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July 21, 2005
Planet Thai
Halfway through the second week back at work and my body feels like it’s been run over by an Australian road-train. This particular road train is called, unsurprisingly, Diana. It’s taking a while for the body to adjust throwing ladies around again. Not that I wouldn’t have thrown people around during my holiday, but Asians are so small that it takes at least two for any proper effect. Work is much like before the holidays: The Dragon’s back beasting the spirit of Mr B out of the poor souls and we contemporary refugees are plodding on by ourselves. Ashley’s back next week so we’ll get some outside input as well. Just yesterday I got hold of a schedule for our shows at the Dance Base, but still now idea of the layout of the evening. I hope they’re not putting ‘Acrid’ and ‘Refurbished Behaviour’ back to back: half and hour of dragging even as lovely creature as Diana around the stage is enough to break a back or two, and, since I’ve only got one, I’d like to make sure it'll last me for the rest of my life. Did I mention schedules earlier? Apparently my whinging about the lack of future schedules got noticed and we’ve got performance dates all the way to January up on the notice board. Nice one, Cindy!
Pre-holiday depression left me incapable of facing the ballet classes in the morning so I got hopelessly left in the dark while the company was undergoing another transformation. Now that I’m back in the class bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I’m facing the task of putting names to the new faces without much success. “So you’re Flopsy and that’s your friend Doo-Daa?” I should probably check out the Company's website to save myself from a few embarrassing moments… Nah! Give it another six months or so and I’ll absorb the names via osmosis or some such semi-magical technique.
As I undoubtedly mentioned earlier I was going to spend the entire summer holiday in Thailand and that I sure did, sir. It was a very interesting and enlightening trip in many ways. As an introduction to Asia I managed to dive blindly into the deep end. For the first week I wanted to chill out and check out the scene. Unfortunately ‘Bangkok’ and ‘chill out’ don’t appear in the same chapter, let alone sentence. What comes to checking out the scene though I was in the thick of it: my hotel was on Silom Road, five minutes down the road from Patpong, Thailand’s most notorious red light district. The location had nothing to do with the choice of hotel. Honest! After checking in, since my chief reason for being in Thailand was to attend a massage course, I promptly walked to the nearest massage parlour to get the stiffness of a thirteen hour flight rubbed out of me. I opted for the special oil massage and after an hour there was no stiffness left what so ever. Special. After that introductory experience into the terminology of the local massage scene I opted, mostly, for traditional thai massage or foot massage. During the five days or nights, I’m not quite sure which was which (and the wagon load of Baht) I spent in Bangkok I hardly saw any sunlight at all, but the scenery was still worth while, especially when looked through an empty Sang Som bottle from the back of a wheelying tuk-tuk.
After all that boisterous, drunken merrymaking it was time to head up to Chiang Mai, the second largest city of Thailand and the capital of the north. Where Bangkok is a sprawling urban jungle of twenty million inhabitants Chiang Mai’s head count stops at two million and the city itself is distinctly more relaxed and traditional. On my very first night in town, as my habit is, I set out to check the local night life and got dropped off in the heart of the bar district. After a few minutes of walking about I came across a suitably seedy looking street that I liked the look of. I have a penchant for urban assault course, see. After a couple of hundred meters of dodging girls who tried to drag me into this or that bar, or back to my hotel, I found an inviting, badly lit alley and, against all odds, on that very same alley I found an oasis called Number1Pub. It was the first watering hole nobody tried to force me into so I sat down at the bar and made it my second home for the next three weeks. A big shout out goes to Freddy and Joi, John and Deung, Joss, Yuri and all the ladies! The mornings and afternoons, when the bar was closed, I spent learning the fine art of thai massage (“the lazy mans yoga” as it’s occasionally called), lounging by the poolside and letting little yellow friends make a fool out of me at the local boxing camp. I readily take my hat off to any man who lasts a full five rounds in a ring with any half decent local boxer! Despite all my best efforts, I only managed to do anything useful on the very last weekend when Michelle and Urska, the SQUAT Team, from the massage course talked me into getting out of the bed at an inhumanely early hour to go hiking up and down hills and riding elephants and bamboo rafts with them. I’m glad they did and I’m glad I did, because what followed was a great day out, and I still have the bruises to prove it.
The anatomically correct squatting position for optimal expulsion. ©
All too soon the time was at hand to say all the good-byes, throw the last twirls around the pole, have the last Number1 Cocktails and get carried to the tuk-tuk for the very last time. The next morning I headed back down to Bangkok, but unfortunately I had twelve hours to kill in transit so I left my luggage at the airport and took a taxi to the familiar stomping grounds of Silom Road and from there jumped on the sky-train for a spot of sightseeing. I stepped off at a random stop and found myself in the middle of Sukhumvit Road, another tourist trap with big hotels and the usual street stalls and hustling tuk-tuk drivers. After a little aimless wandering my nose led me to the Nana “entertainment district”. It was 8pm, but all the bars were open and pretty crowded already. A few hours vanished very pleasantly first watching the rehearsals and later the shows and all of a sudden it was time to peel the ladyboys off me and jump in a cab back to the airport. 38 hours later I was in the studio hanging off the bar and gingerly trying to get my knickers around the ballet-thing again.
I come in peace. ©
The circle has closed and here we are, back in the sweatshop once again, creating art for the entertainment of you and the neighbour’s dog. Now don’t go doing anything I wouldn’t do, or if you do, do tell me about it and let me know how was it.
Mullets and handlebar mustaches all round. ©
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