Big Bird in Asia - Part 1 - Pattaya, Thailand

When my good friend from Dublin David Byrne (more affectionately known as Big Bird) came to the Far East last summer, we found ourselves embarking on a really enjoyable 3-week journey across 4 Asian countries, with some great memories captured along the way on his camera.

We met up on connecting flights at Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates where the air traffic control tower in the middle of the desert was clearly designed to adhere to local architectural sensitivities. 

Shortly after take-off The Palm Jumeirah of Dubai was clearly visible from the air. 

After arriving in the Philippines, we briefly headed 2 hours north to the city of Angeles, where David was able to get his first sighting of a Filipino beauty. 

From the once bustling airport at Clark, now almost deserted after the departure of the American military in the 1990's, we boarded our short flight to Thailand.

Given that the flight was at a low altitude, the view of the rice paddies over Vietnam was awesome.

After our arrival in Pattaya, just a 2 hour drive from Bangkok, we quickly found ourselves in the middle of what sometimes felt like the biggest freak show on earth. David quickly made the acquaintance of Robo Cop.

I was more interested in getting to know the two Asian beauties by the Terminator's side. Unfortunately the evidence would suggest that my own ineffectual brand of English charm went down like a fart in a spacesuit as Billy Connelly once said. 

Whole swathes of the place were populated by ladyboys on the prowl offering their bodies in return for a decent night's income. What was most bizarre was the fact that they were being openly pursued and solicited by packs of Indian guys making a serious effort to barter for a communal evening's entertainment. The mind boggles.

Given the need to keep your wedding tackle in order, there are signs up everywhere to remind you of the importance of being ready to take advantage of a quickly-struck bargain.

Cross-dressing and transsexuality were in evidence everywhere we went. During our day trip to the nearby island of Koh Larn, David ended up sitting behind a guy/woman who looked like Bernard Bresslaw in drag in the film Carry on Doctor. 

The long black body hairs he was openly displaying all over his legs were evidently attractive to his partner, who himself was a young man with breasts dressed in a skirt.

The beach at Koh Larn is regarded by some as a public catwalk, no more so than for two gay guys who  sunbathed on their feet for an entire hour. To catch as many rays as possible, the one on the left did his utmost to expose his entire buttocks to all and sundry. It was not a pretty sight to say the least.

To get as much attention as possible, his partner on the right shoved what looked like a toilet roll holder down the front of his trunks (thankfully not visible here). His ploy presumably failed because in Koh Larn, such sights are not out of the ordinary, and the only people who appeared to notice them were us.

Obese Western men are ever present, invariably with slim petite Thai women in close proximity attending to their every need.

Aesthetics play no role in the sexual stakes here. It's purely the size of your wallet that counts and the long-term security which that entails. As our Thai receptionist told us quite openly, "it doesn't matter how old, how fat, how ugly he is. If he has money, and takes care of her and her family, 

she will love him."

The pubs in Pattaya offered extra services that you could barely conceive of, available then and there in the bar. Lolita's, which portrayed itself as a respectable "Gentlemen's Lounge", even sold gift vouchers over the counter, so that if you had enjoyed the pleasure of your mouthwatering experience, your friend could also come too next time. 

Rather strangely, Thai food can be fairly hard to come by in Pattaya, as almost all of the restaurants cater purely for foreign tastes. Consequently, we ended up trying a local delicacy at a street cafe one night. However, the spices in the food almost blew my head off and it wasn't long before they transformed my entire face into a reincarnation of Alexander Dubcek.

It was invariably mid-morning by the time we got to bed each night, as the early hours always gave us a good chance to chat to the hotel staff, naturally complete with a resident ladyboy.

David positively towered over the locals who must have thought he was from another solar system. 

In addition, it's not unheard of in Pattaya for guys to take anything up to 5 girls back to their room on a nightly basis, so the women behind the bar were likewise extremely wary as to what kind of alien perverts we were that we chose not to take any and always slept alone.

One of our fellow hotel guests was Helmut, a guy who helped make our stay incredibly enlightening. His lifestyle was mostly definitely not for us, but he nevertheless gave us an amazing insider's view as to what goes on in Pattaya. It's not a place either of us will ever go back to, but it's certainly somewhere that makes you reflect on life and what it's all about. As David said, when he's back in Dublin, whether it's New Year's Eve, Christmas Day or Easter, thousands of people will still be plying their trade on the streets and in the clubs and bars of Pattaya as they do on every other day of the year. 

It's a bizarre feeling as you watch the locals hustle to survive in the only way they know how. For some this constitutes a mere business transaction, for others it's a thoroughly degrading spectacle unjustifiable on any level. Whatever your conscience tells you, Pattaya clearly has no difficulty attracting visitors, and not only from Western men. There were groups of Western women as well as individual Asian couples frequenting the clubs who looked on in fascination at Thai girls performing stunts with pens, darts, Coke bottles, bunting and even razor blades. It was even more of a shock to discover that Pattaya is also deemed by some Caucasian parents to be an appropriate tourist destination for families with young children. 

Whatever your reasons for going there, Pattaya is most certainly not the paradise on earth that one or two of my mates consider it to be. However, it was quite simply great to share the experience 

with Big Bird and it was to be the first of many on our travels.