Adventure Island

As it happens I am not going to write one of my analyse this and analyse that articles about Thai girls but simply mention a few of my personal experiences that led to my fascination with LOS.

My first (of three) trips to Thailand was in 2000 and I was not long divorced (interesting, unusual and different?). My first thought on leaving exiting the old airport for a smoke at 4 AM in the morning was “Oh f**k I have come to
have a holiday in a fan forced microwave oven, how delightful”.

So off in the bus panicking about just about everything, will they steal my gear, will I be kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery, have I caught AIDS yet from touching my passport after that Thai guy had handled it, where is that damn passport
and so on. I was the last passenger to be dropped off (I just knew they would pick me for their devious schemes) and lo and behold I was there. I was dropped off and looked up and I was in Stella street. WTF, this is spooky as Stella is the name
of my ex wife and here she is again, the ghost who travels on airplanes instead of walking (and you thought the Thais were superstitious). So here I am in Accidentally Stella St at the tallest hotel in Thailand. But where is it?

There was a 20 foot square lobby in front of me with a lift and so in I sauntered for a look. Up the lift and into the real foyer of the Baiyoke Sky hotel. Phew. Up to the room on say the 35th floor and in the door. Christ on a Sao with vegemite
(yes I am a plagiarist, how else do you think I got thru Uni, sleeping with the lecturers?). What a big room, look at the size of that son of a bitch bathroom, time I took a crap. Flushed the toilet and thought, Whoa hold on here, what’s
going on now? the water is rising, how embarrassing, it's all gonna flood on the floor. Then whoosh, I thought I was back on the plane as the debris was sucked down the tube 747 style. He he I thought it is different here after all.

Next day I tuk a tuktuk, or rather they tuk me and it was very interesting.

“No I can't really see what I am going to do with a tailored suit'”

“No I don’t really need to go to a another travel agency this one is fine'”

“No I don’t want to have a girl in a white dress for 4,000 baht'”

“No I don’t want to buy sapphires to trade back home for three times my money'”

“No I already have hotel booked for three days so while I would like to stay in your Uncle's hotel it isn’t necessary right now'”

Needless to say the tuktuk driver was reluctant to believe me (perhaps it was my lack of Thai?) and I had to explain these matters each and every time to the various, no doubt disappointed, sales folk who had gone to so much effort to convince
me otherwise. Still it was very kind of him to drive me all over Bangkok for only 40 baht or so. Tremendous sight seeing adventure, worth every baht, don’t miss the opportunity to spend a day with Mr tuktuk as he shows you around. Not that
you will really have a choice if you are a newbie.

Somewhere over the next couple of days I found myself in a tuktuk with a girl in a white dress only she had changed into civvies and didn’t look quite as alluring. So that’s what a starfish is. Good choice of metaphor there.
Still I did manage to slip back the sheets ever so slowly while she was sleeping and snap a pic or two, which when I look at now, remind me of just how lively she was. Well, I thought, so much for all this Thai women are just wonderful in bed
business, could’ve fooled me and they certainly did. Maybe its time I visited some temples and stuff.

So I spent time wandering around avoiding tuktuk man and all his buddies and a few days into the trip was joined by a mate from home and things kicked up a gear or two.

Now Pete is a little more experienced in the matters of the world than me and so here we are again screaming round Bangkok in the back of a tuktuk with a girl on each of our knees and I first encountered the idea that perhaps Thais do not
learn physics at school. See Pete is twice my weight and so every time we went round a left hand corner the wheels would lift off the ground on my side. Apparently this is no problem and as I was drunk it wasn’t really that much of a problem
to me either. Lord knows he should know, after all he does this for a living. Its just like roller coasters, they seem scary but really its all quite safe if one really understands the physics.

We get back to the Baiyoke Sky and Pete disappears into the bathroom with his girlfriend while I get to know my new companion. I don’t recall much about her other than she didn’t want to have ‘sek’ with me and
hey what can you do when a girl refuses. Well you can drink more so that’s what I did. Pete on the other hand must have had a lovely time because his girl came out shaking her head like a horse with the flu and muttering “bad man,
no good, make me do bad thing” and I proceeded to tell him that my friend wasn’t interested in making love tonight because I was too pissed.

Well didn’t things get interesting then when he said “You stupid little sluts, I am coming to your work tomorrow, I tell boss you no good, I tell boss you no do job” and so on.

They went as white as Thai ghosts and started bowing and saying “No we solly, no problem, no see boss etc’ as he unceremoniously pushed them out the door.

Such is the nature of Pete that he still managed to slip them a couple of hundred baht or so for taxi money just to confuse them and perhaps save himself later trouble. Made me laugh and think that perhaps I wasn’t as cool as I might
like to be just because I was now in Thailand.

