Sukhumvit

Had a bad day yesterday - must of eaten something bad, but Dave from yesterday got me some medicine which perked me up (he is Scottish by the way, I remembered to ask) and we hit the road (and the skytrain) in the mid evening. Got off at Nana Station (skytrain), it was like there was some tarts convention going on nearby. We followed the general stream of people out of the station, if there was any doubt just go the same way the fat bald guys and the tarts. Sukhumvit is like a wierd street, lots of stalls selling souveniers and stuff, a lot of tourist kitsch but some interesting things too. If I'd been alone I might have spent all evening just looking, tho some of the sellers are a bit pushy.

Anyway we got to where the girls were going, which was Soi 4 ("Soi" means sidestreet) a short-ish walk from the station,and it was literally heaving with bodys. I mean, meat market, - bars, those street food stands, souvenier sellers, bars and of course girls everwhere. And the Great White Male in huge numbers, coem to hunt their prey - or as Dave put it, "shoot fish in a barell". We walked about a bit, past the entrance to this Nana Plaza place, it was smaller than I thought but looks like it goes in a long way with "gogo bars" on 3 or 4 levels. Lots of neon and terrible disco music. We didn't find anywhere we'd find comfortable to sit and grab something to drink to get our bearings, there was a hotel opposite but it was just as seedy as everything else. So we ended up going back to the main Sukumvit street, and found a Starbuck. OK I don't like going to places like that normally, it makes a mockery of going abroad, but it was the only place not heaving with girls and sex tourists.

Upstairs you can sit and watch the street, at least the part of it directly in front the starbucks, and that's a sight enough. Seems not only is the Nana Plaza place, but also prostitutes lining the street too, among the stalls and tuktuks. Just soo crazy. And here too you see guys of all ages, I mean all ages, going with the girls. Dave was pretty amazed at this too, I can tell you.

Anyway by now I had a headache, probably from earlier on, so we went back to the relative sanity of Khao San, I suggested we could come again and see if we could get into a "gogo bar" to see what goes on, but Dave is reluctant ("not the place I'd want to go for a first date" he said, not sure through my headache if there was a deeper meaning to that).