The Seediest Place on Earth, Strippers and Adele?, and the Pre-Full Moon Party Days! Pattaya and Koh Phangan

12:31 AM Tuesday July 17th, 2012 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Bo and I having left Marlowe back in Phnom Penh had boarded our night bus to the Thai border.  We awoke at the border early in the morning and got our departure stamps from Cambodia and then walked in to Thai immigrations.  Greeting us was a sign warning of the severity of the consequences of drug trafficking, sale, and use in Thailand.  Seeing how life sentences and execution were the punishments for drug offenses one of the guys from our bus took out a marijuana infused Tootsie Roll and quickly consumed it before entering the Thai immigrations building.  Better safe than sorry I guess.  Such was our introduction to Thailand.  Bo and I got our 2 week visa provided by overland entry into Thailand.  We boarded our mini-bus to Pattaya and attempted to sleep, but after a few hours it became evident to us that our mini-bus driver was lost.  He kept stopping the vehicle, asking for directions, and then confidently speeding off only to pull off the road 10 minutes later.  We finally made it to Pattaya after many stops for directions around noon.  As always Bo and I exited the mini-bus and ignored the first five people trying to get our attention.  They charge more when you get right off the buses, so we walked a little until I saw a western guy and by chance decided to flag him ask him if he knew where the crazy areas of the town were.  We wanted to stay near the action.  John, the English ex-pat of about 35, was quite a character.  For over an hour he took us around town describing the best places to get happy ending massages, which girls were best at which bars, where to get soapies (a body on body oil/soap massage ending in sex), what bars were worthwhile and what ones weren’t, and so much more information about the city and his Filipino ex-girlfriend who worked as an escort.  John was the seediest kind of person who fits in among the seediest city I’ve ever been to.  The whole town seemed to revolve around sex.

You've gotta be crazy to try to struggle drugs into Thailand.

Pharmacies may have an agenda in Pattaya.

A normal Pattaya street vendor's wares.

Every inch of the place seemed dedicated to finding it, paying for it, or selling it.  This made for quite an interesting experience for two guys not interested in the prospect of utilizing prostitutes.  This town seemed to have a blind, faithful dedication to the prostitutes.  They were well taken care of, and seemingly some were happy to be doing what they were doing.  Who am I to judge?  There truly are very different cultural views towards these things out here than there are back in the states. 

Even Pizza Hut is getting in on the action.

John led us around town, eventually finding us a place right above Walking Street.  This is the Bourbon Street of Thailand.  Excess, drunkenness, bulging crowds, late night raucousness, and multitudes of watering holes were the norm on Walking Street.  

Walking Street.  This guy seems to fit in well.

Condoms and alcohol were sold in our hotel room.

So a stay on Walking Street seemed only fitting for Bo and I to begin our Thai adventures.  As Bo continued fighting off a cold from a couple days prior we both drifted off to nap around 4:30 PM only to find ourselves awakened at 2:30 AM, 10 hours later, by the pulsing music from below.  There was a band blaring classic rock covers.  We were told by reception that the third floor would be quieter, but with the door closed, the windows shut tightly, and the large curtains drawn I still heard every single word perfectly.  Most other people would have just given up on sleep, and seeing as how I’d already slept for 10 hours I should have just gone out to the street to see what was going on.  Instead Bo and I somehow managed to make it through to the morning sleeping in intervals until we were awoken by the music again.  It was uncomfortably loud in our room, but the music ended around 6 in the morning, and we slept until 7:30 AM.  Refreshed by 15 hours of sleep we went out to get some Thai food, our stomachs screaming from skipping dinner during our slumbers. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, the city was a ghost town in the morning.  Random shop keepers had opened early for no apparent reason.  No one was stirring or had any plans to until at least 11 AM.  I was approached at 8:30 AM by three ladyboys attempting to proposition me, and with only one afternoon’s experience in Pattaya this didn’t seem abnormal. Ladyboys for those who don’t know are transvestites, though they often get sex changes.  Regardless the ladyboys who approached me were three broad shouldered, very tall women of sorts asking to come up to my room.  That night we were set on going out, and luckily the party was right outside our hotel.  After having my first beer in ages (15 days) in the hotel room, we went at midnight, walking out the front door and into the madness.  Walking Street was going off.  It was packed with middle aged and elderly white males, Thai women, and even some Russian families.  Not the kind of place you’d want to bring your kids, yet they were there.  Bright neon and flashing lights pulled you into bars and clubs.  We picked a place to go into and walked up the stairs.  We had heard of the go go bars, but didn’t know what to expect.  When we walked in we noticed a lot of scantily clad girls bringing drinks.  We had walked into a strip club, but Bo and I were on a mission to experience Pattaya, well with the exception of the prostitutes.  The girls in this club were all extremely attractive, Russian girls.  I’m not one for strip clubs, and this was only my second experience in one.  Bo and I chatted with each other and relaxed.  Whoever chose the song list in this club must have been a bipolar dj as they switched from songs like Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, to quick paced house music, to Adele’s Someone Like You.  You can’t imagine the incongruity of girls stripping to the song Someone Like You.  The two just don’t fit, and Bo and I looked at each other and laughed at the absurdity of such a pairing.  After about thirty minutes chatting and being approached for money we’d had enough and wanted to head to what we thought would be a normal go go bar.  Oh how we were in for a shock. This time it was my choice of the place, so without thinking I picked a random go go bar and entered.  It started out inconspicuously.  Girls danced on a stage, we got some beers, but it wasn’t a strip club feel.  If anything it was more disgustingly like a selection show, where guys in the audience basically pick girls to take home as they rotate from pole to pole dancing, some performing while others seemed to mindlessly bounce up and down or talk to each other on stage.  At least here we weren’t being approached as consistently as back at the strip club.  So here we were sitting at this bar having a beer or two and a second rotation of girls has just gone up, worked their way around and exited the stage.  We were not at all prepared for what was going to happen.  Out of nowhere another group of girls, maybe 8 or so in total came up to the stage completely naked.  BAM!  Bo and I got hit by a train.  A ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore,’ look escaped Bo’s eyes.  Was this really even happening?  Nowhere in the world does something like this happen, but in the center of the beastly, seedy, and repugnant place that is Pattaya this seemed both weirdly fathomable and understandable.  It was not for us though.  Two strapping, young lads such as ourselves needed to get the fuck out of there as fast as humanly possible.  This was not a place we wanted to remain for long.  After exiting we wandered the street for a little while, scared to enter a place and see more of the same.  It wasn’t that the girls or the effeminate ladyboys (who are basically impossible to discern from the other ladies might I add) were unattractive, but the manner in which they moved around the stage as if they were in a display case at a buffet was so wholly disheartening that it made it pretty unbearable to remain in front of them.  So we stayed outside and ventured to a club down the street where we might be able to dance ourselves and forget about what we’d just seen.  Alas Bo succumbed to his persistent sickness that hadn’t yet left him and we called it a night around 3:30 the music again roaring beneath our hotel room.

