Pat Pong, Ping Pong, *pop*

From 16 Jan 2010

Ugh, my head hurts. This enormous weekend market thing is a little ridiculous. Packing in 10,000 stalls in to such a small area will make you delirious and struggling for air and space, as the hoards of bargain-hunting women glare around, goggle-eyed. A few hours are more than enough of this kind of punishment. It’s fantastically interesting and awesome to behold, but the shorts that cost me £2 will probably last me till the evening and then disintegrate in to a cloud of cotton-dust. I think a blind paraplegic must have put these together. And probably did.

Strawberries should be gloriously sweet and refreshing, but in sub-tropical climates, they’d turn to mush faster than an American jock fleeing a recently discovered ladyboy. So instead they are seasoned with salt as a preservative – I hold in high regard anyone that can willingly stop the gag reflex on chewing. The saving grace in all this is finally finding a stall selling some playing cards. Now to teach my sister the ins and outs of heads-up, in a bid to while away hours sat on the train. On route back to the skytrain, there's an interesting Thai David Blaine. Look closely and you can clearly see the wire from his ear (though sadly not in this picture)

From 16 Jan 2010

The evening brings with it yet more obstinate pestering. And much like those flies that wouldn’t leave me alone yesterday, these buzzing insects just need a hand wave and they’ll go away. For a while. I don’t under any circumstances ever want to buy the following: Novelty large fag lighters, Cube alarm clocks, wooden animals with spiny backs that sound like a cricket when rubbed with a stick (I’ll never forget that noise), tatty looking chains, flying toys, or tall multi-coloured hats. Eventually, however, it’ll become like white noise and you can switch off to it easily enough.

I can hear American accents to my right, so instigating conversation, I find that they’re brothers and travelling around Thailand before heading to Vietnam, and then home. After the usual travel story-trading pleasantries, we exchange details and are invited to go see the R.L.D. “Taxi meter” are two words that will save you a fortune here, and off to find Pat Pong we go. It’s horrendous, but as droll as it is disturbing. Are these men, women, both, half and half – it’s impossible to tell. With amazingly strong muscles though, the first ball flew almost 20 feet and hit Drew in the face. He spends the rest of the evening joking “Does my face look alright?”, “No”, I say “but I’m sure the antibiotics will take care of the Syphilis”.

It’s scam-tastic around here – after being told we can enter for free “You look, you look. Free”, the tout says, it’s 100 baht each for a drink. Soon enough the balls come out in a small container with liquid – which I assume sterilises them – and are fired one by one at us. Presently, we have a bill thrust in front of us for 1200 each, as we’ve seen some action. As we argue and win, we leave to see darts popping balloons and fairy lights extending from one girl to another. It’s worth seeing, but do go in a large group, to ensure there’s the numbers to argue the toss. Classy and full of culture, it most certainly ain’t.