Bangkok, Take 1

OK. You've waited long enough. Let the beginning of the end begin:

Friday, July 8
Bangkok

Where were we? After sweating through the Grand Palace and staring inappropriately at the 18 and 20-year-old girls on the boat, had bad pad thai and went to chill at the hotel. Around 8, Monkey arrived. In typical Monkey fashion. By which I mean drunk, and babbling something about having lost his passport in the cab on the way from the airport to the hotel. He obviously had it when he cleared immigration, but didn't have it when the front desk asked for it. So, he was potentially fucked. Except that, in totally not typical Monkey fashion, he had somehow managed to retain that little piece of paper they give you which tells you the number of the cab you rode in. And, in a move totally out of proportion to the quality of our hotel, he had apparently asked the concierge to "take care of" tracking down the driver and retrieving his passport. After all, we shouldn't lose any valuable drinking and whoring time on account of such a mishap.

So out we went. Now, when the idea of Monkey meeting me in Bangkok for the weekend was first floated, he, as a Bangkok veteran, gave me a preliminary rundown on the nightlife: "There are really 3 kinds of bars. There's the hooker bars, the go-go bars, and the regular bars and clubs. We'll go to all 3." And so we did. By "hooker bar," Monkey apparently meant a bar that, while not necessarily advertised as such (prostitution being illegal and all), is full of hookers. We went to one of these that was just around the corner from the hotel. And, to nobody's surprise, no sooner had we ordered a beer and taken a seat by the place where the window would have been if the bar had windows than two young ladies sat down next to us and started talking to us. These two were friendly, but not overly aggressive. We smiled and talked. I'm pretty sure Monkey pulled the routine that would get very old by the end of the weekend, pointing at me and saying "No like lady, he like ladyBOY!" There were some other hos lingering in the background, in case we should indicate that, while the two who had gotten to us first were not particularly to our tastes, we'd truly like nothing more than to pay strangers for sex. But after a beer or 2, Monkey was impatient to move on to the second category of bar.

We did not have to go far. Here's a Bangkok go-go bar in a nutshell: it's like a strip club, with lots of girls (and I'm using "girls" instead of "women" quite deliberately) dancing on stage and wandering around the bar. Each of them wears a number. According to Monkey, who I trust implicitly on such matters, the numbers serve a practical purpose. That of avoiding undue confusion when ordering one of the girls from your server. For instance, "I'll take a Heineken and that girl who was rubbing her pussy on the third pole from the left a couple of minutes ago when they were playing 'Pour Some Sugar On Me,' you know, the Asian one," is a lot tougher for someone who speaks very little English than "I'll take a Heineken and number 52." Monkey tells me (and I'm sure he read this somewhere) that once you decide on your lucky number for the night, you have to pay the bar a sort of rental fee, which entitles you to negotiate with the girl herself. It's a hell of a system. We went to a few of these bars (including one featuring exclusively ladyboys; the novelty could not make up for the aggressive groping - Monkey and I didn't even finish our beers. I've been to Lucky Cheng's before, but this was ridiculous), and while neither Monkey nor I took home a girl, we did chat with some, and buy them some drinks. "Lady Drinks" are significantly more expensive than regular drinks (though still a bargain by NY standards) - even if they just want a Coke, it costs between 1.5 and 2x what a beer costs when you buy one for yourself. As explained in the Book of Monkey, Chapter 3, Verse 16: "Yea, though the whores drinketh only soft drinks, verily will the white man be charged twice the going rate, as for each vessel of liquid purchased in the name of a harlot, said harlot shall receive a percentage of the proceeds theretofore designated by the management."

So, I had seen some go-go bars in Bangkok, managed to -- politely -- decline all offers to take home a hooker, and was off to the third kind of bar. Which turned out to be a club. Now, we know I'm not a club person. But I did it in Singapore, and figured this trip was all about doing things I don't usually do. So, once again, I paid a steep (by Thai standards) cover, passed through a velvet rope (though there was no wait at this club), and set out to enjoy the "UH-UH-UH" bass thump. Other than the fact that the crowd was 90-something percent Asian, it was just like a club in NY. Monkey spent a fair amount of time chatting up (among other women), the ladies' room attendant - shoot for the stars, Monk!. She didn't seem that into him, which was strange, since, as he'll tell you if you ask, he's smooth. Monkey ran into some girl he knew (read: had slept with on a prior occasion), and we talked to her for a while. There came a point when I had had enough to drink (well, OK, that point came several hours before) and the smoke in the place was really getting to me. So, content with my evening, I headed back to the hotel around 1 or 1:30.

Waiting for me was a flashing light on the hotel phone. I retrieved the message - Mr. Monkey should contact the Duty Manager to retrieve his passport. He did not deserve to be so lucky, especially considering the events to follow . . .

Which is where I'll leave you all for now.