Apocalypse Bangkok

I wake up in my tiny room feeling awful. The street food I ate last night must have been contaminated with something and I feel sick all day. The room I'm in is a cell. Four walls and a door. No window, no light, no sound. At least there's a fan. I feel like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now...

The opening scene :

THE END BY THE DOORS

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land
Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah


Hotel room in Bangkok :

WILLARD (v.o.)

"Bangkok, shit. I'm still only in Bangkok. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in the jungle... I've been here a week now. Waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger. Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter."

But it's a different kind of apocalypse, not one of war, but one of tourism. I swear there are more blonds in tank tops here than there are Thais. There are backpackers everywhere, just arriving, leaving, coming, going. Some are here to explore Bangkok, but most are here just to sort out visas before moving on to other destinations. My experiences interacting with the Thai people have been less than ideal; we've been yelled at for picking up a statue of Ganesha or for trying on a bracelet or shirt and not buying it. As I look around the marketplace at these people and the conditions that they live in, I feel compassion for them and also recognize how privileged we are coming from our first world nations. We decend on the denizens of Khao San and try and bargin down to a cheaper price for novel trinkets. It's understandable that some may develop a justified indignancy.

I wake up and meet Kristina, Jodi, and Cindi for breakfast. I have to leave early to use the toilet and then lie down. This is the third occasion in Thailand that I've had "fire ass," and I can tell you it's not fun. I only have time to run around to do some last minute shopping in the market for gifts and souvenirs before I have to catch my bus to the airport. Bangkok has been crazy. I've heard people say that they love it, and others that they can't wait to get out. I've had a mix of both sentiments. But I'm definitely glad I stayed to experience it.

Patpong Ping Pong

In the morning I meet up with Kristina and Jodi. They took the overnight bus with Derek and Kristi and arrived here this morning at 6am. After Sorting out their visas for Burma, we shop around the markets in Khao San. Later we meet up with Cindi, who arrived from the airport today, at a crazy Shell gas station converted into a restaurant / bar, and then we randomly bump into Seth and Joe, 2 climbers from Tonsai. They just came from Chang Mai and Joe fought in a Thai kickboxing fight, as evidenced by his black eye and swollen nose. He won the fight, at least, and made some money for the people in the crowd who were gambling on him. We wait around the guest house for Kristi to show up. It's her birthday today and she's been reving us up for "ping pong" since Tonsai. She shows up late because she's feeling ill. When she arrives with Derek we split up in two cabs to go to Patpong district and to the legendary ping pong shows.

We get split up and the cabs take us to 2 different places. Seth, Kristina and I wait outside the ping pong place and derek takes the cab to try and find the others. Somehow he finds them and brings them back. We discover that we're the ones that've been scammed and our driver brought us to one of the fake tourist trap ping pong shows where they charge 1000B for entry. Kristi leads us to Patpong and to a real ping pong show at a place called Super Pussy.

I find out that "ping pong show" means SEX SHOW and that's what we're going to see. When we get inside we're told that there's no cover but we have to buy a drink for 300B. Then a few minutes later there's a disagreement and the bartender wants to charge us 200B each for cover. Derek, Seth, and Kristi get into a big argument and we end up walking out of the place. Kristi is really upset that we're getting scammed so much and she decides to go home. She insists that the rest of us stay and enjoy ourselves and her and Derek go back to the guest house. So after looking around the market for a bit, Kristina, Jodi, Cindi, Seth, Joe and I go to another club called Kings Castle II. There's a 300B cover but it includes a drink.

For the next hour we watch a show, the likes of which I've never seen before. A group of strippers go up on the stage led by a woman who proceeds to do some truly amazing things with her private part.
These include: blowing out candles on a cake with a straw, shooting darts through a tube and popping balloons!, picking up rings and putting them on a bottle, pulling out a very long lei, pulling out a string of needles (ouch!), pulling out a string of razor blades (double ouch!!) and cutting paper with them, shooting ping pong balls at us (Seth was blocking them with an ashtray!), and finally shooting a banana, which almost hit my foot! All throughout the show the woman on stage keeps motioning to us with her hands an invitation to some sort of illicit act in the bathroom, but we decline.

After the show we do some more shopping in the market, I buy a horrid looking giant steer belt buckle, and then we catch a cab back to Khao San. We gorge out on street food before heading to sleep. Bangkok, what a crazy place!