Pattaya Parties

Last night was going to be a pretty quiet night.

Or that was the plan, however, as everybody who visits Pattaya knows ...... you can never make plans in Pattaya! Something or somebody will always create a detour from the original path.

In this case I believe the blame lies with Talen (Tim) a great American friend who I met during the first week of my arrival in Fun Town.

Anyway, Nuts (Brian) and I, had arranged to meet up in Lennies Bar at the Jomtien Road end of Soi Diamond. Lennies Bar is currently offering 'Free Draught Tiger Beer' on a Wednesday between the hours of 7:00pm and 9:00pm.

Not really being a Beer drinker the Free Beer isn't really a great incentive for me, but it's a good place with a decent manager (Sunny Valentine) and friendly girls. We got there just after 8:00pm.

It turns out though that Nuts had company with him. A girl from a restaurant where he'd been eating had caught his eye, and he'd asked her out the previous night. A couple of drinks, some food and visit to the pictures ensued and the night ended with him escorting her to her room, some mild kissing and him departing alone without even entering. What a nice guy!

Now though, he had hoped to spend tonight in the company of friends for a stroll of Walking Street, but this girl had decided he was a 'good catch' and had 'locked on' pretty tight!

She seemed a nice girl though and spoke perfect English.

After a few drinks at Lennies, and me buying a couple of Lady Drinks for one of the Hostesses, we departed and headed off to the FLB on Walking Street.

One of the girls there had only returned today after spending one week at the equivelent of a Convent (strange I know!), she's a really nice girl, too quiet really so she tends to fall into the background with all the goings on in the FLB. Anyway, I wanted to catch up with her.

We get there and meet up with Talen. Talen is still in the company of the lady he had barfined from the very first bar of the Covent Garden Bar Crawl the other day. Looks like he's going for a record!

So much for the single guys night out!

We arrive at the FLB and pull a few tables together and order a round of drinks. Ricky the manager is present and comes over to say his hello's and catch up with whats been going on. He's a good guy.

My FLB friend, Sri joins me and immediately ties a white cotton cord around my right wrist, from Buddha, she says.

We all drink and talk, then do a little more drinking and talking. Eventually the usual 'shot' rounds begin (why do we do this to ourselves?!) and after a couple of Sambuca's, one or two Jiegermeister's and something 'green', Talen spots the 'Monkey Brains'. Having experienced this 'drink' before I knew things were about to go downhill pretty quickly from here.

Monkey Brains is possibly the worst thing I have ever tasted, something that we all agreed on ....... however it didn't stop us from from drinking a further 10 each in pretty quick succession! All that is, except for Nuts, he managed only 4 before he had to make a hurried visit to the bathroom. To his credit though, he did allow us to 'push' a further 3 on him before he finally called it a day.

What is the best food to go with monkey brains? I thought fried Scorpions sounded like it may work, so called over one of the FLB 'service girls' and asked her to make a quick visit to the mobile food cart on Walking Street. She returned shortly with two large bags of Scorpions and various other 'bugs'. I will admit now that I had absolutely no intentions of eating any of this, no way, no how!

Talen had already confessed to being a bit of 'bug eater' but when he saw the size of the Scorpions, he did flinch a little, nevertheless he was the first to 'treat himself' to the delights of this particular Thai delicacy. He reckoned that whilst it would never make his number one food choice, it wasn't half bad. Weird guy!

Now he had tried it, and his attempts to convince me to try had failed miserably, he turned his attention to Nuts. After only a few seconds, Nuts was being tempted. Maybe it was the fact he didn't do so well in the Monkey Brain stakes that he was so keen to redeem himself in the 'fried food' arena.

He bit down on a 4 inch long Scorpion, I was close enough so that I could hear the exoskeleton break under his bite ......... I wanted to vomit ........... yes I have a weak stomache when it comes to things like this!

He chewed on and proclaimed it didn't taste half bad. Another weird guy!

I felt suddenly 'out of place' and it appeared that my idea for buying the 'bugs' had backfired on me. I was now an outcast as these two 'enjoyed' the meal with all of the girls present .... and there was about 6 of them by now. All turning to me with handfulls of 'wriggly things' and offering them as food. I was the 'butt' of everyones jokes, though whilst my ego was taking a pounding, there was no way my delicate taste buds and weak stomache would allow me to try the smallest morsal of the meal.

I thought of returning to the Monkey Brains again in an effort to pull back some 'points', but decided I couldn't manage that either so 'limped' back to my usual drink of Gin & Tonic. This was not a good night for food or drink in Pattaya.

The company however, was excellent as always!