Ronald McDonald is fucking creepy.

The next day we relaxed and shopped, though I was taking the bus to Bangkok for my flight down to Koh Phangan the next morning so the one night out in Pattaya would have to suffice.  In some kind of misunderstanding the jump-on, jump-off taxis that carry about 10 people or so at a time failed to turn where I expected it to.  I found myself the only passenger on a taxi way up in the north part of the city until the final local exited the taxi.  The driver came back asking me where I was going, and when I responded asking when he was turning around to run the length of the city the other way like normal he said, “No turnaround.”  He then unceremoniously kicked me out of his taxi after I refused to pay the $5 he wanted to take me to my actual destination.  I paid him the 33 cents that was owed for my trip and wandered around aimlessly until I got on a taxi that was going the other direction, back down south, and was willing to direct me to the exit point I needed.  After the two hour bus ride in to Bangkok I took a taxi to the airport and quickly met up with an English guy and girl traveling down to the Full Moon Party as well.  I noticed the guy limping and inquired if Vang Vieng in Laos had gotten him as well, and sure enough it had.  He had a pretty infected wound on his foot that I informed him he should definitely get checked out.  I gave him what medical care I could with all of my experience with infections and my now well stocked first aid kit.  We slept on the marble floor in the airport on some clothing in our silk sleeping sacks and awoke early for our flights having gotten only an hour or two of shuteye.

Night in the airport.

My happy plane.

Piled up bags on the ferry heading to Koh Phangan.

Turned out that when the guy got to Koh Phangan he had to get on some serious antibiotics and have his feet wrapped up to prevent any further issues.  I guess the knowledge gained from my accidents was already paying dividends to other people.  Bo’s flight from Pattaya to Koh Samui left him able to just barely catch the last ferry to Koh Phangan and arrive at the Home Beach Bungalows where I had been stationed for the last seven hours.  It turned out that our friends from the Ha Long Bay Tour, Rich and Ola, had also booked the same place as us so we were immediately in good company.  Another friend from the tour, Clark, was stationed just up the road from us.

A book by the sea.

Northern Koh Phangan

A day of riding around the island on motorbikes and seeing some of the beaches and very lackluster waterfalls kept us occupied until the Jungle Experience party the night before the Full Moon Party.  After struggling to get to the Jungle Experience before it cost $10 to enter at 11PM and later, we waited for 10 minutes and then ordered some buckets at the bar, but the bartender informed us that they’d run out of rum, but more was coming soon.  We got his name, memorized his face, and headed to the side of the bar to receive our buckets once the rum arrived.  Oh glory days the rum had arrived after about 20 minutes, but where in the hell was our bartender.  After talking with another bartender he didn’t seem to even know the guy we had dealt with, and more importantly they had now run out of buckets to pour our drinks into, so unless we washed a dirty bucket in some filthy stream water we were shit out of luck.  Supposedly our bartender was up in the DJ booth at the moment.  We saw him pop in and out a few times, always letting us know there were no buckets.  By the time they finally arrived it had been about an hour and a half since we’d first ordered them.  The amount that we initially ordered was 9 buckets, but when Clark finally showed up with the buckets we had 11 of them.  Not only had Clark been saying we’d paid for the buckets already, which we hadn’t, but Clark was sent behind the bar to pour our buckets for us.  Clark tipped the bartender 500 Baht ($16) for all of the hassle plus the free bucket he’d given us earlier and we escaped with about $90 worth of free buckets.  

Riding on the back of the taxi to the Jungle Experience.

Needless to say everyone had a great night, and did some training for the Full Moon Party the next night.  I even slightly fell asleep in the taxi waiting to go back to our bungalow around 4 in the morning, exhausted from a solid night out.