It’s the 5th of November.
A plump woman, old enough to be my aunt, has my hand clasped in hers and she’s rubbing a slightly saggy tit against my arm.
I’m sitting in the cushioned seats of a smallish club. The seats are made of cheap polyester, the stain resistant kind. Loud techno music pumps beats into the walls of the room. Red, blue and green disco lights blink on and off. In the center of the room, the longish bar sits with a pair of long metal poles at each end.
My travel partner sits stiffly on my left. On his left is an unusually tall woman with an unusually broad set of shoulders. She smiles a lot and doesn’t really talk, except to say, ‘you buy me drink?’ in an unusually deep and husky voice. Ladyboys, or ‘kathoeys’ are common, my newfound aunt purrs. She even points out two girls on stage who completed the surgery.
Sex tourism is nearly a requisite experience in Thailand. Pat Pong resembles a tourist trap more than sleaze street. The streets are lit by the night markets seeking to make a quick buck from tourists and locals. The touts are a constant presence.
As if to reinforce the tourist trap image, a group of two white girls and one indian guy are escorted into the bar. They’re here to watch the ping pong show, my aunt tells me. She unzips her jacket, letting loose a noticeable paunch, and smiles to me, saying, “I go do show now. You wait for me ok?” I try to be encouraging by giving her a thumbs up.
The show involves one woman with amazingly acrobatic vaginal muscles. She lubes up her vagina, in much the same way a gymnast rubs their hands with chalk. Smiling to the audience, she waves a large marker and a piece of paper, before setting the paper on the floor and sliding the marker up her vagina.
Squatting, the woman half squats and starts gyrating her hips. Her movements are quick and professional. I find it hard to imagine anyone who’d be turned on by this. Pulling the marker from her vag, she picks up the paper and displays it to the audience: Welcome to Thailand!
Aunt is up next. She climbs on stage, breasts bare, and unties her bikini bottom. An assistant hands her a basket with ping pong balls and a lube dispenser. She lubes up before reaching into the basket, holding up one ping pong ball for all to see.
Lying sideways on the floor, she turns to my direction before lifting up one leg and sliding the ball into her vagina. Her legs bend slightly as she contracts her muscles and with a sudden jerk, send the ball flying out about one meter in my direction.
Being the touristy idiot that I am, I stupidly applaud. This of course, is not the correct response, because everyone, from the older Thai uncles watching the show, to the bare breasted waitresses serving drinks, turns to stare at the sole moron clapping away. I give it two more claps before their withering gaze sinks in.
Aunt repeats the performance, making sure every patron in the bar has a ball flying his or her direction. Somewhere between the third and fourth ping pong ball, a fully clothed and stocky woman waddles over with a calculator.
She settles down, strategically positioning herself to completely block my line of sight. I get her meaning even before she starts jabbing the calculator and scribbling down numbers. Still, I’m slightly shocked that the finally tally comes up to B4000.
Just for perspective, the bar fine for taking a girl out for a shot is B500.
Taking her out for an entire night will set you back about B1500.
So for B4000, my travel partner and I could have gotten two hookers (each!) for the entire night and still have B1000 for dinner.
Regardless, we pay up. And by pay up, I mean we empty our pockets and hope we’ll get away with a mere B3000. The calculator looks at us, smirks dismissively, and sweeps our notes and her calculator into her basket with a well-practised motion.
On stage, aunty has a blowpipe in her vagina. She fires needles at balloons. And she doesn’t miss. And at this point my travel buddy and i decide that we’ve seen enough. We get up and leave for more of Thailand’s nightlife.
Caught this clip of one Mark Dice, trying to sell an ounce of gold for US$50. Last I checked, gold closed at above US$1100 an ounce.
While Mark concludes that people are too stupid to know the value of gold, I’d like to point out that if someone’s selling something at a greater than 95% discount, my initial reaction would be one of intense skepticism.
And really, it’s highly unlikely anyone can verify on the spot that it’s a real gold coin he’s holding and not some well-made imitation.
Plus, as one of the respondent’s pointed out, ‘I don’t need it.’
So after three days of eating, merrymaking and general holidaying in Thailand, I head home for a good 12 hours of sleep before waking up this morning at 5am to catch the taxi to the New Balance Real Run.
Doing 15km on a Sunday morning is not something I do on a regular basis. Doing 15km immediately after three days of indulgence is an even rarer occurrence. It’s also a rather bad idea.
