Drunk & Disorderly

My days are numbered, well in Thailand they are anyway as I scuttle off to the Phillipines as of Monday and I plan to spend 2 weeks there island jumping and taking in the sights. I have officially decided to swear off booze for this portion of the trip and hopefully avoid the lingering hangover effects and the late sleep-in's. I haven't updated in a fair while so I have plenty to talk about and was even organised/nerdish enough to knock together some notes so I could share with you folks. Now I must issue a strong Bushy warning that this update includes a number of bar-related stories and we may even encounter a ladyboy or two.

I did manage to get over to Cambodia but didn't spend as much time as I anticpated and took even less photo's so I'll have to show Cambodia some love on a future trip. The place was pretty crazy and was reminiscent of the wild-west with it's dusty roads, rickety wooden buildings and I even saw a tense stand-off (ok so it was between two dogs but it still counts). I'm sorry to say I didn't get to fire an AK47, throw a grenade or fire a rocket at a cow but I did hit someone in the mouth with a frisbee. The sheer number of touts and beggars was amazing with most of them being small children who fight for your attention and fight even harder between themselves once you fork over some money. A number of people from Thailand I had spoken to told me that they kissed the ground upon there return to Thailand and while my reaction wasn't that strong I was happy to be back. I will go back but the poverty and the crazy roads take some getting used to but the people were friendly and it was relatively cheap.

I caught a mini-bus back from the Cambodian border to Pattaya yesterday and am going to spend the next day or two here before heading to the airport on Monday morning. The bus ride got off to an amusing start, it picked me up from my hotel and then went about town picking up other travellers until we had packed it out with 9-10 people. The bus left at 6am so I had crashed out early the night before so I could wake up in time which I barely did. Another traveller decided to take a different approach and drunkenly staggered onto the bus from a bar where he had no doubt spent the entire night drinking. Captain drunkard obviously thought this was a cool idea but it ended predicatbly with him on all fours puking his guts up beside the road an hour into the trip, heh not so cool now are we spewboy!. An old man was seated next to me and spent the whole trip swearing under his breath to himself and I'd often lean close just to hear him mutter "fucking-fuckers, fuckfuckfuck, fucksicle" and I wasn't sure what he was upset about but the guy was a regular fuck-factory. The trip took a good few hours over some rough roads and my ass was killing me and after stopping at a petrol station and stretching our legs I had this horrible incident with another passenger.

Fellow Traveller: "Boy my ass is sore"

Darren: "Mine to, feels like I've been in jail!"

Fellow Traveller: "Jail?...whatever do you mean?"

Darren: "Errr...well...errr"

!@#$%^&

I mean what the hell could I say, if he didn't get the original joke then I very well couldn't explain it and say "you know sore ass like in jail where another inmate forcibly sodomises you against your will!". Speaking of jail I saw a big brawl the other night that ended in some drunken pom getting stabbed with a steak-knife so have fun in prison where your the steak buddy. When in Cambodia I was drinkin' with a crew of mixed nationalities with a couple of poms,scots and an irish fella comprising the group. Had a good time and they were a good laugh and could all drink me under the table but the Irish dude had a raging boner for Australian sport and woulkdn't shut up about it. We had just met at a bar and were sinkin' some beers when he said;

"Sorry to Interrupt Darren but wasn't Steve Waugh a great ambassdor for the game of Cricket?"

"He sure was buddy"

Not more then 15 minutes pass and he leans over and whispers;

"Darren, isn't Michael Clarke a fabulous young talent and a superb batter"

"He sure is"

This went on all fucking night with him giving props to player after bloody player until thankfully he said some words that cheered me up and then nearly made me weep.

"Darren, I think I'll stop rabbiting on about Cricket as I'm probably boring you....but isn't Australian Rugby a great game and isn't George Gregan an intelligent quick-witted captain"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Now that I'm back in Pattaya I'm once again exploring bars but being much more of a tightass as my budget is thinning. I've changed hotels at least 6 bloody times which 85% of the time is due to me forgetting that I'm supposed to tell them that I need more time and someone else books my room. One night was particularly memorable with a drunken buffoon hammering on my door at 2am convinced it was his room, then the fire alarm went off at 6am and at 8am I was told I had to check-out...FUN!. Speaking of thinning budgets I've still been kicking it with Kwan and I wanted to head over to the island of Ko (insert name here as I've had a mind blank) and she wanted to come along. So she smsed me and requested that I pay her barfine for 2 days so she can goto bed early then spend all day on the island, which I responded by saying that I couldn't afford to do this. This of course led to her labelling me as "Miserly" which is defined as;

adj : used of persons or behavior; characterized by or indicative of lack of generosity; "a mean person"; "he left a miserly tip"

The sms hysterics that followed has now led to Kwan going home for a week to cook god-knows-what for Chinese New Years so I guess all's well that barfines well (that sounded good in my head I swear)

