There is nothing simple about living the Slinky life. And so it is for vacations. Last minute packing saw me sleeping 3am for the fourth night in a row, and I woke up feeling half-fucked but ready to go. Unfortunately, in keeping with the game of God vs Slinky, we missed our plane. God - 265, Slinky - 0. Liability for this mishap remains a much-heated dispute so we won't talk about it. Some frenzied hamstering around Terminal 1, temper tantrums (yes, me) and a quarter-pack of Djarums later, we are on our way to Bangkok, although not without almost missing our flight again by about a minute or so.

Deep-fried grasshoppers, a delicacy

Contrary to all expectations, I did not eat myself into a stupor. I missed entire meals. We mainly cruised the streets and market and grazed on street food. Bangkok is street-food gastronomic paradise.

Shortly after touching down, we went roaming the streets in search of food. The Boy stopped dead in his tracks when he saw it and walked towards it, drawn like he had been pulled by a ring in his nose.

"I guess we're eating here then."

Tender stewed pork leg with kiam chye, one boiled egg and some gravy. Peasant food, but so damned good. Especially with some dubious looking fish sauce and green chili. I stayed away from the chili padi flakes though. I like being able to talk after I’ve eaten.

In Chatuchak we found what was to become a favourite. I'm not sure what it actually was. Best guess was water buffalo. Or wild boar. It's best not to inquire too deeply into these things.

Heavily seasoned, very salty, fried and dripping with oil, and a strange pink-orange color that I don't usually associate with meat. Sold by weight, chopped and eaten with a bag of sticky rice, it was the best damn thing I ate during my entire trip. Also in Chatuchak, small crispy pancakes with whipped rice flour and coconut. Rich, sweet and terribly decadent.

In a bar near where we stayed, The Boy found himself some deep-fried grasshopper. I didn’t eat that.

"It's not like you not to be adventurous." The Boy remarked. He was taunting me.

Bugs are what you swat, scream at, or run away from. They are not a food group.

Also along the strip near where we stayed was a little old lady selling fresh fat river prawns, grilled and served with something I presume was the inevitable fish sauce and chili padi which can damn near take your heard off.

Thais have mouths made of Kevlar.

Also eaten: grilled sotong which came in a completely different shape from what I'm used to, strange grassy Thai vegetables, goose, scallops which The Boy swears came out of a can and then were artistically arranged on the top shell, curry powder crab, steamed kim bak lor, more strange grassy Thai vegetables, Baskin Robbins with LOTS of whipped cream (I love that stuff), Dunkin Donuts, some truly excellent deep-fried chicken, deep fried chicken skin, mandarin juice, sugarcane chunks and barbecued pork. Mmmmm.

Near- naked girls and blending with the locals

I realize confuse the locals. When I go to Thailand, everything is fine right until I open my mouth. Then they are befuddled. I apparently look Thai, right down to the color of my skin. The last time I went to Bangkok, The Boy and I had hopped into a cab outside MBK. I had gotten into the cab first and promptly got berated in Thai, invectives flowing like water. As far as I could tell he was scolding me for making him stop where he wasn't supposed to. Then The Boy and I said "What?" and suddenly he realized his mistake and became all smiles because we were tourists. Huh. No tip for you, buddy.

This became a particular problem in the area that we were staying, as there was this one soi which was nothing but girlie bars. The Boy and I decided to cruise the trip for the sheer hell of it. Dressed in a T-shirt that said "Don't call me cowboy until you see me ride" (possibly a mistake) and a pair of faded blue jeans, I followed The Boy around. After a while I realized that I was getting fairly speculative looks from the local hookers, many of whom were wearing clothes which would have made my Victoria’s Secrets blush.

"Babe, why are they all looking at me?"
"They probably think you're Thai but you're not dressed right, so you've confused them."
"So they think I'm cutting on their turf?"

After that I stuck real close to The Boy. Don't want to get gettin' in no bitch fights with no Thai hookers for stealing their pudgy Singaporean meal ticket.

Unfortunately all the bars were closed when we went so we decided to come back the next day.

I toyed with the idea of dressing like a hooker and figuring out my market rate, but didn't in the end.

