Day 306 - Bangkok & the Ping Pong Show

Pussy ping pong...



Bangkok STINKS. In fact, Thailand stinks. This is a fact. Its a confirmed fact. It stinks. Sometimes of toilets. Sometimes of bins. Sometimes of wet dogs. And its almost always rank. Has it put me off Bangkok? No way.

OK, so we're booked on an amazing air-conditioned, reclining chair bus to go to the Thai border. Its 5 hours away. We get up at 7am. Tired. Grumpy. I've got a hangover from hell after going out with Tom last night and drinking too much beer. And our bus arrives. Right - visualise this. Its a minibus. Its tiny. There's already 10 people in the 12 seater bus. Plus all their backpacks. The driver crams us on, some in the aisle on makeshift fold-out chairs. We pick up some more people and then head off. No air con. No reclining chairs. 5 hours of hell. And then we find out that the road to the border is UNPAVED. That's right - its a dirt-track. And not just any dirt track. Its the most hideous road you've ever driven on. IT WAS HELL. We stopped twice for food. We all swore at how painful our butts were. We're all miserable. But 5 hours later, we're at the border. stamped out of Cambodia and stamped into Thailand. And it is from this very point that the rotten smells of thailand begun.



And its from this very point that things change dramatically. Thailand is considerably more developed than Cambodia. First up - the buses are amazing. No more minibus after the border. we swap into a double-decker, super deluxe, air conned and freezing cold mega-bus. The roads are paved. and street lit. Houses are on concrete, not on stilts. The people wear clothes, not pyjamas. Everything is significantly first-world. Its nice, although suitably uncharming.

Any 4 hours later we're arriving in Bangkok. I'm excited. Bangkok, in my head, is a city of dingy alleyways. dark and imposing. seedy. I had this perfect picture of it. And driving in destroyed it all. Bangkok looks a lot like any other major city. Huge skyscrapers, sprawling motorways, neon and billboards. There's pictures of the King EVERYWHERE. Sometimes they're the size of 10-storey buildings. Sometimes just framed photos in shop windows. But they're everywhere. And the thai flag flies outside every house, shop and streetlight all the way through the country.



We're dropped off at the top of the famous Koh San Road. Again - mental picture destroyed. Its one huge pedestrianised street flaunting market stalls, thunderous bars, street sellers selling fried crickets and noodles, our first McDonalds since China, and more shitty run-down hostels than you could ever care to trawl through. Its late and after seeing 6 rooms we settle for an expensive and hideously basic set of rooms. Rooms here are RANK. The matresses are too hard. the rooms too small. They take a massive room and divide into 5 with plywood divides that don't even reach the ceiling. Its rank. We opted out of sharing a snorefest and chose a walled room, without windows and with aircon. And its like a really not nice sauna.

Anyway, settled in and unpacked, we spend the evening wandering the streets, eating a Burger King (sick - thai food is so nice and we had a BK instead) and checked out the busy backpackers district. There's a shed load of beautiful people here - all western tourists. It seems good looking people don't go backpacking in SE Asia as much as they go backpacking round thailand. That aside, its got a nice vibe here. hectic and messy, but nice.



We did NOTHING in bangkok. There's so much to do and so much stuff to explore, and we barely did any of it. We didn't go to the palace - we walked around it. We reluctantly went and saw this massive buddha (its actually MASSIVE), reclining as he's about to be whisked off to enlightenment (i like the sound of that) and reluctantly took some crappy photos.





We barely touched china town. We didn't go to the red light district. We didn't go to any temples. We didn't go to any nightclubs. But we DID go to a Ping Pong Show. Yes guys - I now know what it looks like to stare up the barrel of a "gun" about to fire a piece of banana at your head. As night fell, Tom, Sam, Eve and I jumped in a cab and on the request of "ping pong" we're driven 20 minutes away, dropped outside a very seedy looking old warehouse, and invited in by a thai woman who looks amazingly like my Mum (sorry mooms).



Stripped of our cameras, I have no photos. Which is a crime, because it was pretty photogenic (i stole the one below from the internet). Guided upstairs, the place is about the size of two school classrooms. i.e. tiny. A small stage about 8ft square has an unimpressed girl in a miniskirt (just a miniskirt) dancing on the spot to an audience of 30 men (mainly indians) sat passively on two rows of leather seats circling the stage. I'm excited. I love naked people. So yeah, we sit down, grab our beer, and out comes a girl with a nothing on. Tom's got a serious face on (he's a bit of a sexpest so he's in his element here), and sam, eve and I are giggling like kids.



So, out she comes. naked girl. Takes centre stage. Lights dim. blacklight up. she reaches down there, grabbing something and out she pulls some neon-glowing ribbon. I love it. Its so funny. I'm laughing. She's pulling out this ribbon. 1ft. 2ft. 3ft. It changes colour. 4ft. 5ft. 6ft. Colour change again. I'm still laughing. And she keeps going. 10ft. 15ft. 20ft. More colours. she's got a shed load of ribbon sprawling out of her hands. 25ft. 30ft. she whinces (pain?) as the last bit pings out of her clearly oversized vagina and I burst into applause. There's little other encouragement for such talent, but I led the way. Tom kinda liked the whole thing too much, but that's understandable I guess.

Anyway, settling in to it, we watch as girl after girl comes out and show's us what they've learnt while bunking off from school. Next up we've got high-heeled naked girl. she comes out with her modesty covered with some lacy pants, but a quick dim of the lights and she whips them down and starts carefully moving her hips so that a string of RAZOR BLADES slide out of her. Sick. Although she was stood up, so you can't see much going on.

Then there's cheeky naked girl, who throws me a smile and wink as she bounds on stage with a birthday cake and a tube. She lights the candles. she inserts the tube between her legs. then blows them out one by one. Sick.

