good bye snow...

one night in bangkok...

Hi again!

I still have a bunch of reporting to do on various trips that I have gone on in the last few months... however, there is a story that I want to document before it flies out of my head.

Last weekend a bunch of my friends from work decided to go to this bar district called RCA. This is a trendy area in downtown Bangkok that is lined with about 5 or 6 clubs to go out dancing.

Anyway, I had arranged for a bunch of us to meet up outside one of the clubs. Once I got there I tried to get inside, only to discover that I had forgotten my id. Oooops. But I figured, this is Bangkok, I'll throw the bouncer a couple hundred baht and he will let me in, right? WRONG. No dice. They were not budging. I even had my thai speaking friends talk to the bouncers and nope... no luck.

So we walked down the road to the next bar to try out luck and again, no one was letting me in. So I figure my new night will consist of me getting back in a cab, driving 45 minutes home - grabbing my id and driving 45 minutes back to the club, then dancing for about 45 seconds and then going home again.

Then my friend Bua shouted, "Hey - there's another white girl, wait here!" and she took off. She returned about 5 minutes later with a photocopied passport of Kristen Brandstatter from Austria and told me to use that to get into the club.

At first I was a wee bit nervous, because I've seen Bridget Jones, I know what happens in Thai prisons, and I didn't want to be accused of fraud. However, my friends assured me that it would be fine. So I handed the guy my "ID" and he looked at it really hard, and then let me in.

So then we wandered around the monsterously crowded bar. Ok - the bar was packed with people, but the congestion of the room was heightened by the wacky way that Thai clubs are layed out. They don't really have a dance floor. They have a floor that has all these little coffee tables spread out everywhere... not just bar tables around the perimeter... but ALL OVER. It's quite illogical... but who am I to judge?

Anyway, we found a coffee table to dance around and had a good time dancing for a while. The music was a mix of American pop music, thai rock and thai hip hop. Then at midnight it was Jeff's birthday. I looked over at this group of Thai girls and saw that they had 3 birthday cake candles that they lit, and then had their friend blow out... I thought it was a brilliant idea. So I swiped them off the table, and lit them for Jeff. Then he turned to me and said, "I think I'm gonna cry. I can't believe you brought candles with you! And you've been carrying them around all night!"

I replied, "Yeah! I'm awesome!"

Then around 1 o clock, I went to go outside to get some fresh air, just to discover that the doors were being baricaded by police. "Ahhh, they are on to me and my fake ID!" Just kidding. But seriously there were like 50 officers and then a camera crew and they wouldn't let anyone leave or tell anyone what was going on. So we were just trapped. So I stood in the hallway waiting to be let out and I look over at this Farang guy who was holding up, literally holding, a Thai girl who had passed out in his arms. The guy screamed, "Get a chair." I looked around me... there was barely a floor to stand on... let alone a chair. So I pushed a bunch of drinks off a table and moved the table up against the wall, and we propped her up on that... but she still wasn't responsive. It took both of us to hold her up. The he asked me what the number for 911 was... I had no idea. I later found out it is 191, just FYI if you come to Bangkok.

So I checked this girls pulse... thankfully she had one... I really wasn't in the mood to do CPR in the middle of a Thai club that's being busted up by cops. Then I tapped her face, and tried talking to her. She confusedly responded that she was ok, she just couldn't breath. But, we still weren't allowed out. So I talked her through some breathing excercises, and she said she was ok... and the guy said he was ok... so I left to find my friends. At this point they had turned the lights on and shut off the music.

Eventually, Bua got a call from her brother that there was a door at the back of the club that people could leave from. So we all paraded down to the door and walked right out. At least most of us did. There were still 3 guys that were unaccounted for. We called one of them, and they were trying to get out at another door... but at this door they were making people do urine tests before they were allowed to leave. Crazy!

Then finally one of our friends who had to do the pee tests found us, and said he lost the other two guys... these two guys are really independent and are infamous for taking off without warning, so we figured everything was fine.

We were wrong! I found out on Monday that one of our friends had a false positive pee test, and the police thought that he was on drugs, so they hauled him off to a thai prison! He had to spend several hours in a cell with a bunch of coked out Thai guys. They wouldn't let him call anyone, or call the embassy or anything! After a few hours they let him take another pee test, which came back clear, so they let him go. It was horrible.

Anyway, luckily he lived to tell the tale.

This concludes my rendition of - one night in bangkok!

posted by Crystal @ 10:06 PM