Printable excerpts from the weekend

Friday
When I arrive at Spicy around one thirty a.m. it is fairly packed. I had earlier sampled Foxy Lady's, which I didn't know is a go go bar with the dancers on the bar and if you want you buy them drink and they come sit with you and if you like them you take them short time there, two hours. Not cheap. Six hundred bar fine and two thousand short time, although I was not clear if it was two thousand all together or two thousand with the bar fie. I learned all this talking to one of the dancing lady's who I bought a drink for and asked to explain how things work.. They are quite liberal with their affections for one drink, obviously hoping to get more. Some beautiful ladies, definitely a cut above the bg crowd, which might explain the prices. Anyway, then went dinner at Riverside and to see Tuk again and then headed over Spicy. As I said, it was pretty packed when I go there and I spent some time surveying the grounds and trying to figure out what to do when this woman walked past me and smiled. What intrigued me about her was that I could not figure out what nationality she was. She didn't look Thai nor did she seem to be an American (incidentally, there seemed way too many young foreigners in the place). Anyway, something drew me to her and I asked to buy her a drink. Well, if you can't figure out that someone who grabs your ***** within the first fifteen minutes is not out for love, you probably don't deserve to be out in the game. We danced and groped for a couple of hours. In the meantime, I noticed Spicy had become wall to wall. I do not think you could have squeezed five more people in the place. Looking around it was Sodom and Gomorroh, the sequel. When she signaled she was going to leave I signaled for us to go together and she said "how much," I demurred.

Sat

It turned into another strange night; it certainly didn’t start out like it was going to be a strange night. In fact, after the previous evening I had planned on taking it pretty easy. Actually, I did not even have a plan. By the time I got up and got going on Saturday it was past noon. I am not sure where the inspiration to rent a bike came from, but in fact it turned out to be a pretty good idea. I can’t say I made any major discoveries, but I did develop a little better sense of Chengdu. It was hot, really hot and at some point I got a gelato and a massage. I had been told that there were to be festivities for the Chinese New Year, but when I went to the location where the alleged celebration was supposed to occur, in fact it turned out there was nothing going on—at least nothing that I could see. So I ended up walking back to the hotel, which turned out to be quite a bit more distance than I imagined. But it turned out to be the basis for at least one act of kindness. As I was walking back, I was pretty sure I was close to the hotel but thought I still had a little ways to go, so I decided I was going to bite the bullet and get a tuck tuck back to the hotel. When I approached a driver, he informed me that if I turned around it was only a couple of hundred more yards to my place. Clearly, he could have drove me around and charged me something for the trouble.

When I got back to the hotel I decided I really needed a sauna, even if it was going to be 200 baht. Unfortunately, going down to the sauna room I discovered there was only 45 minutes left. Nevertheless, I made the best of my time and enjoyed a pretty good sauna. But when I got back to the room it was, I think eight p.m. and I was exhausted. I knew I needed to lie down, so I put on the only thing I could find on tv and set my cell alarm for nine p.m. By the time nine rolled around I was still exhausted and opted against getting up. When I looked at the clock it was 9:30 and knew it was either get up or go to bed for the evening. But as I had rented the hotel room just to be near the action for the weekend, I forced myself to get up and headed to (where else) LaKroi Street. Out of force of habit, I wound up going to the two familiar places, B&B and #1, By the time I left #1 it was almost midnight, really too late to even see Tuk. I was planning on headed to the third place where I am a familiar face, Cherry Club, when I veered into the bar right before the Cherry, which I will refer to as the bar right before the Cherry. There I ended up sitting next to am aging bg who spoke non-stop about Burma, I think, though in truth I was not sure what the hell she was talking about much of the time. Whatever it was, she seemed fairly passionate about it, and I think it had something to do with politics. But it was two beers—or rather, a beer and a Johnny Walker—before I could get out of there, and already past one’ a.m.

I decided at that point to make my way to Spicy, although I was not quite certain about what direction in was in. I was fairly confident and figured I would walk in the direction I thought it was and that if all else failed, get a tuk tuk. First, however, I had to veer into a couple bars. The first was the corner bar on LK, where I got a beer and realized pretty soon I was going to have to drink it alone and so got up and hit the street and veered into the next place, where I at least had company although it cost me a 150baht maitai. When she asked for another, I got up to leave.
Fuel, I kept thinking, recalling Mickey Rourke’s line from Barfly, Fuel. However, my favorite burrito stand was shut down. Fortunately, the hamburger place next to it, Mike’s Burger, was still open. That’s when it started getting weird. There was a row of four or five seats parallel to the street and another four or five seats at a right angle to these. He sat katty korner from me while another young man sat next to me. The two of them struck up a conversation. My sense was that they were both from the same country—if I had to guess it would be England—and they started comparing notes. Actually, it was mostly the guy across from me talkinig. He had been in Pattaya seven years he said and began to regal his mate with stories designed to show his knowledge and experience of the country. Somehow, though, when the guy working the counter told him a Pepsi was 200 baht or about six dollars, he handed it over without question. The two rookies across from him could both tell the guy was just shitting him. So how experienced was he really? In any case, it turned out he was headed to Spicy and we decided to go together. On the way, he told me a story how the other night he and his friend were involved in some huge fight, except I had been there last night and had witnessed no altercation. In the bar, he kept saying how everyone knew him there but he did not know them, and how he was a champion at seven classes in Thai boxing. So I followed him around for a while because he did seem to know people. After a while we got separated and I ended up with some Eastern European chick, buying her and her friends a drink and then getting propositioned. For a while, I actually thought this was the girl from the other night. But this one it turned out spoke good English, or good enough, and when she propositioned me I decided I was too drunk and tired to do anything.