One Night in Bangkok…

It took almost two hours to get from my hotel near the airport, to Borge’s hotel in downtown Bangkok… Traffic clogged the motorways and streets of the city… Thirty kilometres felt like three hundred by the time I got there…!!

BL and GB, reunited in Bangkok of all places...

Borge and I greeted each other like long lost brothers… Much hugging and back-slapping, renewing the bond that we had shared for many years… I was introduced to Hlodver Olafsson, a fellow Dane who lived in Bolivia, and was part of the group who had recently bought Borge’s company…

Hlodver as it turned out was also a biker, and before long we were making plans to meet in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where he lived and had his offices…

We were later joined by Gwynn, (whom I had last seen six or seven years ago) Georgia and Eleanor, part of the Alexander Rose sales team, and together with Raymond, owner of the furniture factory that they had come to Thailand to visit, we hit the streets of Bangkok…

Our first stop was at a restaurant where Raymond took charge and ordered what seemed like a dozen different Thai dishes for us to sample… It was an amazing spread, and the waiters were kept busy removing empty plates as fast as they had set them down…

Borge, Eleanor, Georgia, Gwynn and Raymond... We had made short work of all the good food that Rayond had ordered...

While we nibbled on fruit for desert, Raymond set out the plan for the remainder of the evening…

“We will first go an take a look at the “sleazy” side of Bangkok, then I will take you to a more comfortable and private club, where we can relax and have a few drinks…!!”

There was no need to take a vote, as we all wanted to see the so-called “sleazy” side of Bangkok…!!

The bright lights of Bangkok...

We wandered down a street that was wall to wall girls and Go-Go Bars… The girls, dressed in micro-minis, stood outside and waved placards and drinks menus to entice people into the establishment they were punting for… I will not go into too many details except to say that we were “lured” into a few of them, enjoyed a beer while we watched wide-eyed and slack-jawed at some of the sights on display, and then wandered back outside to look at some of the “snacks” on offer…

Grasshoppers, Cockroaches, Scorpions, Giant Crickets, River Crabs and other bugs I could not identify...!!

Gwynn can't decide whether to bite and chew, or just swallow quickly...!!

There are more conventional snacks on offer as well...!! Or at least things that are big enough to fit on a stick...!!

When in Bangkok, I guess you have to try what’s on offer…!!

We all gave the grasshoppers a go, deciding against the scorpions and other creepy-crawlies… Mine rolled around in my mouth for what seemed like ages before my throat finally gave up the struggle and swallowed the crushed contents of my mouth… It tasted like Marmite…sort of…!!

At one of the dives we ended up in, some of the girls wore high heels and stockings… Nothing else…!! We spent some time trying to figure out their average age, and settled on somewhere between sixteen and eighteen…!! I wondered where they had left their schoolbooks…

We were more than a little amused by the guys who were there to do some serious perving… One elderly gentleman sat completely absorbed by the scene, and if the roof had fallen in, rescuers would probably have found him with the same idiotic grin on his face…!!

The girls gyrated to thumping techno music, doing their best to display the numbers each one had attached to their outfits, or in some cases, their stockings…!! We sat in a tight group, making snide comments and rolling our eyes heavenwards…and that was not necessarily to look up through the glass floor above us where other girls were dancing…!!

Bangkok will get you smiling if nothing else...!!

We piled into the minibus that Raymond had arranged and then made our way to The Pegasus Club, a members only establishment… It was decorated with many statues and soft lighting… Above the seating area, the domed ceiling portrayed scenes that you would not find in any of Enid Blyton’s novels…

The Pegasus Club.... Members only... Good on you, Raymond...!!

We were escorted into a large u-shaped booth with a full view of the stage, where either dancers or a twelve piece band  performed at intervals… At one point, Raymond went on stage and sang a few songs with the group’s back up singers… He certainly surprised me with his performance…!!

And then the first round of drinks arrived...

It was long after midnight when we finally left the club, and were taken back to the hotel…

It had been a very lively and interesting evening to say the least, and in the company of good friends, it was made even better…

Seeing Borge again, and enjoying our usual form of banter, brought back many memories of the days when he was one of our major clients, and the many times I had either visited him in the U.K., or he had visited us. in South Africa and Swaziland…

By the time we retired to our rooms, and after one more “Absolutely Bloody Final” drink, we were hatching outlandish plans for me to leave the bike in Bangkok and fly to the Philippines and Vietnam with him and his group of associates…

When the sun came up a few hours later, sanity finally prevailed…!!

©GBWT 2011