If you’re new here you might be wondering how Bangkok pertains to Italy. It doesn’t but went with my italian husband so stop yelling at me.
And I know a lot of you are waiting to hear about the Italian wedding but that will have to wait a few more days because I want to have the pictures back first. Until then you have to hear about Thailand which was a combination of The Beach and some other fucked up movie that is chaotic, with loads of surreal out-of-place characters and scenes. So basically it’s like The Beach mixed with Charlie And The Chocolate Factory mixed with Pretty Woman. Only the hookers are short and asian and there are no super attractive rich dudes who are really good guys. Just old perverts. And instead of chocolate there is rice noodles and instead of oompa loompas you have lady-boys. You get the point. Also in real life The Beach smells like urine.
Day 1 Bangkok
Francesco and I left Rome for Bangkok on May 6th. We arrived ridiculously early in the morning and were not able to check-in at our hotel for four hours, The Pullman, in Bangkok (you suck). I still kind of hate them for that. “You can lounge by the pool, though,” the front desk lady told us after a thirteen hour flight. The pool would have been totally awesome if I hadn’t stunk like airplane and wasn’t wearing pajamas. Luckily, I found the pool locker room, took a shower and used my scarf as a sort of makeshift dress so I could comfortably sleep on a sun-chair. I wasn’t wearing underwear though. I cannot put dirty panties back on after I shower (and if you can you’re gross) so I couldn’t fall asleep because I was worried that people would see my girl parts. Eventually we were allowed to enter our room and given two hours to rest before our “Buddhist Temple Tour” which I forgot about until now. Anyways, lots of big, gold, pretty buildings but I was tired and grumpy so all I remember was that it was hot and that I needed coffee but nobody would give it to me. Also, Francesco, who books an all-day-tour the day they arrive!? Freak.
Amazing Architecture In Bangkok. Buddhist Temple
Secret Ninja Woman Selling Flowers On The Street.
After the tour finished around five p.m. me and Francesco took the sky metro into the city center. The area we walked through to get to the metro was total chaos and I kept thinking, “man, I totally know how those guys must have felt during Nam, if Nam were in Thailand.” Food carts everywhere, sidewalks lined with merchant carts, every inch packed with tourists and locals and prostitutes all Full Metal Jacket style (also if FMJ was about Thailand instead of Vietnam). Bangkok had really great street-shopping. If you’re ever there don’t be cheap. BUY CLOTHES. The quality is decent and I found super cute stuff for like ten bucks, such as the peach dress I’m wearing with the snake which you will see in a minute when you scroll down. Francesco went into Italian mode and I couldn’t get him to stop trying to bargain with everyone about the prices. He spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to pay fifty-cents for everything. Seriously, he’d spend an hour trying to give someone one euro for something that cost forty. Although, I’m not good at that stuff. I feel bad for the people and end up paying more than they asked in the first place. Five euros? But you look poor. Here, you know what, take ten. I am a sucker.
An interesting and random observation: The city, oddly, had two billion 7/11 stores and every inch of the street smelled like oyster sauce.
Bangkok Sky Metro. I swear I don’t have a mustache. Those are very ironically placed sun spots.
Street Food. I Was Told Not To Eat It Or I Would Die.
Menu In The Fusion Restaurant
Weird Fusion Restaurant. Notice The Waitress Is Dressed Like A French Maid.
One Night In Bangkok…blah blah blah blah blaaah blah.
Day 2
We took a private tour to the river market. Our tour guide, a middle-aged Thai woman, picked us up around eight a.m. in a white molester van. We drove out of the city for quite a while and I started thinking that any minute the driver could pull off into the jungle and I would be abducted and sold into sex slavery for around 3 euro 50. The door was not locked which was good. If they pulled into the bush I’d grab Francesco and we’d make a run for it.
The van slowed down and we pulled into an area full of tour vans and buses. European tourists were everywhere so it seemed legit. Francesco and I crawled out of the van and followed the guide over to an area full of fire, cauldrons, and mountains of coconut shells. Witch doctors? This, our guide instructed, is where they make coconut sugar. The old coconuts are gutted with some iron seat tool that you sit on with what seems like an iron torture device that shoots out from between your legs. You grind out the coconut “meat” with this, then other things happen to the coconut which she explained but I forgot, something about boiling and cooking in big iron witch pots. In the end the coco sugar looks like disks of carmel, which were covered in flies, all laid out on a white sheet. Our tour guide grabbed a glob of it out of a little wooden bowl that was sitting off to the side and thrust it at us. I tried a tiny piece. It was really good and tasted clean, and sweet.
