Only in Asia...

Cool, inventive roadside rubbish bin you see all over Thailand...




Burger King Thai Style...



Not really sure why some guys over here grow a nail long. And this is a little one compared to most! Some say it is for a toothpick (don't think so), some say if it is longer than the next finger they will have a long life. Others say it shows they are upper class as you couldn't do manual labour and maintain one.










Semi-loaded street lady. Seriously, semi-loaded.



Ducks running away a problem for you? Try a basket... (Works fine for Chickens too)

This is one way of how you get your road side petrol. Very old school. Very cool.



Legal driving age?

Everone eats rice over here!

Thanks to Conrad for this one...

Everything in Cambodia comes with a bag. Everything!

Featherless chickens abounded here. And this isn't a bad one. Some were fully bare!

Asia's skies

BLANK

Floating market

Kind of a must do I guess. Go visit a floating market place.

Wasn't much to it really. The old sxhool days of huge market places on the water have been whittled down by companies like McDonalds (I don't really know for sure but everyone else blames them!)

Mook and I ate a quick Pad thai and some fishies for lunch and then he had to cruise to a meeting. I wandered home taking a back way rather than a bus as I'd been told by one lady it would be fun and by another that it was a stupid idea and that I'd probably get mugged as the path leads through a slum area. Either way it sounded fun.

But it was again fairly uneventful. Probably best to wish for excitement like this than actually have to live it. And it was a nice walk too. Mmmm, what an interesting post, haha.

Ping! Pong! Pow!

Yep. Last night was the ping pong show. Classyc! - My new word - Classy and Classic at the same time. Classyc aye? Ooh, I used it again. Smooth. Bet you didn't even see that one coming? Oooh and now you expected one more didn't ya? But it didn't come. You'll just have to wait. Good things come to those who wait. Anyways I seem to be off topic somehow. Could be the 3hrs sleep last night...

So we first spent the day doing stuff. Then when night encroached and we began to feel less seedy with the dimming of the lights, we met up with my Aussie mate Grant and his Thai lady to go indulge in a little ping pong action at "Super Pussy". Seriously, the club sounds like the next porn superhero or something.

You walk in and there's a stage with poles all around it and nudey girls just dancing away. You pay 10 bucks for a beer, get swarmed by cute Thai chicks in their underwear asking you to buy them a coke (??) while they dish out free massages and then the show begins.

First was a chick pulling out a string of flowers. What! Lame! Get on with it! Next were razor blades (real ones. sharp ones. She cut stuff with them all afterwards). Next was a string of pins (heaps of different girls doing these things) and then the concealment show was done. By now we're already suitably impressed.

But on to the pings. First were the ping pong balls. Only they didn't ping!? They just rolled around her legs and fell into a cup. But then the bananas appeared. Smoothie anyone? She shot these babies like mini torpedos! Hell they were fast. One was aimed at Jeremy for him to catch but it was so Forest Gump like that it just kept on going and going and he didn't even realise she'd fired. Fast as a Vietnamese tuk tuk driver who's seen a farang getting off a bus! Crazy.

TUI: All eyes were focused intently on the ping pong balls... Yeah right!

Then a chick draw my portrait along with some fancy chaligraphy saying "Welcome to Thailand Mark from NZ". Souvenir time I think. Next darts were shot at balloons and you'd have to see it to believe it (we also pocketed a couple of these to go with our portraits).

There was smoking and horn blowing and bottle opening and all sorts. But one awesome one was when she, um, 'took in' a bottle of water and then, um, 'let out' coke to fill another bottle?! That looked cool. She also asked me to drink it but sadly I had to decline. My allergies to caffeine and all.

And the night was just beginning too...

We played a few games of pool afterwards (I was by far the best. Must have sunk at least 1 ball (seriously. it was sad) in 8 games!). Then we moved off back to Koh sahn to head home (it was about midnight by now).

But when we get there me and J realise we don't know our address. Nor do we have a ph number to find it out with. And the local buses we came on have stopped. Shite! So we start walking.

We walk for about two cricket pitches and then maybe another, hmmm, let's see. Maybe another thousand! Took us forever (we're still going really). So after about an hour or so when we realise walking home isn't really an option we grab a taxi. Only problem is we don't know where we are going (this didn't seem like such a serious problem when we were walking. Did I mention that we were also a wee bit drunk?)

So we give directions to the driver but for some seriously mixed up reason, this fails miserably. So we pull over to ask some thai people we see on the side of the street for directions to 'the water' - not really sure how we planned on getting them to help us. But things are looking good when this chick walks over. Here's help we think. So I lean out my window and say hi. She just shoves her tongue down my throat and smiles - helpful?

When we head off again we once more drive aimlessly around blowing our money on nothing. We change cabs into another one with another no-english speaking driver and drive some more.

Sobering up, we begin to realise this plan has no real 'plan' to it at all. So we stop at the 2/4 to buy stuff. At least then we doinmg something useful! A few lollies and another 20 minutes of pointless talking with locals trying to explain we were are going later, and we are back on the street but this time with the police. They suck and so we head off Taxi styles again.

Should we have learnt our lesson by now? Nah. Bangkok is huge and the chances of just happening to get somewhere you want to go must be awesome we figure. We end up at a street side restaurant where this "famous" Thai music guy decides to take us under his wing. He offers to buy us drinks and dinner and then drives us around until we actually find somewhere we know. We did have brief idea of what it was called you see.

So it's now about 4 in the morning but we're home. mmm. Turned out Jeremy had the number and address of where we were going all along (just didn't realise) and so the Thai guyrang Mook up and he directed us home.

LADies:

Oh and for a laugh for you, the last thing that happended at the ping show was a group of dancers coming out again between shows. Nice arse I thought, and sadly voiced, as the first one took the stage. Yep, chicks with dicks. Wrong. Just wrong!

Mook's revisited

So I'm back at Mook's. It hasn't really changed much since the last time I was here. But I know the area really well which is cool and everyone is beginning to know the one white farang who's always on their local shuttles and in their shops.

Mook and Elena, Mook and J chilling out at Mook's place:






I have my own discount coupon for the local internet and friends in the fruit stall and a meat side market who give me free samples. Nice to settle for a bit.

Back in Bangkok

Smelly, noisy, touristy Kho San Road etc Expensive

Train

Train ride from Chiang mai to Bangkok...





Yep, it was a train ride. Not much to see until I figure out how to upload movies...

Even then it was just a train. Best thing to happen is when they bring food around. Otherwise we sat and listened to music. Whoop whoop, whoopdy do.

Insert Thai II blog entries here...

Utopia, Chiang ria, Pai, Chiang mai ...

'Hill tribe' people

So tribe like..

'Tribe' ladies living in Thailand's most touristy area - Koh shan road. Jeremy got about a doyen interested in him just by trying on one hat!



The best laugh for J though was an 80 year old woman who had boobs almost touching her knees, was toothless except for a few sporadic black stumps, had more wrinkles than zou'd find at a bingo convention and who was asking if I wanted to sleep with her; for money! I had cold shivers for weeks.