Bangkok by night

Last night I went out drinking. “Quelle surprise”, I hear you say. It started out innocently enough. We were due to meet the family for a Mexican dinner so we stopped off at the Robin Hood for happy hour. Still too early for our rendezvous we dropped in at one of the new “beach bars” that have seemed to have sprung up on Sukhumvit. Well, beach bar is probably a very inappropriate term to what is effectively a shop front with optics and a beer barrel and more bar girls than customers and three table and chairs sat on the pavement of what I mentally dub Concrete ‘n Cars Street. Still, the Bali makes a bit more of an effort with tables inside and the walls all decked out in bamboo. And the beer’s cheap.

Anyway, the Mexican meal was fun with all drinks on a three-for-two offer until seven (the girls happily tucking into three-for-two margaritas before the deadline). It all started to go wrong when Mike decided that it was too early and invited me to join him at his local, affection ally known as “the Rugby Club”. It definitely went wrong a couple of hours later when we decided to pub crawl it home . . .

I have vague memories of events after that. I dimly remember a bar where the rock band did a passable rendition of Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers while girls in fishnet stockings danced precariously on the bar and on tiny platforms surrounding the pillars holding the roof up. A bid redundant, I thought, as the lead singer was gorgeous (but then I’ve always had a thing for female rock stars). Much later, and many bars on, I recall a tiny thing (her head just about reached my chest) loudly declaring that she wanted to have my babies. At least, that’s what I think she said. I’ve noticed that Thai girls have a tendency to speak in vowels, especially when they shout: “EYE WAAAAN OOOR AAY-IES!”. Thinking about it, she probably said she wanted me to buy her a Baileys. It took me the best part of an hour to explain that I was very old, English, quite drunk, broke and therefore in no fit state to participate in either option. She eventually left in search of a more worthy contributor to the local gene pool. Or a drink. Or whatever. It was at this point, I think, that my host decided I’d had far to much exoticism (yes, I’ve spelt that right) for a boy of my age and poured me into a taxi.

Back home I have been reliably informed that I woke up Long Suffering Linda at around 4 in the morning, babbled for around an hour, demanded Anadin to forestall the inevitable hangover, and promptly snored the house down until someone woke me up at 11 by hoovering the corridor outside. Still staggering, I made my way up to the food court at Sukhumvit for a duck, rice and broth breakfast for the princely sum of one pound sterling. Munching mindlessly away, I contemplated that the cost of the breakfast probably represented one hundredth of the cost of last night.

Its raining again. I’m not going out tonight.