Ping Pong
Trip Start
Oct 26, 2006
1
3
6
Trip End
Oct 2007
Krabi, Thailand
Saturday, November 25, 2006
After a hellish drive from Siem Reap along the bumpiest road in the world on the oldest minibus in the world and a very long border crossing, we eventually arrived in Bangkok. It is an enormous city, full of skyscrapers and a nice layer of smog. Went out for a group dinner and said goodbye to a few people. Took a trip down Kao San road, one of the very famous backpacker stretches in Bangkok and after fighting my way through all the other tourists and saying no thank you to all the nice street vendors, we found a nice little bar that acts as a petrol station during the day and a bar at night, never seen anything quite like it. Its exactly the same as the petrol stations back home, and i was just waiting for somebodies cigarette to set us all alight, but never happened thankfully. Anyway they did buckets of vodka and red bull for 3.50 and they were pretty strong so naturally i had a couple and was bouncing off the walls, after my 2 litres or so of alcohol, me greg and 2 english birds jumped in a tuk-tuk and demanded he take us to the best ping-pong show in town, to which he was only too happy to oblige, bcos we were drunk enough to pay his extortionate rates he agreed to wait for us outside this bar, that was down some back-street far, far away from anything. Was a little dodgy but thought if we all stick together we'd be fine, so we went in and got our free glass of beer. When free and beer are in the same sentence, that usually means it's going to be warm. I think we paid about 12-15 quid to get into the place although i can't really say for sure cos i don't really remember but we went into this darkened room with lots of scantily-clad girls dancing round shiny poles while dirty old western men sat watching with two thai girls under each arm who would have been young enough to be their grandaughters i'm sure. I was just glad to get sat down. So after a bit of dancing the party girls came on and started doing all these weird and wonderful tricks, shooting balloons with toothpicks thru a peashooter, pulling out razor blades on a string, playing the trumpet, smoking cigarettes, ping pong balls and the best one, the final trick, this thai woman, gave me a bottle of pepsi and told me to hold it really tight with both hands so i did, and it was one with a metal cap that u need a bottle opener for, or at least i thought u did until i met her, so i was holding onto this bottle of pepsi and she said r u ready and i said yeh, so she squatted down and i heard an almighty pop and the pepsi fizzed all over my hands and the room erupted in a mixture of applause and laughter, a very impressive trick indeed.
I thought the nite was still young at 2.30am and was keen to head on somewhere else but in true democratic style i was outnumbered and had to go back to the hotel cos everyone else was tired. Next day we kept with the program and thought because we had been so cultural the night before we'd go see the royal palace and the reclining buddha, which is an awful lot bigger than i had imagined, like its enormous, really really big. We even managed to get into the monks dorms and one invited us in and had a chat with us and prayed for us and then got us to try and but little buddhist necklaces, but i wouldn't make a very good buddhist so kept my hand out of my pocket, give us his business card and told us to send him some photos of him and us, nice chap, nice and fat, just like buddha.
Anyway going on a bit, i checked into a very posh and very expensice hotel and was a good job i did cos was pretty ill for a few days, so spent the 2 days i was there in bed watching movies. Went out for dinner with the 2 english girls one of those nites altho i didnt eat too much and then headed to Patpong area, Bangkoks red light district, which was another educational and very cultural night and if i hadnt been feeling so ill would have been a lot more fun, but was good to see. Another couple of days spent in Bangkok, met up with new tour group and started next tour. Went to see the bridge over the river Kwai and the JEATH museum which was all very interesting and then last night we got the long overnight train down to this area and checked into new hotel and have spent the day walking around drinking fruit shakes and eating pizza, have a nice relaxing day aboard a boat tomoro, visiting some of the local islands which should be excellent, they're meant to be some of the most beautiful beaches in the world so looking forward to that.
Well had better go get back to relaxing, its not easy
