Thursday, February 22, 2007
Super Pussy's
We're on our way back from the floating markets southwest of Bangkok. The markets were on a series of canals, where old women in straw hats come every morning to trade fruit on their boats. Unfortunatly, the affair has morphed into another exploitive tourist trap, complete with the dreaded mega coach buses. We had planned to take the public, air-conditioned bus for the 150 kilometers to town, getting up at 6:30am to get over to the bus station early. Mistake number one: asking the concierge where the bust station was. Her english not so good and was quickly ursurped by the cagier doorman standing over her shoulder who said he would get us a cab. Mistake number two: allowing the doorman to arrange a taxi for us. The cab driver whom he pointed out suggested that because the buses stopped so much, we'd be better off riding with him to town and back. After haggling for a price, we grudgingly agreed to give it a go. Mistake number three: having the cab driver as a tour guide. The cabbie dutifully drove us out of town, happily chatting the entire way. We didn't realize it at the time, but our cab driver in Italy was the same way right before charging us an obscene 40 euro for a 7 kilometer ride. Mistake number four: trusting the overly friendly cab driver. On the outskirts of town, our cabbie pulled into a parking lot where we were to hire a river boat to putt us around the market. Mistake number five: to allow said cabbie to choose the boat operator. Another session of haggling commenced, leavings us feeling really used and sour. Let's follow the trickle down effect of our tourist dollars: the doorman gets a kickback from the cab driver, the cab driver gets a kickback from the boat tour, the boat tour gets a kickback from the market vendors whom the boat driver decides to pause and let them tout their wares. Ultimately, we're doing all the kicking here. In addition, the little old ladies in the straw hats who established the market in the first place are now locked out of the equation, being pushed out by generic curio vendors whom we've seen a billion times before.
Speaking of kicking, last night I went to a Muy Thai kickboxing match. There too, it seemed to be an exploit the farang (foriegner) affair. There were, officially, tickets for Thai people and then the tickets for the other saps like me. Guess which one was five times more expensive than the other? Same seats, different prices. A friend from the dive boat accompanied me into the 3rd class seating area, which actually was a pretty good view of the action. The kickboxing wasn't really that interesting, what provided the most amusement was the chaotic gambling that went on in the stands. Thai men, all seemingly middle aged and partially toothed were acting like they were on the floor of the NYSE. Everything was a series of hand signs made with vigorous gesticulation to another similarly empassioned man the next section over. The betting was all done on verbal and visual agreement, nothing was written down and there was no sports betting on the premisis. Our presence there earned us a few projectiles and a tap on the shoulder telling us that we should move seats because it was a Thai betting area only. We stayed put.
The matches were between kids, essentially. The quality was also somewhat mediocre, with a only a few combatants matching the intensity of our friends in the third-class seats. There is a four piece band that accompanies every fight, playing a driving drum rhythym that quickens in pace for the later rounds. It didn't seem to matter what was happening in the center of the ring, the audience was content with waving bills and fingers at one another. Each match was five rounds and everyone acted completely disinterested until the fourth round, only then picking their guy and starting to cheer.
In a few fights, kickboxers would have this large, overbearing man in his corner, who would empithatically stomp over and through the use of two or three fingers, tell the fighter how much he had riding on him winning the match. This 'Don Keung' type of guy would then spiral back towards the audience and determinedly throw the same number of fingers to someone a few rows behind us. At the time, he seemed to act like he was very much in the know, but his guys kept losing. I guess the guilt trip didn't work very well.
We then picked up Peggy who was relaxing back at the hotel for a nightcap in the red light district. She mistakenly (or perhaps not so mistakenly) led us down the gay alleyway (another dead end) which was oblivious to my friend an I until we pivoted to retreat. At that point, I thought I could feel my butt cheeks getting warmer. The more mainstream alleyway was marked with a Super Pussy's neon sign. Every five paces, you would essentially be presented a menu of different vagina-based sex acts. Options like Pussy Slices Banana, Pussy Ping Pong, Pussy Magnetize, Pussy Use Chopstick and Pussy Fried Rice were some of my favorites. OK, I made that last one up, but really got a kick of asking the touts if it was available for order. Sadly, we declined all of the menu options and stuck with the sidewalk gawking.
posted by ncawthon at 7:17 PM
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