We went to one of the girlie bars, the Tilac Bar, to have a drink and watch the world go by. I was amazed at the number of fat old ang mohs who had some sweet Thai girl hanging off their arms. None of these men could have gotten half as much luck in their home towns. We ordered a Heineken and a Grohl's, and settled in to do some damage to the Djarums we had brought with us.

Eventually the madam of the bar came to check that everything was going all right. Again, the same speculative look, coupled with a slightly unnerving sense that she was assessing how much money I'd make her. I must have confused the fuck out of her when I spoke in English. She hovered around The Boy a lot but pretty much ignored me. "Is she a man?" The Boy asked me nervously when she went away. This was Thailand. She could have been anything.

When she came back to light my cigarette, I got the same sense of her doing it only because it humoured The Boy. Having to light his popsy’s cigarette was just part of the job. "Maybe, he told me, "she's thinking "Why you bring your own girl, we got plenty girl here!""

I don't discount the possibility.

"Are you sure you're not adopted?" The Boy kept asking me as we walked down that soi and through Patpong. "Maybe when we get home you should ask your parents about where you really came from?"

Inside the bar we got ushered to a banquette where we drank our beers and watched girls dressed only in white G-strings, string bikini bras and killer boots pole dance. Except they didn't dance so much as sway apathetically from side to side. It was oddly unarousing.

I think I'm right about my assessment of the madam sizing me up though. As we left the bar, she told The Boy that I was "very nice". Fuckin' hell at first I thought she was talking about my necklace, they way she said it, then I realized she meant me. She asked me where I was from. I bet you every dollar I have she thought I was going to answer her in Thai and tell her I came down from Kanchanburi or something.

We decided to bar hop after a while, and ended up at Suzie Wong's, where the highlight of the bar were two pole dancers who had serious groove and the bunch of drunk white guys in the corner. One girl was fair and buxom, and looked like she was having fun, the first I'd seen that night. I could have sworn the other chick, with close cropped hair and Beyonce-worthy groove, was half-black. They did perfect hip swivels, wide-legged squats and half-parted lips. The two white guys who sat near their feet were in a world of their own, gazing up at the two near-naked goddesses with matching looks of reverence that said "I have found paradise and it is between her legs". They must have though they'd gone to heaven when the girls started play-fighting with each other, because their lower jaws nearly fell into their glasses when the black chick ripped off the other girl's top and yanked down her knickers. Woooo. Good wax job, and an even better boob job.

But the best thing about the bar were the drunk white guys. The club played groove music, occasionally rock, and these guys were doing their best Pretty Fly for a White Guy routine, thinking that they is black, and trying to get jiggy wit' it. 'Cept they had absolutely no sense of rhythm whatsoever. Having listened to Russell Peters just before, The Boy and I were quoting his show at each other and snickering like idiots.

"Don’t we look cool?"
"Aren’t we hip? We are pimping!"
"e are going to meet all the bitches tonight!"

Wildlife

Tranny boys aside, Thailand is animal heaven. If we lived there we would be overrun with animals.

In Chatuchak we were mooching around, almost concussed from the sauna-like heat and humidity until I spotted something, and was gone before The Boy could turn around, leaving a cry of "Puggyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!" in my wake. Pug puppies, people! Little weeny puggies! All with those adorable squashy faces and sad puggy eyes! And when you played with them they'd laugh in a way only dogs can, and their mouths would split open in that puggy grin and little pink tongues would come lolling out. I couldn't take it, they were too cute. I could carry one in just one hand, they were so small. "Puggy, baby! Puggy puggy puggy! Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww, aren't you so cute?" The Boy would stand patiently by while I babbled to the little puppy of the moment, who would usually be hot as hell and kind of dopey. My favourite puggy was one I found which was more spirited than the rest, who tried to playbite my fingers and squished his flat face against the side mesh cage, then tried to pull my fingers to him with teeny little puggy paws. I was in love. I couldn’t walk past a single pug puppy without that scream of "Puggggyyyyy!" and then zipping off to the latest object of my affections, which left The Boy to try and find me in the crowd.

After that I generally made The Boy’s life miserable.

"Want a puggy!"
"Okay."
[more insistently] "Want a puggy!"
"But you can't bring it back."
"Can too! Want a puggy!"
"Okay."

