Rebel without applause

Trip Start Jan 16, 2012

Trip End Jan 01, 2014

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Flag of Thailand Pattaya, Thailand
Wednesday, February 29, 2012

My otherwise unblemished drinking record went out of the window at a party on Monday evening. The party was to celebrate the 25th birthday of Ning, who is married to one of the ex-pats here, and took place in their bar in Jontiem Beach. The attendees were a mix of older English men and young Thai girls, and the buffet followed a similar theme as the spicy pork salad and other exotic dishes were side-by-side with hot dogs, scotch eggs and cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks - retro English cuisine at its best. Despite having devoured a large amount of food originating from both East and West, I unfortunately also forget how to say the words, "no thanks, I've had enough" as I drunk plenty of Thai beers (Chang, Leo and Singha, all pretty strong), Thai vodka, with their energy drink M 150 (sold in medicine-style glass bottles and allegedly containing nine times as much caffeine as Red Bull, its enough to give one wings enough to fly into space), and ending on Thai whisky (also fearsomely strong). This suicidal approach all predictably ended in me having very dim recollections of going home on the back of a pick up truck and meant that most of yesterday was fairly frosty in the house, despite the 38 degree centigrade heat outside, which frazzled my dehydrated weak English skin...

Once I had talked my way back into something approaching the good books, I attempted my first scooter ride with passenger - Shelley. After a wobbly start, I eventually straightened things up although I was undoubtedly the slowest moving machine on the road, as we were overtaken by bikes being ridden by school children (sometimes riding in threes), the elderly and even the side-carred bikes selling various Thai delights. In my limited defence, riding over here is like playing on an arcade game, as potential threats to stability are thrown up from all angles, including cavernous potholes, rabid dogs, other cars/bikes and yesterday three birds who dropped from the sky fighting and landed in front of the slim front wheel of the bike. Against this backdrop, the bulk of Thais, including the school children mentioned above ride without helmets (although the authorities here are starting to clamp down on this now, apparently starting with tourists, who are normally more ready to pay fines to unscrupulous traffice police at the threat of jail). This is another example of the inconsistency in the 'Land of Smiles', where pornography is illegal, cigarettes, swear words and sex scenes are edited from TV shows, but where on the other hand one can pay about ten pounds to watch a female fire ping pong ball/darts/razor blades out of her intimates, about 20 pounds to enjoy a female's company for a day or two, and where the local TV news happily shows graphic images of murdered corpses...

The hungover shame of yesterday, coupled with gross over exposure to the scorching sun led to a later than planned start to proceedings today. With the mercury again reaching towards 40 degrees centigrade, we braved a final outing in the sauna like heat inside the Honda Civic to which we've become accustomed when I've not (as is usual) been trusted on the scooter to head towards central Pattaya and "Mini Siam" at which one can wander round and take in miniature versions of some of the great sights of the world. As is standard with Thai attractions, the "wonders" seem to have been selected randomly and include the Eiffel Tower, the Colesseum, Statue of Liberty, Angkor Wat, Sphinx and others one may expect, together with Dover Castle (?), the Thai Insurance Company building and Bangkok airport (the latter two being completely unexceptional architecturally). The remainder of the day has been spent exploring in the car/on the bike this evening and planning the activities which will fill the next few days of a life which is rapdly becoming too comfortable...