Where the white boys dance

After the hilarity of my last night out with James of course I was up for some more drinking with Dyer. I’d not been out drinking for ages (thanks to the weird irregular hours we’d been working) at this point so I was chomping on the bit.

So I go out, get completely lost when the taxi driver drops me off miles away from where James is and points in a vague direction. I of course go down completely the wrong road and have to ask a Thai-Norwegian couple (she Thai, he Norwegian) where I am. Going in the opposite direction, it seems. The Thai woman thinks this is hilarious.

On my way back down the road I see a man riding an elephant, tuk-tuks swerving out of its way just in time. I wonder if there’s a business in selling tail-lights for elephants. It’s sights like this that bring me back to reality, that remind me I’m the other side of the world from home. But in a totally good way, a ‘yay I’m on a big adventure’ way.

I eventually find the pub – a Western style bar with a car hanging down from the ceiling. Yes, a real, full-size Cadillac type thing. (I have no idea what make it is really, I made the Cadillac bit up.) I meet James’s Thai girlfriend Jeab for the first time. She’s absolutely stunning, looks a bit like Nicole Scherzinger from Pussycat Dolls. Yep, that good-looking. She’s a bit hyper and chatty, which I like, and James later tells me they’ve been drinking whisky and Red Bulls before they left.

There’s two other guys there – Dan, a mate of James’s from college who’s having a long holiday before he joins the army, and his mate Sam, who James has just met as well. Sam is tall and handsome but a bit dull. I have more fun with Dan and James and the innocuous conversations and endless jibes that straight boys are so good at. We talk beer goggles (Dan had them the night before apparently), football stickers (I admit defeat on this one and James is suitably embarrassed), and 80s cartoons, where I really show my age in front of these early 20-somethings.

Later I have a conversation with Jeab about her and James. She tells me about their relationship and how they met on Khao San back in September. He went away for a bit and came back and they picked up where they left off. She says she really likes him - “He good man and very handsome.” – and is happy for it to continue until James goes back to England for the summer. She says she’s cool with it if James meets a girl “for a different future”, but if he wants to come back and start again then that’s cool as well.

I like her, she reminds me a little of my sister, and more than a little of my ex’s sister, in that she has a relaxed attitude to life but is fiery at the same time. The first time I see her temper is when we’re in a club called Spicy later (no idea where it is, you get in a cab and any cab driver in the city will know where to take you). We’re trying to buy some fags and at first the barman says 100 baht, but then he comes back and says 200 baht. Jeab kicks off, giving him shit for trying to rip us off. Brilliant. But not so brilliant when she turns it on you, I imagine.

And then later on this creepy-looking guy comes into the club and stalks (there’s no other word for it) past us. Imagine a Thai Catweazle if you will and you’d not be far off – unkempt hair, bony body. He’d never get into any Western club, that’s for sure. Anyway, later on he’s staring at her friend, quite obtrusively, and brushes past her at one point. At this, Jeab kicks off and has a go at him. It takes a young Thai lad, seemingly a companion of Catweazle, to calm the situation, which he does by bravely standing between them.

On the other hand Jeab’s amazingly friendly as well. By the time we’re in Spicy we’re with an attractive-looking Indonesian woman as well, that Jeab started speaking to in the pub, name of Natalia. James tells me Jeab’s got a bit of a bi thing going on - which he doesn’t mind, of course – and that this girl had been staring at Jeab for ages in the pub. I tell him he’s on the sofa tonight then. He tells me there’s no chance of that.

Spicy is a bit like a working men’s club, just with higher ceilings and large podiums and louder music. It seems to be strictly white boys, Thai girls and the odd gay guy here for the music. James assures me it’s good when it gets going.

We buy a bottle of whisky to share (standard way of drinking here in Thailand) and get drunk to the endless R&B and hip hop (standard soundtrack here in Thailand). Signs by Snoop Dogg and Justin Timberlake comes on and I get up and dance with Jeab and her mate. I then sit down and get more drunk. I chat to Natalia a bit. She says she’s on holiday and her mate went home early. It’s all very vague, and not cos she can’t speak English well – she can. I wonder what her real story is.

Madge’s Hung Up comes on and I’m drunk enough now to get up on a podium and dance. James, drunker than me, jumps straight up behind me and we do lairy jumping up and down dancing. A bunch of Thai girls sat by the podium take an interest and before long both James and I are having 10 baht coins shoved down our trousers. God knows where they end up.

The night carries on much like this until James peaks and bales with Jeab. I’m left with handsome but dull Sam who has been moaning that he doesn’t fancy Thai girls all evening (so in the wrong club) and proclaims he’s off to find a white girl. With that I’m left with another of Jeab’s mates, who I forget the name of. She points out all the random gay Thai boys in here and drags me around a bit trying to get me to pull one of them. I can barely think straight let alone talk to anyone so eventually I bail on her and head home.

I have so much whisky inside me that I sleep through most of the next day, only getting up at one o’clock or so to eat, drink water and use the toilet. A Thai whisky hangover is a killer.