Then miserable naked girl. she slowly lubes up 3 ping pong balls, never breaking her miserable pout, and one by one pops them out into a glass with near-perfect aim. that was rubbish. I expected ping pong balls pinging off the walls, not dropping vertically into a cup. rubbish.

Equally exciting naked girls proceeded to demonstrate the firing of darts from between their legs and bursting balloons (I loved this one - especially as Tom got to hold the balloons!). One girl removed a whole hawaiian garland of flowers from inside her unfeasibly oversized chute, and another transfered the contents of one bottle of coke into another bottle. That was kinda gross though, and involved some serious bottle penetration, which I found mildly distasteful.

And then came the best bit. Right, so old woman naked girl comes out in NOTHING but some black heels, peels a banana and breaks it into 3 bits. She then lies on her back and fires the pieces of banana from between her legs to 2 metres in the air, then catches it. Its amazing. Real hip action. And then cheeky girl who threw me a smile tells banana woman to fire a piece of banana at me. I'm mortified. Cheeky's laughing, bananawoman is questioning me for an approval, and I'm pointing at Tom saying "DO IT TO HIM". She's not having any of it, so I bow my head to conceal my face and with a quick hip thrust she fires the banana at me from 4 metres away and it hits me square on the top of the head. The crowd roars. cheeky is wetting herself. I have banana in my hair. And to top it off - old woman naked girl comes and sits on my lap and asks for a tip. I told her where to go.

A few more tricks later - smoking cigarettes down there, opening beer bottles (which is AMAZING I will add) - and one naked girl comes down to the crowd to gather some names. We jump on her. we've heard about this. I'm desperate to get Freddy a souvenir, so I say I'm called Freddy. Sam, Eve and Tom all hand in their names. Naked girl passes it to cigarette smoking naked girl on the stage, who then lays out some A3 paper, gets down into a squat, and inserts a marker pen between her legs. With them spread open and just a marker pen and a brazilian between her and the paper, she starts to write. "Welcome to Bangkok Tom". "Have a good time Eve". "Thank you Samantha". And this...


[check out the beauty of the letter G]

*THIS* I love. Anyway, we're all laughing. We pay up a tip for our presents and get ready to leave. Not before one last show. Out comes tiny unimpressed naked girl and muscle-boy naked man with a semi-erect penis. We didn't know about this part of the show. We weren't prepared for this one. Lights dim, but enough that you can see everything. Some peaceful chinese music comes on, and naked girl lies down on her back. Naked guy fluffs up a little, tugs on a condom, and starts the dance. Its car-crash material. I can't turn away, but its grim viewing. We're all transfixed. What happens next is hideous. Its a perfectly coreographed display of some 100 classic sex positions. He'd do 3 little thursts inside the girl, then the two will move to the next position. 3 more, move again. And so one for 3 minutes. Every movement is slick and fast and perfectly rehersed. One minutes she's on her back, next she's on her knees, next he's throwing her legs over his shoulders, next he's got his back against a wall. Its bizarre. I never anticipated it. And its all on display - every grim detail. Its finale is spectacular - he grabs two bars on the ceiling, pulls himself up in the air. she does the same, and they do the 3 thrusts in mid-air. The crowd goes wild. I'm open-mouthed. They get down and then the most uncomfortable moment - he gets mildly aggresive and starts thrusting the hell out of her before an untimely finish and quick withdrawal. He looks sheepish. I don't even think he had a hard-on towards the end.

Anyway, that over, we stay - shocked - for a couple more repeat tricks. Tom gets more involved this time, tugging garlands out, holding balloons, holding candles, flirting with the prostitutes (they are - we asked - he asked). And soon we're leaving the venue, stirring between shock and amusement. Its a must-see in bangkok. But I could have happily lived my life without seeing the sex show.



The rest of our stay in Bangkok was a little less exciting i'm afraid to say. We're all kinda hungover the next day and spend it doing absolutely nothing. Wandering the streets. Browsing the hideous traveller-style shell jewellery and friendship bracelets. Looking through masses of tie-dyed t-shirts, fisherman pants (if you don't know already, don't ask), tacky brand-rip-off t-shirts (the worse being a girl listening to her iPod on the toilet, with the caption "iPood" - rank). You name it, they sell it. Snide DVDs, flags of the world patches, North Face backpacks and photocopies of the Sun newspaper from yesterday.



Sunday was a little, although not much, more productive. There's a weekend market in Bangkok, so we get up, get in a cab and spend the next 45 minutes fearing for our lives as our mental cab driver shoots us across the city via every back alley and market street you can imagine. Sam's screaming in the back. Tom's loving it. I'm in the front and kinda uncomfortable. But its all ok. we arrive safe. we don't tip. we don't ask him to wait for us.



And we're faced with possibly the biggest market I've ever been to. Its massive. Its probably about the size of wembly stadium or something. We arrive, wander around in the blazing heat, getting stressed and losing each other, and soon enough I've spent 2 hours joyously collecting new t-shirts and empty sprite cans.



And the day was completed with the wonderful and much anticipated appearance of DARREN. Now, I love darren. I've only known him for about a year and half (a year of that being away travelling) but he's a good mate and he's pretty special to be around. anyway, it's just dinner for now, and after catching up on the news from back home (Talia - i know what you've been up to now...), we said goodbye and arranged to meet further south for some more fun before he heads home and I head to India.



And 24 lazy hours later i'm waiting in line to board a bus to Ko Chang (andaman coast, not gulf coast) - a reported island paradise that the lonely planet doesn't even mention. Finger's crossed it'll be as amazing as we hope - but it probably won't. These things are way too hard to find in thailand.