes it upon himself to try and swap trainers with the security guards and as you can imagine they weren’t too keen on that.  We did a bolt from the stadium and paid Holly a wee visit at our hotel where Jelly and I tanned a bottle of Sang Som and he pulled over our marble table spilling beer all over the place.  I stayed in with Holy while they went out for a ping pong show.  I would have loved to have seen how they ended up as I’ve been out with him in that state many times and it always ends in good stories, letting him loose in Bangkok will surely amplify that tenfold.

All in all, Bangkok wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  I had it in my head that it was gonna be constant hassle like in Patong, dangerous and seedy.  It really wasn’t that bad at all.  Although it was a shame that my wife was ill the silver lining was definitely getting to see Kenny and some much needed patter that Thailand sadly lacks at times.

Crag