Friday gave me some time to catch up on a few things because everyone else (Bert, Merrie and Trey) were all out of the house working. I also spent a few hours walking around the city to do some shopping, and also made it to Lumphini Park again and got some excellent footage of a monitor lizard (see facebook)…..I am beginning to see them a lot.
Over the course of the week that I was out of town, Trey became acquainted with couple of guys who work under Bert named Andrew and Ton. Both have spent the majority of their lives in the US, but also have Thai roots and are currently living abroad. So, Friday’s plans were to meet up with Andrew, Ton and a group of their friends at the local pub for happy hour. Following our pub stop, we were going to go use some of Andrews gift passes at Pence, and then when Pence closes (2 am), go check out a local hole-in-the-wall bar called Wongs……all was thinking was I better pace myself. We also were going to meet up with a friend that we haven’t seen since college, May Chen, who was flying in from Taipei for the weekend, but wasn’t scheduled to land until 1:30 am.
Things started off great when we met several of Andrew and Ton’s friends…all of which were from the US. Did the usual “where are you from….oh really, I know so and so from there” and it turned out we had a few friends in common. Small world….Our next stop was Pence, which is more like a club in that you have your own waitress, as well as hosts who basically make you buy drinks. It was a lot of fun, and I could tell the drinks were really getting to Trey….guy was a dancin fool.
After Pence was winding down, then it was time to check out Wongs. When we walked up to it, I didn’t even realize we were about to go into a bar because there are no signs.....
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walk in and there seems to be a decent crowd considering it is 2 am (and also because the bar is only about 15’ X 30’). Wong himself is the bartender, but he only serves you shots and mixed drinks. If you want a beer, you just help yourself to the beer fridge and use the honor system to pay. We headed to the Marriott to meet up with May and immediately head back to Wongs. Oh yeah, the other policy Wong has is he stays open until the last customer leaves….apparently the record right now is 5 pm the following day….I learn about this and then claim this is the best bar in Bangkok. We ended up staying at Wongs until about 4, which gave me just enough time to have a few more drinks, and also lose about 1000 baht ($28 US) to Wong in a series of arm wrestling matches. Don’t let his small stature deceive you…..the guy is strong and well disciplined in his technique.
We headed out the next morning (a little later than expected) to go do a Klong tour and visit a floating market. Bangkok was once called the “Venice of Asia” because of the many klongs (canals, rivers) that are interwoven throughout the city. It was an unseasonably cool day, so the tour was very nice. Saw many historic Temples and sites of the city from the water, and also walked around the “floating market” (not quite sure why it is called that, because not one part of it was on the water). It was similar to most of the markets we had been too (clothes, food, etc)….May talked me into trying something that looked like a little chip with some unknown white substance on top….not nearly as bad as that meal I had last week, but you aren’t missing anything if you never try one.
By the end of the tour, it was already early afternoon and we all really wanted to catch a Muay Thai fight, so we went down to Lumphini stadium and bought tickets for a 3 hour block of fights. I guess Saturday’s are not there busiest day, so the only tickets they will sell you are they pricey front row seats (about $50 US). We ended up seeing about 8 matches, including one knock out. I am not much of a big boxing fan, but found the sport to be very exciting with their level of technique. The action in the ring seemed to escalate as the fights went on, either because the level of experience increased or because I filled up on Singha Beer between each fight….not sure. You could also go under the stadium and attempt to talk with the fighters before they entered the ring…so I got someone to catch a quick action shot of my pre-fight pump up speech for one of the fighters.
We all seemed to hit a wall not too long after the fights, as it had been a long night and day. I did insist on going back to Wongs again, which we did for a little while….but called it a night much earlier than the previous.
The weekend was awesome, it was good to get acquainted with a few peers, and also it was great to catch up with May again. I am a little tired from the weekend, so I look forward to taking a few days to continue working with Asia Cement and rest up…..Because next on our agenda is we are headed to Hong Kong this Thursday for the weekend!
Peace,
sbt
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