Alan, Marilia and I then went on some kind of walkabout. The notes say so. I can't remember whether there was any point to the wandering. There didn't have to be, just being in the street was an experience.
The notes also say that I went to the Burmese Embassy. I had less success there than I had had when I made enquiries in London before I set off. At least there I had the feeling that I was being understood. At the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok I was met with blank incomprehension.
That was it, then. No chance to visit Burma, at least not by organising it myself.
It seems that after that we must have made our way back to Banglamphu where we sat around chatting. I seem to remember having my first bowl of kuaytiau - noodle soup - and falling in love with it. What a fantastic way to eat and take on a substantial amount of fluid at the same time! My notes say "some washing" and this was an example of how Bangkok was back in the modern world. Just around the corner from the Clean & Calm was a place that took in washing.
So what? Well, this was no dhobi wallah place. This was a a place with a proper 20th century front loading washing machine. It was fantastic. I think they charged by the kilo.
The highlight of the daylight hours was the Golden Buddha and the highlight of the evening was visiting the Patpong Road. Trust me, I really didn't want to go. It was Alan who was most keen. I had read a book called "Borderlines" by Charles Nicholl in the year before setting off and that had related an episode regarding the Patpong Road. It is the red light district, full of girlie bars and strip clubs.
Alan, Marilia and I arrived by Tuk-Tuk - a truly amazing form of city transport, the Thai version of the auto-rickshaw and much better. As soon as we were off the Tuk-Tuk the hassle started. Within a second a tout was accosting us telling us to come in to a particular bar with the promise that there was "No cover charge! No cover charge!". We had come to see these bars so we let this guy take us in to the place he was promoting.
We sat at the bar and ordered three small beers. They weren't particularly expensive, only 20 Baht (about 40p at that time). As we sat at the bar a couple of naked girls were sort of dancing in a very bored way on a sort of stage which was elevated behind the bar. I had never seen less enthusiastic exotic dancers. I seem to recall going to couple of strip clubs in Paris on a trip there a few years before with a girl called Liz (not the same one as mentioned previously). Somehow or other that experience was completely different. The clubs were genuinely tiny bars where a series of girls stripped off with the only prop being a typical Parisian bar chair. We were in Paris and it looked like art, it wasn't particularly erotic. The participants did however seem more than half interested in what they were doing and got genuine applause from the surrounding crowd watching the performances in the dark.
This place had none of that ambiance. It was all rather sad and tired. There was loud music and along the dimly lit back wall I remember seeing a couple of older pot bellied men sitting with a naked girl on each side of them. Add to sad and tired the words sordid, sleazy and seedy.
We were all on a tight budget and we all merely sipped our beers. After a few minutes the bored dancing girls disappeared and they were replaced by a girl whose trick was to produce ping pong balls from her yoni - I use the Hindu term because there doesn't seem to be a word in the English language that ever works very well, the English words are usually either medically correct or extremely and offensively crude or sexist. Anyway the girl produced ping pong balls from her yoni and dropped them into a pint mug. Bravo! Incidentally I use the term "ping pong balls" because I am sure table tennis enthusiasts would not want their balls associated with the genitalia of Bangkok's exotic dancers. I think Finbarr Saunders or Julian Clary would be proud of that last sentence.
This went on for a few minutes. Look, let's get something straight. Apart from the strip club bars in Paris with Liz I had never been in any establishment populated by naked girls. I had, however, seen the film Emanuelle both in the UK and in Paris. I am sure the UK version was cut more savagely than the French version. I won't relate the story but it involves Sylvia Kristel's character flying to Bangkok where she has various erotic experiences. At one stage there is scene in a sleazy strip joint not unlike the one we were in and in the French (uncut) version one of the performers inserts a lighted cigarette into her yoni and there is a close up of the woman using the muscles of that organ to almost literally inhale and blow out the tobacco smoke (I cannot decide whether an image I have in my mind of her blowing smoke rings is a memory or my depraved imagination). The movie poster shown here comes from a website called Wrong side of the art. I want to credit the owner and don't want to rip anyone off so follow this link to see it in the location that I found it.In all honesty it had been nearly 15 years since my Uncle Lourens a.k.a. Lout Henkes had taken me to see the movie in Paris and I had forgotten all about it being set in Bangkok. My visit to Bangkok and Thailand had nothing whatsoever to do with having seen that film. OK?
Having said that the next girl on after the ping pong ball artist exhibited similar extraordinary yonic control. This one gyrated around for a minute or so and then inserted a blowpipe you know where and fired paper darts out of the blowpipe with sufficient power to burst balloons!
By this time Alan, Marilia and I had had enough. We got up to leave and asked for the bill for our 3 beers. This was when things started to get a bit more edgy. We had ordered 3 beers at 20 Baht each but the bill was for 1,860 Baht. At the prevailing exchange rate that was nearly £37.00. We said we were not paying that much for 3 beers. We had been told there was "No cover charge" whatever that meant and we had been assured the beers were only 20 Baht each.
At this we were led to the part of the bar nearest the entrance where there was a sign which explained how the place worked. There was no "cover charge" and the beers were 20 Baht each but you were expected to pay 150 Baht for each performance you watched and, including the girls mooching around when we had been led in (straight past the sign at the entrance) by the tout, we had seen 4 "shows" and thus owed the bar 600 Baht each for the entertainment and 20 Baht each for the beer.
We protested that we had not been shown the sign on the way in and insisted we were not going to pay. While this was going on at least one English woman in her mid to late forties came over and said she and her husband were effectively being held prisoners because they couldn't or wouldn't pay their bill.
Things then got ugly. A small wiry and extremely brassy woman with an excruciatingly loud and awful voice was summoned and she began to harangue us. She was shouting "You must pay, you pay now!" over and over again. We were not going to pay and this girl aimed a kick at Marilia.
Big mistake! Marilia was no shrinking violet. She was hard as nails and was wearing trekking trainer boots. Marilia just kicked the woman straight back at which point I slammed 100 Baht on the bar and we exited as fast as we could.
Once outside we were safe. It was a lucky escape but we all agreed that we had seen quite enough and we piled onto a Tuk Tuk back to the Clean & Calm. That was sufficient excitement for one day. Looking back it was pretty good value as an experience costing about 70p each.
The reference in the title to this post is to a song from the musical "Chess" which I have never seen. There was a single in the charts performed by Murray Head and there was a line: "One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble".