Now I had had a brief sojourn in Patpong in between me arriving and Pete turning up and although I wasn’t ripped off to the hilt it wasn’t really very pleasant. I did hunt down a German girl in the street who turned out to be
an air hostess and we went for a drink in what turned out to be a gay bar. Funny how things are always turning out in ways you don’t expect. It was pleasant and I have a nice photo of the two of us. I also spent a different night driving
all over Bangkok in taxis with a Dutch girl one other time. I had been sitting on the sidewalk watching life go by when I saw her get out of a cab crying and fighting with the cabbie because she had lost her wallet. Another picture. Another strange
incident. We never did find the wallet.

At the end of the above Patpong night I had a screaming row with the cabbie over the usual 500 baht or so they wanted when picking someone up from that location. Apparently this is very dangerous behaviour but the Thai bloke was alone and
as other experienced folk have commented this isn’t usually when the bad stuff will happen. Anyway one up for me in retrospect. Foolish is only when a foolish result eventuates and in case this I got away with it. That was before I read
this site. Now he still might not get his 500 baht but I would like to think I would keep my voice down in future.

A little later that week off to Pattaya we went. Now one’s arrival in Pattaya outstrips anything that the mind can imagine. I am not an experienced traveller but I did wonder at the sexiness of the street girls in Hamburg where incidentally
I was offered a stunning double (black and white for 70 Euros). This is less than many of the prices I have heard people paying on here for Thai girls but it lacked that sense of fun that Thai hookers create. I ended up in a disco early in the
morning that night and simply had to marvel at the sight of a Thai girl on a stage for the general punters dancing as though she was still working back home. The difference was not that she was young and sexy but that there was one of her and
three hundred young German males who would have gladly taken her home that night. Seems to be a better bargain in Pattaya where there are three hundred wanting to take me home.

So back to Pattaya and my first walk down a Soi where the above 300 young Thai women screamed out to Pete and me that we were sexy men who should come and spend time with them. Now that is the extent of the difference and most things need
to be actually experienced before they can have the impact they truly deliver. Looking at videos on the net about Walking street is not the same same as walking down Walking street oneself anymore than watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon
is the same as doing it yourself. Interestingly it is not Walking Street itself I found ‘impressive’ but the knowledge that it is simply one street in a veritable rabbit warren of prostitution. My little trip to that red light district
in Hamburg was a ten to one expansion of the scene in Sydney but going to Pattaya was a hundred to one expansion.

Anyway so we are in Pattaya drinking in bars and playing pool and listening to the band and going to the toilet. I soon learnt to pay a little more to go to the in house toilet as the things one sees in those outdoor jobs are not very nice.
The details are unnecessary, go and have a look for yourself.

I was soon hunted down as the newbie I was by a girl in a bar I had spoken to earlier. The grapevine was obviously working. Both Pete and I were intending to avoid taking the girls home as both of us were a bit paranoid about the health risks
but hot, drunken nights in Pattaya, well we all know the story.

When we got back to the hotel I was drunk enough to put away my inhibitions and get out my razor and offered to give my new girlfriend a ‘haircut’. She giggingly obliged and I was soon living a little fetish my ex wife had denied
me. The next morning I was not too bright to say the least. I ran that razor under really hot water for at least 10 minutes or more before I proceeded to have a shave myself. Facial this time. No problem.

Well not till Pete came back from his room in a panic saying his condom had broken the night before. He had started to panic and our Western anxiety turned out to be as transferable as our ATM money. In my case add a bit of Catholic guilt
and an ex partner who was a sexual health counsellor always rabbiting on about the perils of fornication who had had clients who were HIV positive, one of whom picked it up from his long time Thai girlfriend. I was ripe for what happened next.

So we are at the Swiss Drs on Pete's insistence and he is saying “now look here boys I don’t fink that zere is eeny problem but if you absolutely must inzist here is your Combid 300, it’s a little expeenzive at 12000
baht or so but up to you’ This is the medication they give to nurses who have had a needlestick injury and are at risk of contracting Aids. He advised us not to drink while taking this medication.

Now come on mate, fair suck of the sav. You Dr blokes always say that. So I am sitting by the pool on my first day of medication and order up a beer. No problem. Half way through the second beer I started thinking about how inconvenient it
was going to be for my parents to organise transporting me from Thailand to Australia in a coffin. I repeat what the Swiss doctor told me. Do not drink while taking Combid 300 and, by the way, do not take your catholic guilt or your fear of Aids
with you to Thailand. Read old mate Dana's (where is he?) <retired – Stick> article and practice looking in the mirror before you go saying to yourself “ My name is Bruce and I have AIDS”. Now,
rationally speaking, if you are male, circumcised (yes some ‘women’ get circumcised, especially in Thailand) and use your party hat the risk is extraordinarily small. We humans, however, don’t always respond rationally.

The paranoid phase passed after a few days and I hurled the bloody Combid 300 away and got on with my holiday. Pete took off to Singapore or somewhere to do business and I ended up taking off with my now hairless friend to a village in Isaan.
This might have to be a two or three instalment job as that’s enough for now.

Stickman's thoughts:

Another submission to which I am just not sure what to say…