Bangkok

Now I know where Santa goes for his holidays before the busy part of his year. You can guess already can’t you; of course! he goes to the strip bars in Bangkok. Why wouldn’t he? You would if you were him. There he was, sat all alone on a stool next to the table of dancing girls, occasionally reaching out and attempting to grope one of them. His face was all cheery and red and his long white hair neatly trimmed. Obviously he wasn’t wearing the red Coca Cola costume, he was on holiday! But I knew it was him and on our way out I went up and asked if I can have a bike this year. “Oh ho ho yes!” he gleamed, happily playing along with my rubbish joke.

Bangkok seems like a direct cross between London, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Amsterdam I’ve always found kind of seedy in a quirky and ridiculous way, but Bangkok is like its intimidating older brother.

Typically, I don’t really remember what we did on our twelve-hour drinking adventure. All I know is that despite going to some really dodgy places nothing very dodgy happened. We had some thoroughly entertaining tuk tuk rides; it seems to be fashionable in Bangkok to intermittently rev the engine in a crazy manner whilst staring behind at the passengers and cackling. And the drivers all seemed determined to hook each of us up with a prostitute, and seemed confused and distraught when we kept saying no.



Much as it was a fun weekend, I'm so glad I don't live and work in Bangkok, I'd be destroyed.

The next day we were atrociously hung over and tried to keep our heads low, but then I led everyone off down some side streets and found a random fairground. The thing that took my fancy was 'throw the ball at the target so the girl falls in the slime' or whatever you would call it. Brandon had a shot and it bounced tamely away. “I think you need to throw it harder” he said as I picked up the next ball. So I absolutely launched it and it hit the edge of the target, ricocheted upwards and smashed a massive lantern overhead, shards of glass spraying over everyone, girls screaming, Thai faces glaring at me. It was funny because no one died.

We took a night train home (after flying up there) and it was full of the sorts of hazards I’ve come to expect from Thai health and safety. I was convinced that either I would sleepwalk out of one of the open doorways into the dark, menacing blur outside, or that the juddering train would eventually rock itself clean off the tracks. Didn’t sleep a wink.