Welcome to the Mile High Club ;)

So on Monday night after elephant trekking and checking out of the Amari Palm Reef, Danny, Brett and I caught the 6pm flight from Koh Samui to Bangkok for one last night of debauchery... Thankfully, we knew going in that we had a reliable guide to help us navigate this city of 10 million people... our guide being a man named Maxi Boy. =)

For those of you that don't know, Danny's father Barry is a pilot, and as it turns out, one of his old co-pilots from his British Airways days has since retired and moved to Bangkok, where he's opened up an 8-room guesthouse known as the Mile High Club... In a nutshell it's a clean, safe place to stay in the middle of the Sukhumvit section of Bangkok that typically caters to pilots... Thankfully Barry had reached out to Maxi Boy to arrange 3 rooms for us for our last night in Thailand and I couldn't have been happier.

In a nutshell, Maxi Boy is a legend... imagine a 60+ year old, ethnic Quagmire... you know, the shady but kind-hearted, sex-crazed pilot from Family Guy? From the moment we got there, Max was availing us of stories of his exploits and the life of an ex-pat in Thailand... To say this guy was a dirty old man would be the understatement of the century, but he was also incredibly helpful in keeping 3 naive guys from the States out of trouble, and the Mile High Club was a very clean and respectable home base as we explored Thai's capital.

After a fairly antagonistic taxi ride (I'll spare you the details) we finally made it to the MHC, where we introduced ourselves to Maxi Boy. He was a riot out of the gates, and after settling in he gave us the run down of Bangkok... where to go and how to get there... One thing he advised against was visiting Pat Pong, which is generally considered Bangkok's chief Red Light District, but we all agreed that no trip to Bangkok would be complete without at least seeing a Ping Pong show, and thus the three of us set out on the Skytrain to see what we could see...

Man should we have listened to Maxi Boy... In a nutshell we got off the Skytrain in Pat Pong and were walking towards the heart of the district when some lady approached us and asked if we were looking for a Ping Pong show (apparently 3 white guys in shorts and t-shirts was a dead give away)... Long story short we followed her to an unmarked door and up a dirty flight of stairs (first sign we were making a huge mistake), and on the way up, some poor old guy came down the stairs and told us it was a huge rip off (second sign we were making a huge mistake, but the guy looked drugged out of his mind so we ignored him and proceeded anyway)... Long story short, the Ping Pong show was what we thought it was... a perverse combination of freak show and strip show, but it wasn't until after one round of Singha and about 20 minutes that the real red flags started waving.

Long story short, we go to the counter to pay our bill, and the old women running the place shows us a bill for 3,500 baht... about $115... When we'd explicitly asked when we arrived how much for the beers and how much for the show and had been told 100 baht each on each count... Reasonable Thai prices, which should have ammounted to $6-7 each... This bill however, while it did have the beers at 100 baht each, it actually had the show at 500 baht each and tried to charge us 425 baht each for some drinks we supposedly bought for the girls... It was essentially a shake down... For one thing, we HADN'T bought a SINGLE drink for any of the girls working there... despite being implored by the sketchy Thai girls several times... And when we stated that we had been told the show was 100 baht each and not 500, she asked who had told us that (sure enough, the lady who showed us in was nowhere to be seen)... We of course reacted with righteous indignation... Lots of yelling on both sides. At one point I slammed 200 baht on the counter and told this woman that was all she was getting from me... That's when she picked up the phone and said in broken English, "Fine then, I call Mafia."

At that point Danny, Brett and I started talking amongst ourselves pretty hurriedly, wondering whether or not to call her bluff or try and reach a compromise in the off chance she really did have some Mafia thugs that could be there in a moments notice... I still think she was bluffing and wanted to storm out of there in righteous indignation, but cooler heads prevailed and we ended up negotiating the thieving woman down to 1,500 baht, or about $17 each... Lesson learned: 1) Trust Maxi-Boy when he says something is a rip-off, and 2) Never go to an establishment that has no signage and that feels sketchy from the get-go (even for a Ping Pong show).

After that we did some bar hopping, and eventually gained our good spirits back... It's hard not to in a place like Bangkok... While there's no doubt about it that the city can be a very shady place, it's also a tonic for the senses: lights, smells, and a cacaphony of sounds are everywhere... from the hawkers selling fried fish at 3am to the blaring music (one remix combined Metallica and Beyonce was amazing)... It was an experience I'll never forget... Nor will I forget the late night Tuk Tuk ride back home to the MHC, which consisted of Danny, Brett and I jammed into a box set on the back of a three-wheeled motorbike roaring down the road at 50+ miles per hour. =)

All in all it was a roller coaster of a night, but definitely a great experience.

The next day we decided to trust Maxi-Boy's advice and we took the commuter riverboat from the Southern part of Bangkok to the Northern-most stop... a great, leisurely way to see the city while enjoying the breeze on the river. It cost 14 baht per person each way (about 50 cents), and when we stopped at the northern-most stop we got off for a decidely un-touristy lunch and market tour...

First we found a restaraunt (more like a hole in the wall) that had the most locals in it and motioned that we wanted to eat. Nobody spoke english, there was no menu, and it was basically rolling the dice when we ordered... One waitress finally managed to ask "fish or meat?" and "big, medium or small?" and what came was three bowls of a brown broth with noodles in it, what appeared to be 1 meat ball, some strips of meat, bean sprouts, and some weird tentacle looking thing... Thus it was with some trepidation that we tried it, but all in all it was actually pretty good... The best part was that at the end of the meal we found out that our three bowls of soup and 3 Pepsis cost 116 baht total... That's about $4 for a three person lunch... Amazing.

We then spent the next 2 hours walking around this awesome outdoor marketplace... it was HUGE... all live fish and chickens and stuff, with the freshest meats, fruits, vegetables, seafood.... including live eels, turtles and frogs for sale... and did I mention grilled cockroaches?

Afterwards we took the river boat back... did a little more shopping at the MBK, which is a very American-style mall, very different from the aforementioned market, before heading back to the Mile High Club and pack our bags to depart.

Thus it was that I found myself at the airport on 6/15, getting ready to board my flight to Ahman when I first began this tale. It's now two days later, on 6/17, and my birthday-in-transit from Thailand to Jordan to Greece was everything I could have hoped for (except for the fact that the Ahman airport has NO internet cafe anywhere in the airport, resulting in a VERY boring 8-hour layover).

Regardless, I landed in Athens without a hitch, and was able to meet up with Alex, Dustin and Chaz with no problems (other than the fact that the Metro was on strike, precipitating the need to take a taxi to our hostel... go figure). ;)

Today we toured the Acropolis and got a lot of really great photos of the Parthenon. We then watched a lot of World Cup Soccer, and now I'm about to go to bed, as we're catching the 7:15 AM Ferry to Mykonos...

I guess that means good night. Next time I post, I'll be doing so from the Cyclades Islands... and tomorrow night, my USA flag bathing suit will be making its debut as we watch the World Cup here in Greece... Wish us luck!

-Tom