From workaholic to world traveler

Thailand was one of the places that I’d most looked forward to visiting, so much so that I booked 5 nights in Bangkok and another 3 nights in Phuket. To me, Bangkok represented the city experience and Phuket represented a relaxing beach resort vacation.

Bangkok

I booked a crazy nice hotel in Bangkok, called the Athenee Hotel. They put me in an absurdly luxurious suite and treated me like gold. Here is a picture of the view from the club room as I was enjoying high tea!

There are some aspects of Bangkok that I just can’t compute. Like how a cab would take 30 min to get to a destination, but walking would take 12 minutes. Go figure.

My Tinder dominance continued as soon as I landed in Bangkok. The only problem is that the most attractive girls that liked me had (how can I say this classily) anatomical deal breakers. This will be a theme throughout this post, as I ponder how it’s possible that ladyboys can be prettier than the natural indigenous women. I even went as far as to google how to differentiate ladyboys versus natural women and one of hints said that if they are too pretty and display outwardly feminine traits, they may be a ladyboy. That was unhelpful. Here is an example of a Ladyboy tinder admirer. I still can’t believe that this person was born a dude.

Enough about ladyboys…for now. The first night I was in the mood to be active, so I booked a 4hr bike tour of the city. I got the chance to see the night flower market, some street food vendors and some temples. At the temples, I laughed at the fact that only women had to abide by a dress code. That said, even though we were biking for 4 hours, the women had to put on dresses over their biking gear when heading to a temple.

Even though I’m nearly 300lbs, biking for 4 hours in 90 degree heat wasn’t that bad. The only challenge was dealing with a torturous bike seat designed to kill the posterior.

After it was all said and done, I got a massage and went to sleep. Massages in Bangkok are like $6/hr and I probably got them every day that I was there.

The following day I was determined to find the top tailor in Bangkok to make me a badass suit and a few shirts. I’m about to be the CEO of my own small business, and when called upon, I intend to dress the part. I found a link of the top tailors in the area from CNN and ultimately decided on Rajawongse Clothier. I liked their vibe and they had made suits for Obama and each of the Bush presidents. In their fitting room, the business cards of senior executives from fortune-500 companies were plastered across the walls. If it was good enough for them, I figured that it could be good enough for me. Over the 5 days that I was there, I had to go in for 4 rounds of fittings to make sure that I got the optimal fitting suit. I ended up getting 1 cashmere/wool suit, 4 Egyptian cotton shirts and 1 tie and it cost me a total of around $750. I thought that it would be a bit cheaper, but I imagine that similar quality in NYC would be 3x that.

That evening, I went to the Patpong Night Bazaar, a famous night market, with some pretty shady places strewn throughout. It had hundreds of stalls filled with counterfeit handbags, clothes and souvenirs. As a larger white gentleman, I was approached every few steps by some hawker offering me illicit goods and services.

After buying a few trinkets, I settled into this cool bar where a Filipino band was playing 80’s and 90’s rock. While there, I met what I thought to be an attractive girl, but would actually turn out to be my first encounter with one of the famous or infamous ladyboys. After having a drink with her, I became aware of her status and gracefully got the hell out of dodge. Pretty ‘girl’ though.

On day 3, I encountered what every travelers dread – food poisoning. As an ardent Bourdain fan, I thumb my nose at those travelers that avoid local foods and cultures, so I’d been eating street foods and fruits at various street carts for the past 2 days. I don’t know specifically which food got me, but it was certainly unpleasant. I did some research on the subject and apparently it is recommended that you have your ‘output’ analyzed for possible parasites, at which point the doctors can ascertain a best course of treatment. I found the best facility in the area and headed over there. Even though I technically came after their operating hours and didn’t speak the language, their staff graciously accepted me and conducted the necessary exams, and prescribed the necessary medication. I had no idea what medical treatment would cost in this part of the globe and was concerned that I’d get a $2,000 bill at the end, and have to fight with my travel insurance provider. At the end, my bill was less than 400 baht, or around $13, including medication. Shocker. With my ailment, day 3 was a bit of a dud from an activity standpoint, unless watching Netflix is blog-worthy.

The next night I was to have my first Tinder date in Bangkok. My date was with a smart girl with an MBA, named Nadia. With the prevalence of ladyboys and my difficulty in spotting them, I had to ask her in advance if she was a natural born woman. It’s the first time that I’d ever done that in the process of courtship, but I did so in what I considered to be the most delicate way possible. It’s the least sexy question ever, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.

She took me to this really nice outdoor restaurant with live music. It was a really cool joint and the band was great.

~Note to reader. I tried to decide if I would include the latter part of my date in this blog. Fortunately or unfortunately, I found this to be an extremely memorable part of my Bangkok experience. It includes some level of adult content, so feel free to skip. I doubt that you will though.

