Ping Pong

I finally got up the courage to go and see it for myself. I had spent days hearing about it and had countless offers as I walked along Patpong and so one day in Bangkok, I decided that “today is the day”. It was time for me to step out of my conservative shell and live on the wild side. I was up for some ping pong.

However, I had a strong feeling that one should not ping pong alone, one should have company. I decided to go out for a drink and see if I could meet any other tourists who might be up for a visual extravaganza. As happens in touristy places, it is quite easy to meet people and soon I had temporarily befriended a flight attendant from the airline Pam Ann refers to as British fuckin’ Airways and another completely forgettable guy who I have forgotten everything about except that he had brown hair.

The three of us decided we were up for some ping pong, which was just two streets over from there we were and off we went. We were so naïve. Ping pong is not the only thing on the menu. There are a number of shows. The chopstick show. The lipstick show. The bottle show. And the list goes on and on. We confirmed there was no cover and a decent price for drinks. Those places have a reputation for luring people in and then slamming them with outrageous drink prices, sometimes more than ten times the normal price. We were assured everything was on the up and up and in we went.

Although there were no other people in the bar, the show was in full swing and at that moment featured a nude woman “clutching” a straw through which, using the simple power of suction, she picked up small rings off the floor and place them over the neck of a bottle. Our three mouths fell open at pretty much the same moment and we sat back on the bench to see some more. That was when the other 20 or so girls who were not performing came over to talk, try and get drinks from us and feel us all up. Suddenly we were being groped and rubbed and brushed. There were breasts in our faces, legs over our laps and firm hands squeezing our dangly bits.

That was enough for us. We put down our beers and made a beeline for the door. Of course, we were pulled back by the girls, stopped by the doorman and confronted by the manager all trying to get us to stay. We finally got outside, checked our pockets for wallets, phones, and anything else we had on us and made a mad dash back to the first bar we were at to put the whole episode behind us.