An ‘Interesting’ Day In Thailand

Yesterday we didn’t play a single hand of poker (not even on our favourite site poker encore where you can sign up using the code GREEKSTEIN). Spam over btw so feel free to read on.

We got up at a reasonable time (pre 2pm!) and went for a swim in the pool. Then I went down the road for my first Thai haircut. Over here, when you step into certain shops or people’s houses, its polite to take off your shoes. As we approached the hairdressers there were several pairs of flip flops outside, so I took mine off and walked in. Now that ordinarily wouldn’t be too bad at all, but in the hairdressers here they don’t sweep the hair from the floor until the end of the day because they think it makes their shop look very busy and therefore popular. Hmmm. She made me look like a cross between Brock Lesnar and Eli Elezra but I certainly expected a lot worse. It could have been a cross between Sean Paul and Isildur or something. On top of that though, the formerly only part of my body not covered in hair (the bottoms of my feet) now matched the rest. Marvellous.

After my haircut we headed to the Thai weekend night market where you can buy anything from knuckle dusters to dim sum, or fake rolex watches to exotic coconuts. There was even a ladyboy selling baby dogs and we did notice that one of the underwear stalls had a section labelled ‘Women’s Boxers’. We will try and get a pic of those next time we go there! There is most definitely a market for these in Thailand.

We came home, got showered and dressed and headed to a local place to watch the football and have dinner whilst we ordered our cab. We found a driver a few weeks ago who drives a huge pimped out white escalade. It must be the most ballin car in the whole of Phuket; the next closest thing I’ve seen is a 2004 Honda. He’s reasonably priced and doesn’t drive like a complete nutter either. It’s almost as if this guy might even have a licence, meaning some formal training took place at some point. Almost unthinkable for the loons they allow behind the wheel over here.

The destination we were headed to was Patong. It’s a beach on the west coast of Phuket that has been turned into a tourist area and predominantly a nightlife zone since around 1990. There are 2 adjacent 3.5km roads, one is predominantly gay, the other is predominantly straight. Whilst Amatay was begging me to come with him to the gay area, I put my foot down and said NO and off we went down the straight road. It is a mad mad area, FULL of all different sorts of people. Ladyboys, stunning girls, dancers, tourists, hookers, street vendors, bars, clubs, the lot. Our first stop was a pool bar, where you pay roughly 20p per game but someone is always there to rack up as soon as the game finishes and serve you drinks etc. We had a few drinks and some shisha whilst playing. We played a first to 5 (must win by 2 clear games) for 500 and despite a 4-3 lead, I lost 5-7. We then played a best of 3 before leaving and the loser would have to jump in the pool when we eventually got home and do 10 lengths. I had a 1-0 lead when these 2 tall, absolutely stunning birds came and sat at the table next to us. It was lucky we’d only just started drinking because only the height of these two made us realise they weren’t actually stunning ‘ladies’ at all. If you didn’t know though, you’d be in a lot of trouble as they had great boobs, face, alll the work etc and their legs were so ladylike.I don’t know how they get such feminine figures like that. Amatay acts like a woman all the time and he still sorta looks like a dude. I’m scared that I might get a drunken surprise here one night. I’m going to use being a bit offput by these two ‘chaps with baps’ as my excuse for losing this game 1-2. FML.

I suggested going to see a Ping Pong Show as I’ve not seen one before and nor had Nitatay. As we head down a side street to this bar there is a ridiculously creepy Italian man standing outside trying to get a glimpse of what’s happening without going in/paying. He’s dancing about from side to side trying to get a better view until security jog him on. We head inside and within a minute of sitting down, 2 thai girls in their underwear head over. One was really attractive and I sat her next to me and gently swayed the one who looked like a young Bruce Lee with bee stings onto Amatay. We then got charged 800baht for our first drinks. Thats 16 quid a drink and I was shocked! That’s like paying 60 quid for a drink in London, except even more unthinkable over here. They musta seen me coming. We learnt that after the first drink, all drinks were then 200baht, which is still pretty expensive for over here but kinda serves as an entry fee/show charge. In context, the 2 meals and 2 drinks we had in the bar before we headed to Patong came to a total of 470 baht. Circa 9 pounds. We chatted with these two birds for a bit, then Amatay paid some bird 140 baht to paint over her tits. Standard, why not? Pretty sure he wrote ‘I’d fold pre’. He would too. Then some stripper thought it would be funny to grab my house keys. After a few minutes it didn’t seem like she was going to give them back and decided to put them in her bra with a 200baht ransom charge. I might be a complete mug, but no way was she getting any money off me and she eventually came to give them back, not without grabbing my crotch. Hmmm.

The Ping Pong show was eye opening experience for us and an opening experience of sorts for the performers too. At first they’d pull out reems and reems of string. Then they played instruments from them. One girl was a particularly impressive markswoman with a pea shooter. One girl pulled a string which must have been over 20m long, with around 40 sewing needles on it. The lady with the ping pong balls woulda given mrs pea shooter a run for her money as far as accuracy goes. The show was watched by a mix of tourists, male and female. The blokes generally laughing and the women providing extremely funny, but horrified reactions, almost as good as the show. At the end though, two women came out clutching two bowls of water. I wondered what was going to happen here. One shot out 2 turtles and the other 2 frogs. All live. Ridiculous but glad I went to see it. Only in Thailand!

Gonna buy a digital camera this week and get some photos of this stuff up. We have plenty of Encore badges to put to good use.