Welcome to Bangok...Take Two

WARNING: This post is for mature audiences - reader discretion advised.

My first visit to Bangkok turned me off of the place - all the party boys and unkempt expats strutting around with their "little Thai girls" in tow - bought and paid for. With some of Asia's cheapest flights, however, it seemed to be the best option to launch the next portion of my trip. I booked a flight from BKK to Singapore for the 24th of November and arrived back in Bangkok a day early with a strategy that I hoped would improve my experience the second time around: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I would go to an infamous Bangkok ping pong show.

Wanting to somewhat balance the evening (and add a little irony to whole night's program), I started at Cabbages & Condoms, a swanky Thai restaurant that runs AIDS education programs with its profits. The atmosphere was top. The food was good. And most importantly, the ping pong show was only a tuk tuk ride away.

Not being much of a sex show aficionado myself...or even knowing any, I put my fate in the hands of the driver. His local knowledge would surely lead my friends and I somewhere that would provide an authentic sex tourist experience (without going over too many lines...this was to be a purely anthropological mission after all.)

We pulled up to a storefront that was tucked among a row of seemingly legitimate businesses. The ground floor was filled with cafeteria-style tables and Thai men looking bored and watching some stale video they must have seen a million times. My assumption was that this charade was merely a decoy for the authorities. Passing officials might write this establishment off as a tame bar worthy of little or no investigation - a thinly veiled cover for the otherwise shady operation we witnessed when shepherded upstairs by a large Indian man. We were charged 600 Baht each and shown inside to black vinyl seats encircling the similarly black stage.

The lights were low. A single girl stood on the stage swaying back and forth to soft rock with romantic lyrics - the kind that make the soundtracks of movies staring Kevin Costner. She was slowly and unenthusiastically pulling a florescent ribbon out of her lady bits. She looked bored. Everyone else looked bored too. I wondered when the ping pong balls would come and how far they would fly.

After the few yards the ribbon came to its end the music switched to an uptempo number more fitting for a strip show. A girl came out in tall shoes holding two coke bottles - one empty, one full. Long story short, she emptied one into the other without pouring it directly. Strange. Happy Birthday started playing as she picked up the bottles and walked off the stage. No one was celebrating a birthday, but a Japanese businessman with wallet open was selected. He was summonsed up to the stage as a girl walked out with a fake cake covered in over sized candles. He held the cake as she used a pipe and her lady muscles to blow them out one by one. He was amused. I was still waiting to be impressed - where were the ping pong balls?

A series of girls came out, all lackluster and looking mechanical in their movements. This seemed like a crap job (not that that hadn't been my assumption). One girl pulled a chain of covered razors out of her and cut a piece of paper into a hat for another Japanese businessman (the first part with her you know what and the second with her hands). Another girl came out with a large blue marker and a piece of white paper. She inserted the pen, crouched down like a crab and proceeded to write "Welcome to Bangkok." Finally a girl came out holding ping pong balls in hand - this was it, this was the true Bangkok experience I had been waiting for hoping it would redeem this otherwise seedy and sad city for me. Surprise...it didn't.

The girl inserted the ping pong balls. I prepared to block any oncoming balls from hitting me. Ping, ping, pong, pong, pong. Three balls dropped out, the first two landing in the glass placed between her legs and the third missing the target. This was the lamest ping pong show I had ever imagined. Where was the danger? Where were the ball flying en mass bouncing off of walls and creating an atmosphere of awe and chaos?

I looked around. No one seemed very impressed accept for the Japanese business men who periodically opened their wallets to keep a bevy of girls draped around their shoulders. There were other curious tourist just like me who ranged from bored to repulsed. We stayed through the rotation and left when the ribbon girl reappeared. Once was enough. I think I've seen Bangkok...don't need to go back.