My no-doubt cliched Thai experience

On my trip back home, I decided to spend a night in Bangkok rather than sleeping in the airport. I never had any intention to go to Thailand, let alone Bangkok. As such, I hadn't done any research about the place, nor had I studied even the basics of the language. Basically, I had no plans apart from getting a good night's sleep.

I got of the plane at Bangkok Airport at 3:30 and was stuck in the airport for two hours looking for my luggage and crawling through customs. I grabbed a taxi to my hotel (luckily I had the address written in Thai). The Asia Bangkok Hotel is a very large, old hotel, but the rooms were nice and big. Plus, there was cable TV! Sleeping there was actually the first time I had slept in a made bed for the past 10 months.

Bangkok is a mix of the well-off and the not-so-well off. There are tin-shed shanties at the base of office buildings and skyscrapers. There are lush gardens, lots of temples but really bad air pollution everywhere. They are fanatically devoted to their King- there are pictures and monuments of him everywhere. I went sight seeing in a district near the hotel, and the number of prostitutes hanging outside bars offering 'massages' and more surprised me (which in retrospect, it really shouldn't have).

As I had to wake up the next day at 4:30 in the morning, I couldn't do a 'night-out' on the town. I'm pretty sure that Bangkok is not the type of place I would _want_ to do an all-nighter. However, my hotel had a pretty famous cabaret show, so I bought tickets for the 8:30 session. There were a lot of people who went and saw the show, and I have to say it was a mixed crowd- Japanese tourists, American families, Chinese businessmen, German couples and well of Thais. To cut a long story short (I will try and put some photos up later), the show was pretty long and worth the money, and the dance routines were very good. The amount of practice and coreography they would have had to do amazed me.

On the way out, I glibbly figured that at least half of them were transexuals (this being Thailand and all). When I got to Australia, I got the Thai “Lonely Planet” out from the library and checked the hotel as well as what it had to say about the cabaret act. As it turns out, I was wrong by 50% on the transexual estimate...

-Blake