Hangovers in Bangkok, it really isn’t the weather for it…
Day 15 – Round the World 2008
All in all, not a whole lot to say about this morning… Apart from the fact that 32 degree temperatures do not go well with headaches, or the feeling that your stomach contents are really not very happy about being contents any longer.
I don’t think we got up till after midday and after dragging our sorry, bucket swilling carcasses out of the hotel we pretty much sat in various cafes and restaurants for the rest of the afternoon gazing with blank expressions at the movies they always have showing in every hostelry over here. Zohan got us through the 2 – 4pm period, and then Step Brothers took us up to dinner. Who said piracy never benefits anyone, and the bobbing heads on the TV screen as the cinema goers went to the toilet were easy to ignore for the fact that my head was throbbing too much to care.
Of course, as we all know though, it takes approximately… no, EXACTLY the length of one beer to go from, “I’m never drinking again,” to, “Shall we get a bucket?” So, we ended up having a few more that night. I was on my third type of Thai curry tonight, having tried a Red and a Massalam so far, and the Green went down pretty amazingly. I don’t think I’m going to get tired of the food here, and it’s even more amazing for the fact that anywhere you go, almost no matter the cost of the ubiquitous and overpriced western food, there’s always a page of Thai food with nothing costing more than about £2! Cat was on the pizza and pasta diet though after the first night’s scare, but given that pizza’s pretty much her favourite food it wasn’t going badly so far.
Tonight, though, we discovered one of the slight disadvantages of the shonky, makeshift bars of last night’s frivolities. Around 11pm we were sitting on our plastic crates, quietly enjoying a Samsong and coke (One of Thailand’s surprisingly numerous range of whiskies) when suddenly the guys behind the bar started running around and literally pushing people off their chairs. In each case the chair was promptly snatched up from beneath the confused and de-seated drinker’s behind and spirited away through a tiny alleyway behind us, rapidly followed by the bar itself, now miraculously on wheels! We ended up standing in the street that used to be a bar, looking at all of the other ex-customers with incredulous looks on our faces when suddenly the reason for the houdini act became clear – a pair of policemen came into view from behind a stall, walking slowly up the Khao San Road. It was pretty comical to be honest – the policemen were walking along, whistling away in a terrible caricature of nonchalance, while a mexican wave of bar vanishing tricks proceeded in front of them. Even more comically, there was an accompanying wave of re-appearances about 20m behind them, and the recently de-seated boozees casually sat down in the same seats and continued their night.
In the confusion Cat and I got talking to a group of guys, two English boys and a Swede, and ended up going to a few bars with them. It was good fun at first, but sadly they turned out to be a bit of a bunch of knobs, rubbishing any plans that we might have had for the next couple of weeks and extolling the breadth of their own experience and indepth knowledge of everything and anything. They were the kind of people that actually refer to themselves as ‘real travellers’ in a conversation and really don’t realise how much of a cock that makes them sound. After a couple of hours in their company cat and I made a cheeky James Bond manouver and, on the way to another bar, simply ducked down a side street as they strode ahead. Fortuitously the side street led to a whole bunch of kebab-stuffed street carts so Cat and I loaded up our arms and headed for the hotel, looking furtively over our shoulders every couple of minutes incase of ‘travelling’ Swedes.
