After the most awesome day of shopping ever, we went back to the hotel to get shower and dressed for an evening at Skybar! It's the location that is featured on Hangover 2, a rooftop bar that is supposed to have the most lovely view of the city. The place was as advertised, beautiful view, classy outdoor bar, nice beat band playing, but it was pretty boring. Not much going on there though we did stay till about 12:30a.m?
As I mentioned, it was Saturday night and E's bday! We left the market, returned to the hotel for a fun night out. We hit a really cool place called Bedsupper Club. It reminded me of being in the movie Tron. Just really cool concept but our very inept waiter got us moving along quicker than perhaps we would have liked. Just couldn't take anymore of his screw ups on our time. We then hit a really huge bar called Levels, as the name suggests it had different levels of the bar, with different music. Very nice place, really enjoyed it and watching E dance to her Techno music. E decided that J and I probably had enough of techno dancing the last few nights, so she suggested we call it an early evening (it was about 2:00a.m.) and head back to the hotel. So we hopped into a tuk tuk and made our way back. Once we arrived however, we were all in agreement that we were not ready for the night to end. Again, asking if there was anything "fun" to do that late at night (morning) the driver asked us if we wanted to see a patpong show. Now remember, we had already seen a show that wasn't quite what we were expecting but this one he said was open all night, fun and if we didn't like it he would bring us back to the hotel. So off we went to the Patpong show! Look, when you go to Bangkok you expect to see weird shit. You just do. And we had all heard about the women who could dispense ping pong balls from their hoohaws, etc. What girl isn't curious to see what one can shoot out of her privates? A friend asked if I was going to keep this part of the blog rated PG and gloss over it like I did the "Fresh Boys". Okay I won't gloss over. I will give you the blow by blow, no pun intended.
Sincere warning. Do not read beyond this line if you want a rated PG version of what we saw. This is the real, deal sad lives of real sex industry workers in Bangkok. It's not pretty, it's real. Whatever you think on this kind of thing, I can hear it now, "why would you go to such a place? Being there just condones and supports it blah blah blah"....it's there in abundance, more than abundance......it's a sad reality. Seriously, stop reading now, it's graphic.
We arrived to a show in progress. Pftt, Pft. Woe. Ping pong balls were flying, and you could hear the "pop", "pop" and "swoosh" sounds of the paddles as people in the audience swung them trying to hit the ping pong balls to the stage. If any of you men reading this think that would be incredibly hot, let me assure you this was the most unsexy show you can imagine. The ladies looked bored (all except Rosey who kept us in stitches all night with her fun wacky behavior and bodyguard antics protecting us all night), and seeing a woman in a lobster crawl dispensing ping pong balls from her privates was just not a sexy thing to view. Seeing an obnoxious man then trying to catch those ping pong balls with his mouth was just gross. I was given a paddle by our pal Rosey but gave it E as it was her birthday and thought she might enjoy the "honor". She told us after the show that the paddle was sticky and gooey but when she made a face Rosey assured her it was just KY jelly. Yeah, go ahead and picture our faces.
Next up was "dead eyed lady". A song came on and she danced very unenthusiastically until it was her cue to start her talent. She rolled down her undies, tied them in a knot on her leg and proceeded to pull a string of garland from her privates. The garland had razors "sewed" on it. To prove they were real razors she took a sheet of paper and then proceeded to "cut out" snow flakes or something like it. The razors were real.
Rosey tried to keep the show interactive. Engaging with the audience and making us laugh. She was really sweet and funny and again, no matter how we felt about this show in the end, we knew this was her way (and all of the ladies on stage) of making a living and we tried not to show any judgement on our faces and laughed with her and appreciated her humor and the work she was putting into trying to make sure the audience had a good time.
If I remember correctly the next talent up was a woman who could open coke bottles and spray them all over the guys in the front row. Best we could figure was that she had an ergonomically fit "bottle opener in there" somewhere.
Rosey took the stage again and all of a sudden we saw and heard balloons loudly popping. Yep. Our friend was squatting on all fours aiming her privates at the balloons on high tied to the poles of the stage and I believe she popped every one. We ducked.
Next up was razor lady once again pulling something else out of her privates, these parts of the show were just boring and by this time I was struggling with waves of guilt and shame that had been on the edge of my conscienceness since we walked in.
Writing someone's name perfectly and with pretty "handwriting" came next. Only the name was written by hand.
Smoking with one's vajayjay was next. This "talent" was horribly fascinating. Could just not turn away.
Blowing out candles was next......kegals. The woman must have been really good at kegals.
I think the rotation of the acts started shortly after and we collectively decided it was time to call it a night. E tipped Rosey generously and we headed for the hotel.
The tuk tuk driver who took us there as agreed, had waited for us and then got us back to the hotel safely. Yes, lots of conversation on what we saw on the ride to the hotel.
Back at the hotel after each night out, was for me, the best part of each evening. There we would recap the day/night and had good old fashioned girl talk and engage in pillow fights! Okay no pillow fights but as the above show was sooooo unsexy thought I would try to perk this post up a bit. We would order tons of breakfast from room service (the food was sooo good) and then would climb into bed exhausted.
It was our last night there and what a full, INTERESTING night it was. More shopping the next day before we caught our flight the next evening, dadadaduh....our trip was over.
Home. Over this past week I wouldn't tell John about the "seedier" parts of our visit to Bangkok. I wanted him to read about it on this blog to see if he could "see what I saw" through my writings. I found that while writing this post, I was struggling with writers block and I admitted to him that I was a bit worried what friends and family would think of those patpong shows we saw. "Not going to a patpong show in Bangkok would have been like going to Houston in March and not attending the Rodeo", is how John put it. That made me feel better and I was able to complete the tale of our time in Bangkok.
That's it folks. That was our long weekend in Bangkok. It was amazing, it was disturbing, fun and strange, sad and fabulous, a most INTERESTING trip. I can't wait to return.
Oh dear, the alarm just went off its 5:20 a.m. We are leaving for the airport in 40 minutes...but good lord I think, no I am positive I just heard loud screeching of a monkey outside, no way that could have been a bird. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!