No, really, no ping pong thank you
Trip Start
Nov 06, 2009
1
42
354
Trip End
May 28, 2011
Where I stayed
Bangkok, Thailand
Thursday, December 31, 2009
We landed in Bangkok at around 2pm and had an excruciating 2 hour wait to get through immigration, but finally arrived at our hostel around 5pm. We're staying at the Urban Age hostel in the Silom business district of the city, which has the loveliest and most helpful staff.
We dumped our bags (I’m quite upset that the baggage handlers at Hong Kong or Bangkok managed to rip one of my waist straps so will have to find someone to fix it for me before we move on, grrr) and settled in for a bit, then set out to explore the local area and find somewhere to see in the new year.
As we wandered through what we thought was just one of the many buzzing night markets near the hostel we quickly realized we’d stumbled across Patpong, the infamous red light district. At first I was slightly taken aback when as I was looking at some T-shirts a guy bounded up to Chris waving a list of mind bogglingly bizarre sexual services on offer and tried to drag him in to see a free ping pong show. I politely introduced myself as Chris’ wife, to which the guy replied 'yes, free for lady too, come see ping pong ping pong!’. We politely declined then lost count of the times we were subsequently offered ping pong/banana shows and all manner of similarly exotic services.
Decided against having a drink in the ping pong street and found the gay quarter which felt a lot more comfortable so had a drink at the Balcony Bar before moving on to check out what was going on in central Siam, which is where the staff at the hostel told us the local Thais go to celebrate new year.
Siam Square was heaving with what felt like the whole of Bangkok out preparing to see in the new year. We wandered around taking it all in and sampling various bits of street food from the many stalls set up all around the square, then returned to the Patpong area and found a restaurant where we had the most delicious Thai meal. By then it was 11.30 so we headed back to the Balcony Bar for the countdown.
The atmosphere was brilliant, so although we hadn’t planned to stay up much beyond seeing the new year in as were pretty knackered having been up since 5.30am, we got a second wind and ended up bar hopping in the gay quarter until 4am. We must have been a bit tipsier than we thought because on the way back to the hostel we decided to have one final drink and accidentally wound up in a ladyboy strip joint. Oops.
So have started 2010 nursing a slightly sore head but feeling fairly well initiated into the ways of Bangkok and looking forward to seeing what else this crazy city has to offer!
Comments
Happy New Year and stay safe you both. xxxxxx
Sufri un poquito con esto!!! por favor tengan mucho cuidado no confiene en nadien!!!