Despite the strong anti-drug message that Se-Asia sends with it's death penalties and jails so bad that our's seem like daycare centres you still bump into retards dabbling in them. I was a pub the other night and I guy leaned over me and offered me a joint before whispering that he'd lost his bag of weed and could I keep my eyes out for it. Another traveller told me he took some Thai ecstacy and for the next four days had an erection everytime someone touched him...thanks for sharing bonerman. Clearly the anti-drug message isn't sinking in so I personally believe SE Asia should now concentrate on punishing bad fashion especially amongst toursists. It seems that tourists arrive in Asia and believe they can wear whatever they like as they don't know anybody and there fat beer gut protruding through that tight muscle shirt is acceptable. The Japanese are particularly funny with there tour groups all decked out in bright Hawaiin geer but the germans take the cake with fat dudes wearing bike shorts or tight small denim shorts (shudders). Japanese never seem to travel solo and are always part of a loud camera clicking tour group and they really dig the kick boxing and go go bars. I was in a go-go the other week (I was lost...honest) and a tour bus pulls up and the japanese streamed in, picked a girl each, grabbed them and all filtered back onto the bus with there harem. Not a beer was drunk, a cigarette smoked or an erection formed as the whole deal was done in minutes!

Having arrived back in Pattaya late yeste4rday afternoon I decided that I'd get some drinking done and hooked up with my mate Peter and hit some beer bars. At the first one I soundly whipped the girl at connect four 25 games to 6 and after about 12 straight losses she started pointing at her throat. I asked if she had a sore throat and she shook her head and we kept playing but after every game she'd clutch her throat and I'd just assume she was sick and kept playing. She finally won a game and the mamasam of the joint came up and demanded;

"Well are you going to buy her a drink or not!"

"Why didn't she ask...*recalls throat gestures*...Oh!...no sorry we gotta get going"

Take that!

The next bar we drank at was pretty quiet and I went through the same boring routine with the girl;

Where are you from, how old are you, how many times in Thailand but when I asked her age she said something that scared the shit out of me...

"17"

I checked her ID and sure enough she was 17 and so was every other girl in the bar, strange how the bars are allowed to let underage girls serve alcohol but I quickly left already hearing sirens in my head. Peter decided to head off with one of his regular girls so I caught a motorbike to Walking Street and started drinking at a bar I frequent occasionly. There was a bit of drama there after a tourist decided he'd stick his tounge in the mamasams ear and she punched him in the mouth which I found very funny but he didn't. When you drink in Thailand you get a small container called a bin where all the receipts for your drinks are put and when your ready to leave they calculate them all and you settle the amount. It has it's good and bad sides, the good is that you don't have to fork out money after every drink but the downside is that you forget how much your spending and often a receipt for a drink you never got finds it's way into your bin. Anyways I was sitting at the bar drinking and a guy next to me offers to buy me a drink which I happily accept and then notice that his bin is fucking packed full of receipts. I asked him what the hell he was doing and he said he'd been drinking since 2pm and shouting drinks alround and suepected his bin was already at around 4000 baht which is plain crazy. We chatted for much of the night and he bought all my drinks and I had to tell him to stop as ?I was absoultely hammered and offered various excuses for being a wimp and stumbled off. Now this is where things got a bit crazy as I was very drunk, running on 2 hours sleep and in a very odd mood so thought I'd walk along the beach to sober up. While heading to the beach I found a single black sandal on the road and picked it up and put it in my pocket. I then proceeded to approach all manner of people and would walk right up to them before suddenly stopping in front of them and whipping the sandal out of my pocket and demanded;

"I found this, does it belong to you?...I'm looking for it's rightful owner"

Most people would crack up laughing and just to be sure it wasn't there's I'd measure it against there feet and invite them to try it on. I'd tell the particularly hot one's that it was like Cinderellas glass slipper and one girl decided to tag along and help explain to people in Thai what my mission was. One toursit got all freaked out though and ran away so I chased him for a bit waving the sandal and shouting "it needs a homeeeeee". Not long after I came upon a ladyboy who refused to try on the sandal because;

"That's a man's shoe"

"heh aren't you a man?"

He got a bit upset about this and muttered plenty of things in thai which I'm sure weren't very nice so I decided to leave "it" alone and walked off. I'd walked a couple of metres when I felt my pocket and realised my precious sandal was no longer there, I spun around and saw it lying in the middle of the footpath where I'd spoken to the ladyboy. The ladyboy had wandered slightly away but had now turned around and spotted the sandal and we both looked from the sandal to one another. At the very same time we both ran for the sandal and being a rogue I hit sprint and got to the sandal first but as I picked it up the ladyboy arrived on the scene and grabbed the other half. We wrestled with the sandal for a good 30 seconds before my mighty biceps won over and I ripped it from the ladydudes grasp and ran. The ladyboy gave chase and was shockingly fast for a guy in high heels and we were both laughing but I wasn't parting with my sandal and escaped.

I fucking swear that is true and here is a picture of said sandal (taken in the toilets of a Maccas store, where I bumped into an Indian dude who wanted to talk about Adam Gilcrist rather than my Sandal..fucking cricket again!)