The run itself was rather pleasant, and in terms of distance, rather short. Of course not having trained at all for the run may have contributed somewhat to the burning sensation currently residing in every angle of my legs. All in all, not a performance I want to repeat anytime soon.
Better get started training for the 42km then.
I pull out two videos that I made over the past few weeks.
The first is of a birthday party, by a friend of mine for his girl’s 21st birthday. It was a big party, with not enough alcohol and many parents and babies.
The second is a trip to Malaysia, to the city of Kuala Lumpur and the slightly smaller town of Cameron Highlands. And even though I fell sick, it was a kickass holiday.
And that’s how I spend two weekends.
Tonight’s weather: pleasantly cool. Perfect for a run.
Never mind that multiple body parts are orchestrating a mass revolt. My left ear is a ringing cymbal and my right ear is a throbbing timpani. My nose leaks mucus and water, the better to expel in a trumpet’s blare. My throat punctuates every 10 breaths with a buildup of phlegm that comes out in a gooey hacking double bass. My head throbs gently to some retarded drummer’s beat.
I figure it can’t get any worse, and the run might shake a few germs loose.
2km later, I feel a little too dizzy to run without parting company with the contents of my stomach. My ego is a damaged kazoo, farting its way home.
I’m not a morning person.
Once in a while, I’ll go for a morning run, and the wind slaps me awake. As much as I love the fresh, clean fragrance of 7am, I’m seldom up early enough.
I envy people who can burst out of bed, going from zero to a hundred in three seconds like a ferrari engine running on rocket fuel. It’s 8am, an hour before work starts. I wake up like a bear coming out of hibernation; sleepy, bleary-eyed, a little hungry and somewhat pissed off. The stupor lasts all the way through the morning shower and shave.
I curse as I pull on my trousers, only to realise my zipper lines up with my ass and not my groin. It takes me a few seconds to recognize the face in the mirror as I throw on my shirt. I double check all my pockets to make sure I haven’t left any essential organs behind. Wallet, handphone, hard drive, access card, watch, spectacles and acessories. Gym bag on Tuesdays and Thurdays. All systems go.
I hug my parents before I leave the house.
Travelling to the office is something of a blur. After doing it more than 300 times, my mind heads off in a different direction while my body heads to Raffles Place. I step into the office, make my first of many cups of coffee and take a sip.
The instant coffee is weak, watery and weaker than a politician’s promise. It warms my throat as I feel it flow, easing the rest of my bodily functions into the slow rhythm of cubicle life.
Time to go kill some sentences.
It’s October and I’m still watching Bob Janjuah’s call.
Market: S&P 500 @ 1097.91 (as at 20 October 2009)
Direction: Big Up/ Up/ Sideways/Down/ Big Down
Target level: 500 – 600
Timeframe: September 2009 – December 2009
Haven’t heard anything from Bob recently. We’re nowhere near his target. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I’m certainly more than a little worried about whether the market is overreacting to the not-so-bad economic news.
And I bought a fund. The last time I succumbed to temptation and bought into a fund in June, the market crashed four months later.
Some time ago, I advised a friend to start blogging again. Seems that I should take my own advice, since it’s been nearly a month since I’ve touched WordPress.
In my defense, I’ve been pretty bogged down by a variety of pleasures and pressures, which have derailed my intentions to blog about
1. Diving
2. Writing
3. Investing
4. Working out
Someday, someone is going to invent an autoblogging device that records your thoughts as you think. Oh wait. It’s Twitter.
I have no iPhone and I must Tweet.
So I was youtubing randomly, trying to shake off the mental post its from work, when I stumble across some guy from UK called Ortopilot. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone like him.
His looks are typically Brit – painfully white. His voice is a combination of John Mayer and the late Jeff Buckley, which means I need an extra dose of rock (Avenged Sevenfold anyone?) to balance out the pop.
But why am I blabbing away? Listen to the dude cover ‘Run’:
and ‘Hallelujah’:
Frankly, Ortopilot’s cover of Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s original (bet you had to go back and read that twice) is the best I’ve heard.
Here’s to the Youtube generation.
I make it back to Singapore in one piece.
There’s a ton of stuff I’ve missed out and I’m too lazy to fill up the gaps in my memory. Just so I make a show of effort, I put together an MTV of my time in Mumbai:
Twenty-five days is a long time for a virgin trip to Mumbai. I really miss soup noodles.
