It all began on Monday. What should of been an early night to be rested for travel, turned into an all nighter, packing and panicking. The nerves had official set in.
Early hours Tuesday morning we packed our bags into the car and after a few teary goodbyes, we were at the airport, all set. We had booked a split/connecting flight through Zurich (hubby's idea, and it was cheaper) I wasn't too keen on the 10.5 hour long leg from Zurich to Bangkok but it was surprisingly stress free (don't tell him I said that!!)
Fast forward to Wednesday 6am (Thailand time.) We cheated a little and got a taxi from the airport instead of the train/skytrains, but in all fairness it wasn't too much more expensive at £10 including tolls and airport taxi charges.
We intended to stay awake day one and face jet lag head on.... oh how wrong we were! Our room had no windows, no windows = no sunlight, no sunlight = no concept of time.... At all! So we slept day one away.
When we finally dragged ourselves up we ventured out into the Silom district to find food, stumbling onto a bar we had visited on our last trip to Bangkok, with beer and food we were happy.
An American guy was performing as an 'Irish singer' and he was surprisingly good, the mix of Thai, European, Japanese and Australian customers all loved him.
After about 3 songs he picked on me and my husband, without asking us a single question, he called us the 'honeymoon couple' who had 'held hands all through his last song' 😳 so he dedicated his next song to us. He played Ben. E. King, Stand by Me, which weirdly was our First dance on our Wedding day... perfect start 👍🏼
After a few drinks we headed to the Pat Pong night market. This place is incredibly insane! We found a bar that was advertising Muay Thai, great!! We entered to find a vast selection of Thai girls in 'uniforms' of what was basically underwear. Standard for a bar in Pat Pong. The podiums the girls had been dancing on had been unbolted from the floor, we were led to one side and told to sit on one because the bar was already full. Two men had screwed poles into 4 corners and pulled ropes from a black bin to create a ring, its was a pop up Muay Thai fight. The men in shorts and gloves appeared, clearly not matched in size. And off they went. At the end of round one, the smallest/leanest fighter headed to his corner, next to us. He signalled to my husband to pass him the jug of ice water... my husband then became his corner man for the rest of the fight 🙈
As we left we were pounced on by a tout, we knew we should of said no but we decided to take a chance and see what followed. We were frog marched around the Pat Pong market at lightning speed, bundled through a doorway, up a flight of stairs and into a dark room with 4 Thai women on a stage in the middle.... oh dear.
What followed was definitely an experience I will never forget but will probably never repeat, one of Thailands infamous Ping Pong shows. We were even given a ping pong paddle.....! Not for the faint hearted or prudish, we saw candles be blown out, plastic rings be picked up and placed over a bottle neck, a cigarette being lit, darts popping balloons and of course, ping pong balls flying everywhere... I'll leave the detail to your imagination.
Day 1 in Bangkok complete....
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