Who Wants Gum?

I recently made my tenth trip to Thailand and planned to spend 6 weeks dividing my time between Pattaya, Bangkok, and Koh Chang. About two weeks before I was to leave I got a call from my sister and she told me that my brother in law, her husband, was going to need a pacemaker and they had no insurance. I suggested that she consider other options than the USA for the procedure as it is much less expensive in Thailand and they have good quality medical care. I did some research for her and had some hospitals contact her and she was very impressed with them and decided on Pattaya Bangkok Hospital. As the procedure needed to happen quickly they scheduled their trip to Pattaya for the same time I would be there so I could show them around and my Thai is almost passable at this point.

I arrived one week before they did and we all stayed at Pattaya Bay Resort. My brother in law got through the procedure fine and they were very pleased. Just FYI Pattaya Bangkok Hospital service and quality was outstanding and my brother in law highly recommended the sponge baths. He claimed they cleaned everything. Just for comparison purposes my brother in law got the entire procedure with all testing, state of the art pacemaker he could not have gotten in the USA, hospital stay, and aftercare for approximately one sixth the cost in the USA. In short it made the procedure affordable for him when it would not have been otherwise. He could not have been happier. Approximately one week after the procedure he did have some fibrillations and had to go back in the hospital for one night for observation and the staff at the hotel actually took a cab to visit him and bring him flowers. In short I cannot say enough good things about Pattaya Bangkok Hospital and the staff at Pattaya Bay Resort.

We then had some time so I could show them around Thailand and we started with the nightlife. They wanted to see a gogo bar so we began with Angelwitch off of Walking Street because they really have high quality shows with choreographed dancing and are comparatively tame to some of the other shows in town. They really enjoyed the shows and at one point a ladyboy came out dressed as Tina Turner. She focused on my brother in law and he was truly enjoying the show and thought the young lady was beautiful until I had to reveal the inevitable. At this point they told me they thought the shows would be more revealing and raunchy and they were a little disappointed. My response was to tell them it truly depends on where you go and we would go to the next level across the street at Baby Dolls. As you can imagine there was a lot more skin showing and a lot of enthusiastic audience participation and they seemed to be satisfied that this was the kind of show they had heard about. I then told them that there was another level of show where the audience participation reached yet unseen heights or depths as the case may be at X Zone if they were interested. At that point my sister said she had seen enough audience participation so we went back to the hotel.

The next day I decided to treat my sister and brother in law to their first Thai massage. I had found a place called Eden Massage on Soi Diana near LK Metro before they arrived that did a large variety of quality massage services at a very reasonable price. This a very professional massage shop with no sex available at all and they state it on their advertising. I thought it would be a good place for their first Thai massage experience. As they had never had a massage of any type I scheduled their first Thai massage with body scrub included at Eden Massage. For those of you who have never done body scrub I highly recommend it. They use something that has the texture of water and sugar mixed together to exfoliate almost your whole body (there are parts I am not sure I want exfoliated by this method). It almost feels like you have lost weight afterward because a whole layer of dead skin cells is exfoliated away. This was to be followed by traditional Thai massage. I remembered my first real Thai massage and was anxious to let my sister and brother and experience it.

As we were walking from our hotel to Eden Massage we went through the Avenue Mall and my sister was approached by a young child selling chewing gum and she bought a small package and put them in the pocket of her shorts. It was a small package of maybe four pieces that looked like Chiclets.

Once we arrived at the massage shop we were all taken upstairs to the massage room with curtains separating each of us. In order to do body scrub you must remove all your clothes and have only a towel wrapped around you and then lay down on your stomach to start. Apparently the gum in my sister's pocket had fallen out when she took off her shorts and landed on the mat where she would get her body scrub and she was unaware of it. When they finished with the face down part of the body scrub we were all told to turn over in order to do the other side. At this time I heard my sister's masseuse begin laughing hysterically through the thin curtain and when she caught her breath she called all of the other massage girls over including the one doing my body scrub. At this point they are all laughing and I was able to make out from their Thai that the package of gum was stuck to a strategic spot on my sisters lower anatomy and she was unaware of it. When I realized what had happened I was laughing hysterically myself and my sister is screaming at me through the curtain wanting to know what is so funny. When I could finally gather myself to speak all I could say was "Who wants gum?"

Silicon Hills