Coconut Sugar Scraper/Torture Device
We drove some more until we came to a random parking lot near a river. Fran and I followed the guide to a sort of thai speedboat thing and piled in. We cruised down the river past houses on stilts, past large lizard animals swimming, past old women swimming in the same river with the large lizard things, we whizzed down the river surrounded by lush, green jungle on both sides. Then we came to the market.
I’m Cooking On A Boat, Bitches.
And then we held a snake. I am smiling but inside I’m thinking, “salmonella, SALMONELLA!”
Super cool river granny
Later that night we went into Bangkok to explore the city again. We took a taxi to Nana. I stepped out of the taxi and flipped the fuck out. A cockroach ran over my bare toes and a man rolling around on his stomach threw up near my other foot. We got back in the taxi and headed to a seafood restaurant that someone recommended. It was horrible. We went back to our hotel to eat, then we took a taxi back to Nana because I would not give up! Nana is a district in Bangkok which is uh, ghetto. The dead giveaway that it’s ghetto is the five million immigrant shops, and the men puking in the gutter. We found a large bar area off of the busy main street and settled onto some stools for a drink. Ah, finally! Alcohol! Dozens of strip clubs surrounded the tiki-hut bars. After our first round the prostitutes spotted Francesco and started aggressively hitting on him. “Why are you so cute, baby?” One asked. And I was all like, oooh fuck no but was equally entertained. For the first time in my life I said, “Get off my man, hoe,” and I was being totally literal. Bucket list check-off. We looked around and noticed that pretty much all the women in the area were hookers and most of them were chatting up middle-aged European men. We also noticed that about half of the girls looked teenage at best. Then, a british girl sat down on my right and introduced herself. She referred to herself as, “a not creepy dude,” randomly spoke fluent Thai, and seemed to know all the bartenders and hookers. Francesco thought that she was a lesbian hooker, but I it was pretty obvious that she was a pimp. She told me that her father owned a bunch of go-go clubs which sounds like, “my family business is the sex trade” to me. She suggested we pop into a go-go club titled, “The Pussy Mirror”, so we said goodbye and did just that. The dark club was only illuminated on the stage area where around twenty girls, mostly club danced to Thai music. They were wearing short, orange, skirts and a orange bra to match. They were not wearing underwear which is why I guess the place was called The Pussy Mirror. Inside I planned an escape route in case huge Eastern European men were waiting outside to kidnap me for one of the pimp-girl’s go-go clubs. I figured that if I attacked first, I’d have the surprise advantage, aim for the knees and the throat, I thought. Yes, I think about this way too much, I know. We left The Pussy Mirror after one drink because the go-go girls looked really young. The dancing girls pranced around as loads of old American and European men were crowded around the stage staring, each of them bearing a caustic grin. Those kinds of men, surely fathers, brothers, sons, are the things that nightmares are made of.
When we returned to our hotel around three a.m. a hooker waited outside for the concierge to call her a cab. Then, as I peed in the foyer bathroom another hooker fixed her makeup. I tried to imagine what their lives were like and who had they been with that night? The Japanese man who I sat next to during breakfast? The Russian man who handed me a pen I dropped? Those two women were adults so it was not my business anyways or anyone’s business for that matter as long as nobody ax murdered them. I really have nothing against two consenting adults doing whatever they want. Key word: Consent.
Day 3 Phuket
We left Bangkok early the following morning feelings completely dirty and kind of like we’d contracted an STI through our eyes. We took a one hour flight to the island of Phuket in southern Thailand where we were picked up by our guides Ass and Saks. True story. We spent the first few days in Phuket lounging on Kata beach and doing absolutely nothing else. Here are a few of my journal entries from my lazy days as a beached Misty.
“Picked up in van by ass and saks, I can’t even make this shit up people. Drove for one hour to our hotel Katathani. Huge cookie-cutter resort, towel swan and orchid petals on bed to greet us. Got my period (fucking awesome) and Francesco said I have cankles because he’s rude. Bathroom has no privacy. Hm.”
“Watching baby swim. Baby is totally going to drown. I kind of hope it starts to drown to teach the dad a lesson about neglecting his baby AND so I can rescue it. Would be a good story for blog.”
“Everyone is fat and Australian. The restaurants have pre-set menus and a BBQ night. I feel trapped in the resort from Dirty Dancing. Took a Mui Tai class, over-zealous French Sean-Claude dude spit everywhere while doing elbow hits. I will become a super ninja and pull his head off one day.”
————————————————
Just As Things Are Starting To Heat Up I Cut It Off. This Post is Already Too Long So Phuket Will Be Continued Tomorrow. Stay Tuned For The Beach, Pee-Pee, Sharks, Lady-Boys and Post-Op Vaginas, Monkeys, Elephants, And Other Things That Make Up My Day-To-Day.
