THE LAND OF THIGHS - A TWO PART JOURNAL

Part One

This could quite possibly be the most bizzare piece I ever write. I have just witnessed an elephant taking a piss, right next to a street vendor who has a huge wok full of fried cockroaches and scorpions for sale as snacks. No, I am not under the influence of a handfull of purple microdots......I am in Bangkok, and it has to be the most insane city I have ever visited!
I’m here for a spontaneous weeks holiday, with our trusty tour manager, Robert, who has a house in Chang Mai, which is in the north of Thailand. But we are staying in Bangkok for the week, in a five star hotel called The Amari. Very luxurious, very exotic, very air-conditioned!! The temperature outside is about ninety eight degrees and extremely humid, but I’m writing this in the relative calm and cool air of my room. I’ve got MTV Asia playing on the box ( very bizarre, seeing Suede next to Ling Looo !!! ) and I’m trying to think just how to put what I’ve seen in the past couple of days, into words.

So, as I said, just outside, on the mad ( and I mean MAD - traffic jams that last all day and kamikaze moped riders in their thousands! ) streets of Bangkok, I witnessed this huge elephant saunter up to the side of the road, with a kid who had to be all of nine years old perched on top, and unleash the biggest c--- I’ve ever seen, and proceed to urinate for about five minutes into the gutter. What made this even more bizarre, was that it happened right next to a queue of local people, waiting to buy fried cockroaches and scorpions, that they would then munch quite happily out of a paper bag. And they seemed to be oblivious. This seems to be the equivalent of grabbing a Big Mac and Fries. Call me old fashioned, but I’ll stick with a sandwich from Sainsburys any day !!

And the girls. JESUS CHRIST, THE GIRLS!!!! They warned me and warned me, but no amount of words could prepare anyone for just how many girls are hanging out on every corner, just waiting for “Filang” - the Thai slang for tourist/foreigner. From jailbait to OAP, there is a girl for everyone in this town. It seems that for a meagre sum of money, you could indulge in your most vile and depraved fantasy, and the girl will thank you at the end of it and fold your clothes into the bargain. Now, if that is the case, where does that leave that most powerful of sexual organs - the mind? There seems to be no stone unturned, no fetish too much. And that is a shame. The power of the fantasy left in the head is sometimes much more stimulating than the reality. And watch out for the Katoi....the Ladyboy. Good God, these wonderful creatures look like the most beautiful Vogue cover models, but are, in fact, men. You hear stories of how you can tell a ladyboy from a woman, and I am here to tell you that it’s all crap! They are sometimes way more beautiful than the women and WAY  better endowed! The wonders of Bangkok unfold in front of me, and I wonder if I will ever make it back to England, and the safe madness of being in a rock and roll band. Tomorrow, we visit the grand palace of Bangkok, and the canals where parts of the James Bond movie, “Man With The Golden Gun” were filmed. Read part two, ( if I ever get around to writing it, with all the distractions here ) in a couple of days.

With love from Thailand

Billy