Yesterday, I saw my first Ladyboy. The experience was somewhat anticlimatic. When I announced my travel plans late last year, I would get various stock comments for each region or country. For Thailand, of course, warnings about encountering ladyboys abounded. For some strange reason, I didn't see any in Bangkok, but as I was returning from the Chiang Mai night market last night, I was besieged by a crew of Thais encouraging passers-by to check out Muay Thai boxing at a local stadium. Not surprisingly, most of them were scantily-clad Thai women, and as I walked by my eyes traveled over a slim female-looking torso in a dress and as I made it up to the eye, "she" spoke and made it abundantly clear that no, that was no lady, that was a ladyboy. I might've checked out the fights but I had already purchased a ticket for the next night at a different stadium.
I fell in love with Thailand when I visited Bangkok in late March. Great food, friendly folks, awesome hot weather. And I'd obviously heard quite a lot about the southern beaches and Chiang Mai in the north, so I decided to return after I visited Sydney in mid-May. I flew back to Bangkok on 13 May, spent a few days there recovering, as I flew from Sydney to Jakarta on 12 May, and from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok the next day. Originally I was going to fly directly to Chiang Mai on 14 May, but decided to bump that back a few days. BKK was nothing new-- I caught up on stupid Hollywood movies (Speed Racer-boring; and two others I'm too embarrassed to mention), bought more books I can't carry at Kinokuniya, and ate lots of delicious Thai food from street vendors. Then up to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is a small city in northern Thailand, much quieter and more provincial than BKK. It's nice here, there's lots of good food and a solid Ashtanga studio and cheap Thai massage every half-block, but the weather is fairly gray and cloudy and there's not much going on and I also can't wait to finally sample the beaches of Southern Thailand. I fly to Phuket tomorrow, to stay on a patch of beach that's supposed to be totally beautiful, complete with more Thai boxing and ladyboy cabarets and whatever else you need, all within two blocks of the beach and my hotel. I found out my hotel room will have a DVD player, so I loaded up at the Chiang Mai night market on bootleg DVDs -- including a few horror movies that I missed in the theaters, Diary of the Dead and Ruins; also the new Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) Iraq drama Stop-Loss; and a bunch of others. The standard price for a bootleg DVD here is 100 Baht, about 3 bucks. Cheap, to be sure, but expensive by Shanghainese and Vietnamese standards, where most movies cost about 1-2 bucks.
After 5 or so days in Phuket, I fly east to the island of Ko Samui, and then I'll take the ferry to Ko-Phangnan, the backpacker paradise of the southern Thai beaches. The island is known for its infamous full moon party-- which won't happen while I'm there-- and should have lots of yoga and hippie types. I'm also planning on spending some time in Ko Samui, which is one of the more touristy areas and probably less interesting. Then it's back to BKK for a couple of days to watch some more stupid Hollywood movies and load up on books again-- I've been reading voraciously-- before flying to Jakarta for the start of my Intrepid tour through Java and on to Bali. I'm meeting up with my friend Charlie for the tour and we plan to head to Lombok for a bit before he flies to Jordan.
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