After dinner, due to my newly found ladyboy-phobia, she thought that it would be funny to take me to a ladyboy bar to desensitize me. By that point, I had a good buzz going, and I was able to justify that it wasn’t gay if I was to be going with a girl. If I hadn’t known otherwise, I’d have said that the bar was full of beautiful women, which made my brain do a few backflips. With prodding from Nadia, and after a few more drinks, one of the ‘ladies’ got fairly amorous with me, although I didn’t let it get very far. Not one of the most macho experiences that I’ve ever had, but I was clutching onto Nadia throughout the encounter, so again, it wasn’t entirely gay. This is a pic of me after this encounter- note that the while the picture is of Nadia and I, the lipstick wasn’t hers.

It was a messed up night, but I had a great time and it’s one that I will definitely remember.

On day 5, after waking up late and hungover, I wanted to get off of the beaten path and head out to the burbs. I took a long cab across Bangkok and took a canal boat ride which was really nice, other than the oppressive heat.

After the boat ride, I spotted a cool looking restaurant and had a great meal that really helped with the hangover.

After lunch, I got a massage, took a nap and picked up my new, badass custom clothing. I’d gone for fittings every single day of my Bangkok trip and I really dug the result. That night, I met a few hard-partying high rollers that recommended that I must hit this Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was actually excellent.

Phuket

Phuket is around 2 hours from Bangkok by plane. While at the airport, I found an advertisement that reminded me of that ‘found porn’ bit that used to be on the tonight show. It’s extremely sophomoric, but I laughed out loud when I saw it:

Phuket is a beautiful beach resort area, although I made the mistake of booking a family/couple oriented resort near the airport. If I could do it al over again, I should have stayed in Patong, the entertainment area in the region.

I had been used to taking super-cheap metered cabs in Bangkok, but apparently there is a ‘taxi-mafia’ in Phuket that is involved in price fixing, government corruption and intimidation/assault of independent drivers that don’t abide by their standards. Based on this, no taxi driver in Phuket used meters and there were set (exorbitant) fees based on region that were approximately 8x as expensive as Bangkok. Due to this price fixing, the fee that I had to pay to get from the airport to my hotel was around $20 for a 20 minute ride. While the amount doesn’t seem all that significant to people in New York, this amount corresponds to a full day’s wage in that part of the world, and locals simply couldn’t afford using the cab system. I don’t know how much the drivers need to kick back to the ‘Mafia’, but assuming that they get to keep a decent percentage of their fares, they would probably be one percenters over there.

Enough with my cheapness and negativity. My hotel was the Renaissance Resort and it was fucking beautiful. It was immaculately well kept and featured a private beach, beautiful pools, fine dining, beach-side cabanas for massages…etc. The best part was that my platinum status got me a private villa with a private pool, an amenity that I’d never experienced before. The private pool wasn’t very large, but I really dug it. One of my friends referred to it as an oversized hot tub filled with cold water, but I wasn’t concerned with his opinion because he is frail and is often injured. While he would appear to be in better shape than me, I will almost certainly outlive him. You know who you are.

Anyway, the resort was full of couples and families and the nightlife was fairly non-existent, so I had to get my way to Patong, the fun spot. Getting to and from Patong would cost $50 each way, or I had the option to take a hotel shuttle for around $12 each way, but the schedule was extremely limited.

Patong is a lively city catering almost exclusively to rowdy, beach going tourists. It is full of bars, live music, restaurants, souvenir shops, massage parlors and adult entertainment venues. The place is absolutely packed and this is what the Main Street looks like:

While in Patong, I enjoyed a wide range of activities, and I’ll list the highlights. I went to a ladyboy cabaret show, where man-made ladies dressed up in elaborate costumes to mimic celebrity performances. My favorite was probably a Beyoncé impersonator that I referred to as Boyoncé. If you had a few drinks and didn’t look too carefully, you’d have no inkling that these performers weren’t ordinary ladies.

Second, I went to a nature preserve to hang out with tigers.

Funny tidbit about this experience. Apparently one of my Tinder ‘matches’ who didn’t respond to my message saw this picture and chastised me for frequenting an establishment that abuses tigers to the point that they can be docile around humans. Little did she know, but I recently ate a bear, and enjoyed hanging out with tigers; it’s good to be at the top of the food chain. I don’t think that it would have worked out between us. Note that the sanctuary vehemently denies drugging and/or abusing the tigers, but I’m no expert.

The last highlight was getting a henna tattoo of the Thai flag.

While I actually like the tattoo, I’ve never been a proponent of permanent tattoos. While 33 year old me likes this tattoo, I have a hunch that 53 year old me may regret the decisions of his younger self. That said, I chose the henna route as opposed to a permanent tattoo.

Overall, I think that Thailand is an excellent tourist destination. Everything is extremely affordable and there is so much to do that almost anyone can find activities to enjoy. That said, unless I was going through a mid-life crisis and felt the need to do something crazy, I couldn’t imagine living there.