Early check in

Monday, April 07, 2008
Bangkok, Thailand
Perhaps we should have taken the bus (there are three choices of service) but a taxi was just too appealing at 8AM. There are dozens of people trying to sell you taxi services but very polite and not at all insistent. Walking on past them out the door was easy and profitable. Inside the terminal the private taxies are offering a ride for 900bhat, outside the regular metered taxi is whatever the meter says plus a 50bhat service charge (what that is for is not explained) and you pay the road tolls of 65bhat on the way to central Bangkok. in total 325baht. The main city bus service costs 300bhat for two people. The driver's English was poor, a common problem except when negotiating to leave the meter off but the map of the location of the Nap Inn got us there in twenty minutes, ah the wonders of a WAP phone.
Our next problem arose at the hotel - they had us booked, under "Graham" for tomorrow not today but the Thai manager confirmed again his country's efficiency by admitting they had made a mistake and putting it right . We are on the fifth floor in the only room in the hotel with a balcony and clothes drying facilities and all for just over £13 a night. Nap Inn 21/8 Sukhumwit Soi4 Klongtoey Wattana 10110 Bangkok Thailand. Tel: +66.2.2512246 / +66.2.2512247 Email: info@nap-inn.com or reserve@nap-inn.com

The upside of overnight travel is you have the whole day in front of you when you arrive in a new town which is OK if you are eighteen and on a two week trip. Our HC contact in Thailand is a Financial Analyst working the American markets and therefore, a night owl. He was round to our hotel within a few minutes of our contacting him and gave us a very comprehensive tour of the area which turns out to be one of Bangkok's three red light districts. This certainly means it is lively and well supplied with eating places. We had a full English breakfast for about £4 each and it was good. It also explains the price structure here. Only a tourist would be mad enough to spend four pounds on breakfast so the price is extortionate. Inner works the same way. If you eat Thai in an air-conditioned restaurant you will get a choice of small medium or large portions of "soup"; eat the same thing where the Thais eat in an open-air restaurant and you get the equivalent of a medium portion at two thirds of the price; move out of the red light district and the price halves again.

After six months of deprivation, however, hang the price. The sheer joy of eating hot bacon and fish that has been cooked for less than an hour not to mention chicken without bones is worth the rip-off price. The entertainment is also good if not quite free. A large bottle of beer in Khao San Road, the traveller's mecca costs around 80bhat; a small bottle in one of the bars around the heart of the red light district costs 95bhat or around £2.50 a pint - UK prices. Once again, however, it's worth it to watch the floorshow. Broadly there are three types of tourists; a few couples like us, clearly watching agog; some young guys in groups, probably refugees from the Khao San Road and groups of middle aged men, also refugees but from golfing parties and the third type provide the entertainment; such a bunch of lost souls one would never find gathered together anywhere else. The profile is generally sixty plus, often fat to the point of serious obesity and all absolutely sleezy.

They are there, of course, for the girls and there is no shortage. They come in many shapes and sizes but mainly small and many, we surmised, under twenty. The guidebooks tell that many of them are from the very poor outer provinces and often trapped into the sex-industry which is curious when prostitution is illegal in Thailand. We visited Khao San Road once and saw a police raid which involved fourteen police cars, two vans and a tuk-tuk (yes, the tourist police really do have a tuk-tuk) in total over fifty policemen. We have eaten every evening in or near the red light district and not seen a single policeman. The Bangkok police clearly understand the threat to their nation's well-being from travelers. Travellers are, after all, drug crazed dealers who spread western propaganda and corrupt the citizens. Middle aged western men, however, are valued tourists who spend large amounts of cash and isn't it just normal that they might meet a nice Thai girl during their stay.

There is a large courtyard at the heart of this district which contains over thirty bars and nothing else. The bars have two purposes; two sell drink and peddle flesh. The often portrayed image of the bar girl trying to beg a few drinks from a westerner is put to the lie when these, so called, GoGo bars are displaying girls in their underwear on stages where they move in a desultory fashion until chosen by a patron who then pays a bar fine to allow him to take her from the bar, for a while at least. The going rate for a bar fine is 250bhat or more and for a girl 1000bhat or more depending on how pretty (not many of them are) and how young they are. This research was conducted entirely on a third party basis but the outrage is all my own. If Thailand is trying to clean up its sex industry it is not trying too hard. The first bar in the courtyard is called lollipop and the waitresses are all dressed like American high school cheer leaders; the leader of the pack is a midget made up to look around ten years of age. A cynic might suggest we should give free plane tickets to Bangkok to all of our pedophiles, someone who has visited Bangkok might observe that most of them are here already.

The really good news in Bangkok is that we've found the antidote to tuk-tuk thieves. It couldn't be simpler - use a metered taxi. We were offered a half price fare of 200bhat and the driver backed off with a scowl when I said I'd rather use a metered taxi; it cost 67baht. I an attempt to find accommodation to enjoy the New Year festivities in comfort and dry we hunted Khao San Road for a decent hotel and found one but they wouldn't take a booking. Not that they didn't have a room, they did, we saw it. Asian logic was involved here, much more advance than Indian logic. Reception wouldn't know until tomorrow if the room was available tomorrow night, yes it was available tonight but they don't take bookings for their best rooms, they don't have many of them. Yes, a booking for their second best rooms was possible by paying in advance, in cash, in full but no, they couldn't do that for their best rooms. Ah well, maybe they'll get their booking tonight and maybe they won't but we won't be back tomorrow or any of the other three days we would have booked. We'll skip the water fights and head north.

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