4th February - Patong Beach- Tiger Bar - Pete and the ladyboys

Tuesday 4^th February

Pete zipping away from the dinghy dock - back to the sfae haven of 2XS

Snapshot:  I am sitting in a small café in a Patong Beach side street.  Totally HOT and exhausted… Pete is on 2XS – I do hope he is snoozing gently in a shady breezy spot.  My mission has been:

To buy postcards (tick)

To find a post office (tick)

To buy a modem and get it working (tickety TICK, thanks to the nice young chap in the mask)

To buy a Thai SIMcard – no tick yet…This is proving to be impossibly difficult.  My masked friend told me to go to any Seven Eleven shop – easy peasy, cheap and speedy.  Not so.  There are quite a few of these little shops up and down the beach.  But…they have all run out of SIM cards.

   

So I kept trudging the hot streets… I have a very bad habit, when left to my own devices in a strange place, to keep on moving.  I go into a fugue state and forget to eat or drink.  Not so bad in a cold climate, but here where it is so hot it is very stupid.  I finally forced myself to STOP and am now sipping watermelon juice, using the free WiFi, and planning my campaign to track down a tricky SIMcard…

Yesterday we drove our nice blue car to Tesco, up and over the steep hills away from Patong Beach.  We managed to buy essentials: toilet paper, cheese, coffee but it all took and astonishingly long time to find things.  There were many aisles full of sweet snack food, sweetened condensed milk variations, biscuits, chips etc but it was almost impossible to find anything we actually wanted.  So – no Ribena on 2XS until our next foraging expedition – our crew will have to stave off scurvy in other ways!

Sunset from the dinghy jetty

The 2XS crew is now reduced back to basics – only Captain Pete, and me.  Jabba is flying off this morning at 11.00.  

Jabba's last moments of 2XS Couch Time

We spent our last evening with him doing a very predictable Patong Beach thing: The Tiger Bar!   (There are actually many Tiger Bars in this area, all copies of the original.  Noisy, crowded, gleaming, with tigers lining the walls and girls dancing on bartops.)  So sad that James and Bron missed this experience – we only saw a sadly depleted Walking Street and dark empty cavernous bar spaces on our ill-chosen election day visit.

We had an early (8pm) drink on the streetfront and then had dinner at a big Chinese restaurant where the staff nearly outnumbered the patrons.  

Just a few of the cooks

All very delicious but…time to return to the Tiger Bar where the crowds had gathered and the dancers had started bumping and grinding.

The girls, of course, were delightful.  It is, as the receptionist at Rebak resort would have said, their job to be delightful.  

One of them challenged us all to a game of Connect Four and beat each one of us in turn.  

Pete and Jabba were very happy in their company but Pete, in particular was bewildered.  I don’t get it!  SURELY they can’t all be ladyboys??  That one over there, she MUST be a girl!  

I would just laugh and say, Does it really matter? 

We said goodbye to Jabba on the beachfront around midnight – he was staying on what he sadly described as cheap and nasty accommodation, not his luxury cabin on 2XS*, so he could get to the airport easily this morning.

We were very taken with the sun-smart ladies fishing on the rocks near the dinghy jetty.  They cover up completely and can stay in the sun for many hours, fishing for tiny fish.  They must be very hot but no chance of sunburn or skin cancer!

* Jabba’s cabin on 2XS does have a double bunk but that is as far as the luxury goes… There is one small window; the cupboard is full of the sewing machine, printer, first aid kit so he had to sleep with his belongings alongside.  But…Jabba loves 2XS.