Elephants, Ladyboys and Working Girls in Phuket

So Tara and I check into our hotel and the pool and everything looks quite inviting at night.

The next morning, you know it’s gonna be an interesting day, when you finish swimming on the beach by your hotel and there is a baby elephant walking about his own business in your hotel.

After swimming and everything, Tara and I decided to go grab some lunch and for the most part walking along the street, it was fairly quiet and mundane, aside from the old European men walking around with their thai “girlfriends” (of course, everyone of them were younger than 18 or looked younger than 18 – you tell me if they were!) but we a bit hungry and decided to go for some lunch. It was again pretty standard fare except for the garlic prawns which cost about 5$ and looked like this

If were ordering these in Toronto, the price of the dish would have been somewhere in the 30-35$ range easily just for this one Garlic Prawn entree. Ah you have to love eating in Thailand for sure. The rest of the action started later on when we decided to go see a Ladyboy show.

Now don’t ask why we would do this, especially when I live at Church and Wellesley and I see enough of this sort of action for FREE, every weekend, but it’s something to do.

From the pictures, you can tell that was a different type of show, but it was entertaining and well worth the money, if you have never seen a ladyboy show. The one question, I always tried to figure out was, “Where did they hide their packages?”. Well we got the answer after the show. They use tape and tuck them back… and of course, they are Asian after all 🙂 Nuff said!!!

Next, it was on to grab some drinks on the strip, so we grabbed a Tuk-Tuk and we were off!

Once we had taken off about 3 years of our lives in that Tuk-Tuk ride, we hit the strip with me in my Aussie rugby shirt! That shirt always gets attention, no matter what!!

Now the bar were just filled of tons of young girls looking for drinks, work and who knows what else. It was about 11pm and the place was just getting started. So of course, I’m trying not to make too much eye contact with the majority of girls, since I know they are working, but of course having Tara next to me was also a good Thai hooker/bar girl detterent!!

Now beer bars in Phuket are small open air bars with up to 8 girls working and they will do everything they can to lure customers to their bar. Trying to walk past a bar without your girlfriend or Tara, it isn’t uncommong to see a couple girls surrounding you to drag you into their bar and also grabbing your arm for something more private. It could be a lot of fun for any single guy but if you don’t want to drink at that bar you will have to fight your way out. 

After ordering a drink one of the girls will try to start a conversation. They usually begin with asking: What is your name? Where do you come from? Do you like Thailand? How long will you stay? Have you Thai girlfriend? If you answered no on the last question expect to get lot of attention, you will not be bored. And later she will be more than happy to accompany you to a disco and show you around in Phuket for so long you want. If you decide to take her with you, a bar fine has to be paid. The bar fine etiquette is far to detailed to go into here…..google is your friend here!

But somehow or the other while we were looking around for a drink, Tara and I ended up playing some drinking gambling games with some thai girls looking for a date.  The name of the game I was playing was called “Hit nail with Hammer” – get it! Quite subtle I tell you!!

The purpose of the game “hit nail with a hammer” is using the sharp end of the hammer to drive the nail deep into a wood block with the fewest tries.
Simple enough and of course on my first hit, I rammed the nail into the wood! Score 1 for me!

Now from the look of concentration on my face, you could tell I was not going to let any Thai hooker beat me in a game of “Hit the Nail”, but what one did not consider was that these girls have considerable practice in this game, since this is how they hustle “farang” out of their money for drinks. Thankfully, I wagered buying a round of drinks for the one girl who beat me.

In the end, all ended well and we made new little friends

Of course, you couldn’t help noticing the strange sights while walking around downtown Phuket; like the Thai dominatrix beating some hapless wanker… I couldn’t help but watch and laugh at the poor sod!

A good link to check out more on the bars would be http://phuket.baronbonk.com/tiger_plaza_bangla_road_patong_phuket.shtml