Myself and friend M, and three Thai girls run the perilous gauntlet of taxis rolling up and down bar-infested soi 33 to Sukhumvit. All were drinking beer and whisky all evening: two Londoner waitresses who were off duty on the steps of the building and us "customers" (an English friend's Thai wife, myself and M) who were inside and had now migrated to the street party.
The party gathered a lot of gawkers as well as a second big party right beside us, such that the steps were pretty much blocked out of the building. Welcome to Thailand. It's G's birthday but she and her BF had already headed home. It's now somewhere around 3 a.m. and many of the Londoner girls wanted to go to Spice disco down on soi 11. I'd been there once before and it was a thumpin' good time if you like a good DJ and wall to wall beautiful girls.
Gee, Thai girls wanting go to a disco, what a surprise. They must have gone on as M and I, who were urged to join them, must have missed the bus, so to speak. Oh, well.
But another group of girls wanted to go to a karaoke. No surprise no. 2. So, our friend's wife, T, and staffers K and K2, and M and I managed to get mobile and thread the bumpers across soi 33 and then the extra special perilous Sukhumvit to the south side so we could catch a taxi going in the right direction. (With lots of one-ways and very few crossovers, you have to pick the right side of the road in Bangkok.)
M has known these staffers for five years or more and as for me, about two or three years. (There's one of them in the image left, R, pretending to down a bottle of vodka, I think. Others in background are K and O, with my friend M in the very background, on the Sukhumvit party street.) Getting booze in Bangkok is as easy as walking into 24-hour market and walking out with anything you want. On the wall behind R is a whis-KEEE and coke, and Le-OOO beer. Cheap but okay. (Emphasis on the -KEEE and -OOO when saying the word gives it a Thai tonal quality that makes it understandable to a Thai. You can turn specifically English words, such as brand names or specialty words, with no Thai translation available, into Thai by adding a rising tone to the final syllable. It was amusing once when I ordered a Ti-GUHHH. A friend responded that it was Tiger. When he ordered a Tiger, the waitress was silent, then I said Ti-GUHHH and she immediately understood. More words of wisdom thanks to my new Thai language classes.)
K2 gets into a 33 southbound cab -- wrong way, but she was, oh, hammered -- and we extract her for the trip across Suk (many street and place names are shortened in Thai: Ratchadaphisek is Ratchada) to a westbound cab. Five people in a taxi for foreigners means sardine packing, but three slight Thai girls in back with M and it's not a big deal. So the non-stop chattering starts among the girls and all they said was soi 22, across from Se-VENN (Translation: 7-11). That's going to find you absolutely nothing, there being thousands of Se-VENNS. Eventually we get the girls to slow down a moment to tell the driver where this karaoke is.
So there we are, in a restaurant, or open kitchen. I don't get it. Thought we were going to a karaoke. Uh, the girls, led by T who knew this place, disappear up a winding narrow staircase to the third floor. M and I follow into a pretty bare room with long tables and couches, and giant speakers and karaoke box! The 10-baht coins come out, beer is ordered by T, as is food (there is ALWAYS food in Thai girl activities, in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the food was ordered first, then the beer, which was 500ml bottles of Heineken.) Service is excellent. (T shown in image in full karaoke mode.)
The music rolls out, Thai country (Isaan) music and some more mainstream popular tunes, but lots of Isaan music. There's singing and dancing till dawn. How to describe what it's like to hang out with Thai girls? Everything's easy, like hanging out with old friends, except they're a lot more attractive than old friends. There's lots of dialogue (Thai, English and Thinglish), lots of jokes, laughs, joy, smiles and honesty of purpose and conduct, and always, respect -- a complete comfort zone. It's hard to refrain from listing the kind of opposites you might find back home. But I will refrain. The Thais might say it another way, sa-BAI, which is interpreted as content or comfortable with one's situation. Sit down, relax and enjoy the company.
M calls around 2 the next afternoon and we agree, since the Asok street bars were all closed that must have been after 5 a.m. We then ate and taxied home in opposite directions. Must have been home by 6 or thereabouts. Or was it . . . Oh, well. Think sa-BAI.
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