So I’ve just washed my own puke down a squat toilet using a plastic bucket, and now I’m sitting in a dank little hovel of a bar, somewhere in the back armpit of Bangkok, watching a large Thai man fuck a small Thai girl on a stage, and… they’re both up-side down.  What’s wrong with this picture, you ask?  Alaskans, that’s what.  Don’t you ever listen to ‘em.

I’d heard of the ping pong shows, of course, but didn’t really know what I was getting into as I slurped down my 4^th delicious bucket of Thai whiskey / coke / RedBull (aka- caffeinated amphetamines…).  I’d arrived in Bangkok earlier that evening, solo, and met up with a friend of a friend (I love you, Meredith!  Thanks SO MUCH for this one!), his buddies just in from Alaska, and their highly entertaining Nepalese bartender.  How, you wonder, did I find this Rick person at midnight, with no phone, somewhere in a large continent I’d never before visited?  Cause every single white person in SE Asia sits drinking buckets of death every single day in the exact same 5 block alley of Bangkok, aka the Koh San Road, that’s how.  Turns out Rick et al. were drinking in the street at the bar directly adjoining my hostel, haha.  So we ordered more buckets, acquired an 18-yr-old English chick and some other Americans, and somehow decided it would be an AWESOME idea to race tuk-tuks to the ping pong show in the Patpong Road.  Ah, ping-pong, the Olympic sport of champions!  Not so much, it turns out.

I had, of course, graciously declined their invitation to Asia’s version of the strip-club, but was forcibly coerced, totally against my will, into attending, because…  we needed an even number of people for the tuk-tuk race?  So off we went.  Now, I figured no self-respecting tuk-tuk driver would be caught dead racing their 3-wheeled motorized death-traps through the streets of a major metropolitan city, even if the stupid white foreigners were willing to make it worth their while, but oh, how wrong I was.  I think they were actually more excited than we were?  Whatever, race we did.  And I swear we were about to beat that fucker in front, if only he hadn’t cut us off, reeling on 2 wheels, at the very entrance to the Patpong Road.  Bastard. 

So now we’re at the ping-pong place, and they’re trying to get me to pay a like, $7 cover, which is total bullshit, cause like, I’m A GIRL.  Also I don’t even wanna be here!  About 4 minutes of bargaining later, I’ve got me and the English chick in for two bucks apiece, including a free drink ticket!  And we enter… I will not say that it was a cleanly establishment.  I will not say that I enjoyed the show.  I will say that that was the single strongest G&T I’ve ever imbibed (and for those who know me, y’all know dang well how I mix drinks…).  Hence the moment when, having hardly absorbed the fascinating cultural vista laid out before me on the stage, it hits me.  I gotta puke NOW.  So I stumble over to the “bathroom” and am only slightly shocked to discover the foulest squat toilet I’ve encountered either before or since (and for y’all who’re lucky enough not to’ve ever experienced this joy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet).  But, but, I REALLY have to puke!  I’ve since mastered the skill of doing my business in the squat toilet, and they’re actually just as comfy, if not more so, than the western version, but not when you need to, say, get your mouth near one.  Don’t even think about kneeling down, that’s for sure.  And watch that splash-back!  Somehow I accomplished this necessary maneuver, and then the actual gross part occurred to me: I’m at a ping pong show.  These poor girls have undoubtedly not been asked if, given their first desire, they’d choose to spend their short careers stripping naked and shooting strange objects out their woo-ha’s to earn money for their pimps while getting mauled by fat British men.  I can’t possibly top off their evening by making them clean up farang puke…  Can I?  So my option now is…  do it myself?  Oh god.  No, no, I can’t make them.  So eventually I overcome my natural inclination to flee, and get the deed done.  At least they had one a those nifty plastic buckets?

So that was fun.  I think I need another G&T.  Oh god, I really need another G&T, that woman on stage has just inserted a beer.  Into her…  woo-ha.  And sucked the beer up.  Oh Jesus, and now she’s removed the bottle and started walking around.  G&T acquired (for one whole dolla’!), I realize that she has now re-inserted that bottle and, regurgitated? that beer back where it came from.  Now I ask you, if you were watching this travesty of a vaudeville act, would you say a dang word when she offers that beer to the crowd?  Of course not, you’re normal, Thai woo-ha beer is NOT your beverage of choice!  No Sir!  You want a 3^rd G&T!  So I’ll riddle you this instead, who do we think accepted that bottle?  Alaskan Number 2, claro.  I’ve never seen a chick look that disgusted.  I mean, come on dude, you just grossed out a PING-PONG SHOW EMPLOYEE.  Did our dear friend Sara steal all self-respect from the Great White Northerners??

So I’d pretty much assumed we’d hit the low point by now.  Like, I’ve been to strip clubs before (do NOT go to The Men’s Club in Houston either, btw, they don’t even have a pole.  I love you, Berg!).  And no, I’m not always the quickest on the up-take:

I once watched my friend Josh get strip-searched to enter a bar in Jaco, Costa Rica, unable to figure out why they cared, as no other bar in the whole dang country could give a shit if you were passed out drunk in public at 14 yrs of age, only to discover AFTER we’d ordered our beers that: we were in a hooker bar.

Josh-boy:  “Really?  No.  No way”

Me: “No?  So why do we think you’re the only guy in the bar, except for one fat whitey over there?”

Josh-boy: “wull, maybe the chicks’re like, here to have fun??”

Aurora: “oh?  You think?  So why are Nina and I the only chicks with drinks?”

Josh-boy: “uhh…”

Sound of rapid scampering out the bar…

But really, woo-ha beer?  Surely that was the, uh, climax?  Indeed, not.  For her next party trick, our lovely entertainer inserted a string of razor blades into her multi-tasking orifice, then cut paper with them.  There were, of course, the titular (hahaha) ping pong balls, as well as various other objects and implements.  And then, when I thought I’d witnessed enough physical impossibilities for at least a couple o’ lifetimes: Enter the Thai Man.  Naked, of course, but making sure his umm, safety precautions were visible to all (apparently the Thai govt is very concerned with the health of its sex workers, yay, and supposedly all, uhh, employees are tested regularly and force-fed a daily dose of condoms).  Very visible.  So I’m nursing my 4^thG&T by now, mainly out of a desire to pass out, so as not to further scar my tender eyeballs, when Thai dude approaches Thai chick.  And starts fucking.  And it’s really, how shall we say, unenthusiastic?  Ho-hum?  They’re definitely, uhh, just going through the motions.  And then it gets weird (yes, I know, it got weird like, 4 paragraphs ago, but it really gets way more weird in a minute…).  I look up, and now she’s upside-down.  Like, no dismount or anything, she’s just flipped a hand-stand while still… attached. 

Also this dude is like, twice her size, which is making the geometry really like, awkward?  I’m certainly awkwarded out, that’s for sure.  English girl has died in corner some time ago, and Alaskans 1, 2, and 3 are now so befuddled they’ve stopped using their words and gone straight to good ole grunting and slobbering.  But this is the bit that gets me: so I’ve accidently paid $2 to attend a live sex-show, no biggie.  The vomit thing, kinda gross, but hey, everything can always get worse.  No, what really does me in was the bit where Thai dude also flips upside down.  No dismount.  I DEF need another G&T.