They had puppies of all descriptions, including the most adorable Rottweiler puppies, all chunky and sleepy-faced with the sweetest faces. And they were so insanely cheap! S$280 for one Rottie pup! I could have bought four! I could have been swimming in dogs! A rottie puppy was the first puppy I saw in Chatuchak and he was the sweetest little thing, who licked my face enthusiastically and leaned against me in a soft warm fuzzy bundle of dogginess which had me madly in love within the first five seconds. Even now when I look at his photo I can't help going "Aww!" I love the way they all start out so small and vulnerable and sweet and grow up to be big Zeph-like monsters. It drives me nuts. They are too cute for words. I'm not emotionally equipped to deal with this. I wanted to save them all. I still feel bad about leaving all those little puppies behind.

"Baby, he wants to come home with me!"
"Yes, okay."

It only got worse when I found the ferret kits.

"Ferrets! Ferrets ferrets ferrets ferrets!" And zip! I was gone again.

Lean and fuzzy and completely knocked out from the heat, they had little masked faces and this look which promised great mischief and homewrecking. There was this particular one who kept chasing my fingers from behind the mesh, and bit one, experimentally. Ferrets have sharp little teeth. More uncontrollable baby talk/ cooing to the animals.

The chant was changed to reflect this.

"Want a puggy! And a ferret."
"Okay."
"And a rottie!"
"Okay."
"Want a puggy!"
"But you can’t bring it home!"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"

I didn't recover from puppy-induced mush until we left the pet section. And even then, the chant of want still kept popping up when I was reminded of it.

Then we hit the exotics section. Oh my god. The beautiful RTB babies are still my favourite. I stuck my hand into a bagful of ten of them and pulled out one, and it slithered around my fingers and wrist like a piece of living jewelry. The head was no bigger than half an inch, and the mossy grey color of its body was offset with chocolate brown saddles with cream striations and a dull mahogany super-tail. I was massively tempted to just stick him in my pocket and take him home. He would have been called Bob. Bob got added to the chant of want too.

It didn't help that just the day before we had visited the snake farm. I recommend the snake farm to everybody. The show is fabulous. Basically it consisted of two crazy Thai guys manhandling very large grumpy venomous snakes, throwing them on the floor in a "look, snake, nah" sort of attitude in front of the terrified tourists, and then proceeding to try and antagonize the snake as much as possible with casual swipes of their bare hands in horrifying close proximity. Then they'd casually grab them by the tails and neck and hold them out for the farang to take photos. The show presenter got into the act as well, casually dislodging the snake which bit him on the wrist and finger and giving a bored "ta-dah" sort of flourish, with snake et al. Hilarious.

The Boy and I were, of course, in raptures as we watched, leaning forward even as the mostly-white crowd leaned back. When the shows was over, they asked for people who wanted to take pictures with the fat Burmese python that they’d brought out to come down. There was utter silence for a while, eventually broken by The Boy and I screaming "'Scuse us!" as we launched our way through the crowd at the snake.

Boywatching

The men in Bangkok are surprisingly beautiful. They range from olive-skinned to very fair, with soft waves which have been closely-cropped or left long to curl at the nape of their necks, and they have the loveliest eyes.

But none of them surpass the farang we saw in Dunkin Donuts. I don't know if The Boy saw him when we stepped in, but I caught a glimpse of him out of my peripheral vision and I had to do the classic double-take because my god, that man was BEAUTIFUL. Large brown eyes framed by thick brown lashes, shoulder-length wavy brown hair, goatee, and a brilliant smile. He looked like Jesus done by Ford models. I nearly fell over my feet. Totally heedless of anything but the divine poonani-magnet behind me, I grabbed The Boy’s arm and whispered/hissed, "Did you see that guy! Oh my god he's BEAUTIFUL!"

I managed to tear myself way long enough to order, then I could SENSE the divine presence behind me move, and when he moved to the door he broke into this KILLER smile and waved at the counter girls, who instantly collapsed into screaming, giggly fits of hysterical female laughter. One even hid behind the counter. Hell, I practically did it too, and he wasn't even waving at me. Only truly hot men can inspire this sort of hysterical behavior. That guy had serious mojo. God. He was SO HOT. Hubbahubba.