Christmas in Bangkok

For a Buddhist country, they love Christmas here.  The Thai people go nuts over it.  Santa Claus hats everywhere and everyone wishing you a “Merry Christmas.”  Much like Thanksgiving, Christmas was about as non-traditional as it could get, but still packed with fun in this sweltering city that is starting to grow on me.  On Christmas Eve, Michael and I had an early dinner at this Indian restaurant where we gorged ourselves enough to necessitate a nap.  Then we met up with my old friend from O’neill’s, Jon Conrad.  Jon grew up in Thailand, his mother is Vietnamese and his father American, and he is currently the head coach of the Virginia Tech Rugby team, but home for Christmas break in Bangkok.  Needless to say his usually large size in this country and flawless Thai made for an excellent tour guide.  Jon took us to a restaurant called Al-Hussein’s in an area of Bangkok called Little Arabia, formerly Little Lebanon until the Pakistani’s took over town during the gulf war.  Bangkok is full of these sections of town that virtually teleport you to another part of the world like Little India, Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Japanese Section.  While we didn’t eat at Hussein’s, we did sit and enjoy some apple flavored sheesha tobacco out of a hookah.  Jon, who was a regular at the place, claimed that in all his travels and sheesha smoking, that Hussein’s has the best, and it was delicious with my super-strong Arabian coffee.  It was really an experience to sit there absorbing a culture within a culture that probably wouldn’t be so safe for two white guys without Jon, and having him there to answer our never ending line of questions.  Also, Jon informed us that it was much safer and quieter because of the giant drug sting the previous evening.  Next we hopped into a cab and headed to a place called Noriega’s.  Noriega’s is located in the night market/hooker district called Patpong, tucked at the end of an alley that belongs to the gays.  Again, I would not have felt safe without a lead blocker, and Noriega’s was really a cool place in a truly bizarre part of town.  Good live music, a cool outdoor patio, and world-class people watching were a perfect location for our discussions of Thai and world politics.  Noriega, a giant Brazilian man with a pony tail, came and said hello to Jon in VIP fashion, and then Jon told us that there were some very suspicious tales surrounding Noriega’s acquisition of the bar.  Apparently, Noriega had a contract put out on the previous owner, and then negotiated with the widow for the sale of the place.  It was eerily quiet there and Jon said that it always was and that the place must be a front for some sort of illegal business.  We parted ways with Jon and took the long way back through Patpong to laugh at the clusters of Thai hookers in their Santa Claus hats.  The night market is the kind of place that you stroll through laughing hysterically at ladyboys, hookers, and knockoff handbags and then run smack into an elephant.  Truly a spectacular carnival for grown-ups.  My eyes were tired from all the sights by the end of the night and my jaws are still sore from laughing so much. 

Christmas morning was groggy one, it took a couple of coffees to get me out of the haze, while still absorbing everything from the night before.  We spent the morning chilling on Michael’s balcony contemplating how to spend our last two days of the trip, and reliving the laughs from the past month.  We made plans to go to the Japanese part of town, meet up with Jon again, and have a sick sushi dinner for Christmas.  Our cabbie to little Japan took us for a ride that took nearly an hour and was over twice as much as it should be, but still only four dollars.  We never found Jon, due to us arriving late and phone problems on both our parts, and finally sat down for dinner at nearly 11pm.  The place we chose was about to close and nobody spoke any english, but was none the less a great Christmas dinner and a good close to the trip.  A full belly, a beer, and a little bit of sake was enough to put us both down soon after. 

Mad props to Jon for showing us some great and hilarious spots in Bangkok.  And even more to Michael for picking up way too many checks while here, being an epic partner in crime, and making me laugh more this trip than I have in years.  Have fun in Maui and give Maryanne a hug for me.

I’ve downsized yet again.  I decided to stash the $350 bag I brought with me in the hotel locker and have purchased a much smaller Lowe-Alpine knockoff for $30.  The smaller pack will enable me to carry everything on a dirtbike in Cambodia and hopefully make everything more streamlined and mobile.  Anything that hasn’t been used in a week has been ditched including half my clothes, cologne, small pack, fleece, and other unnecessary material possesions.  By the time Scott gets here I’ll be traveling in a moo-moo with only flip-flops and a manpurse.  I was supposed to leave for Cambodia this morning, but caught a bad case of lazy, and I will leave tomorrow at 5am.  It’ll give me more time to research, prepare, and change money, etc.  It’ll be hard to top the past month, but I get the feeling Cambodia is going to be mind-blowing. Happy Holidays.

~ by deanius on December 27, 2007.