Our Thailand Trip: Sorry for the delay

Sorry for the delay - Days 12, 13, 14.......

Apologies for the delay in updates, been a busy few days lots of things going on, so I'll just give you a brief walkthrough of what we've done since our last update.

Wednesday was a fairly uneventful one in terms of the blog. We had yoga in the morning, and then went into the tattoo shop to 'discuss' me getting a tattoo done. This brief discussion turned from throwing a few ideas around, to writing a definitive design down and booking an appointment, for mid-day the following day. I was not expecting to book it and have it done so soon, and I'd not really had chance to build myself up to it, but that might have been a good thing.

The rest of the day was spent in the usual way, training in the evening, then tea, skype and sleep, nothing major to report. We woke on Thursday morning at 11 to get ready to head down to the tattoo shop. After dragging myself out of bed and forcing down some nervous breakfast we headed down to the parlour, which, fortunately is located directly outside Tiger Muay Thai, so about 5 mins from the hotel.

Once we got there I was measured up, checked my design, had the stencil put on and we were away. I had opted to go with the more expensive, traditional method of tattooing, using a bamboo stick with several needles attached. It's a method of tattooing traditionally used by monks on Thai soldiers, with the tattoos designed as protection in battle. The bamboo method also has the advantage of healing very quickly, as the needles pierce the skin, not tear like a more commonly used tattoo gun. Another thing I'd read is that Bamboo tattooing is 90% less painful than machine tattooing, a piece of information that, once we'd begun was refuted by everybody in the shop, much to my dismay. It was one of the most painful things I've ever experienced, like having 120 stinging injections a minute. The areas where the artist had to put the detail in were the most painful, as the needles had to go so deep into the skin, it was not pleasant.

The painful bit had passed by this point!

The pain was 100% worth it though, I absolutely love my tattoo. It's another of those experiences that you're unlikely to get a chance to experience again, so to get tattoo'd, with the bamboo method in Thailand, by a Thai artist is something that will stick with me forever, literally. It's just a shame Nicola didn't enjoy the experience as much as I did. I thought I handled it like a baby, but she had to run out of the shop after 10 minutes as she thought she was going to pass out. I'd suggest it's put her off tattoo's for life, much to her Mum's relief I'd imagine! I'll just have to take her share for her ;)

Nicola
Wherever You Will Go

Admiring my new Muay Thai t-shirt

So that was 2 pretty exciting experiences in 1 week. Getting to have my picture taken with exotic animals 1 day, and a tattoo a few days later, not a bad effort all things considered, just could have done with squeezing a bungee jump and a sky dive into that week and it'd have been a perfect thrill-seeking week completed!

A relaxing late Thursday afternoon and Friday morning followed the painful experience of early Thursday, and allowed us to prepare ourselves for another experience, a night out in Patong. We'd visited Patong earlier in the holiday, and it certainly wasn't the highlight, but we were keen to go back and experience the nightlife. A fellow tattoo enthusiast in the tattoo shop we were in on Thursday told us that Patong didn't really kick off until 11pm, so we geared ourselves up for a long night.

The night started with a little walk around the shops before deciding where we'd be eating, the Hard Rock Cafe. We'd checked out the menu briefly the last time we were in Patong, but weren't too impressed by the prices, but thought we'd go back and take another look. Turned out we'd just seen the specials section at the start and been put off, as the rest was fairly reasonable.

We kicked things off with a cheeky Margarita, my cocktail favourite of the holiday, but insisted on a sugared glass, not the more popular salted rim. We also opted for the more expensive, 899baht version of the drink which meant we got to keep the Margarita glass at the end of our meal, to go with our Hurricane London ones. Then ordered a very tasty platter to start the meal, something I would come to regret when my monstrous double cheeseburger arrived. Once the platter had been devoured our mains arrived, and I was already struggling. My stomach just wasn't used to such mammoth portions, after mainly feasting on a diet of lighter noodle and pasta dishes throughout the holiday, so the burger didn't go down quite as nicely as I'd hoped. Overall, our Hard Rock experience was a very positive one though, and we walked away, large Hard Rock bag in hand very satisfied and proceeded to begin our bar crawl.

The bar crawl begun with a trip to Scruffy Murphys, an Irish Bar, but I'm sure you could have guessed that! Murphys happened to have a very nice deal of 2 frozen Strawberry Daiquiris for 100thb, so Nicola helped herself to 4 of those, whilst I started with a Magners (couldn't turn down a cider, they're not easy to get out here!) before having 2 myself.

From here, it was to an area of Patong similar to a market, but full of small pop-up bars, many of which had dancing Thai girls parading themselves across the bar. We managed to find one that was a bit more reserved, with a few people simply sat at the bar drinking and chatting. After a drink each here we moved back towards the strip. It was around half 10 by this point, so the night was starting to really kick into gear.

As we got back onto the strip we were instantly offered the chance to partake in the viewing of a 'Ping Pong Show'. I'm still not 100% sure what goes on at one of these Ping Pong shows, as the 'menu' seems to have diversified beyond purely Ping Pong balls, but I can take a good guess, and I don't think it's something I am too keen to see. Talking of the menu, I have no idea what these poor girls were doing with these objects, but we were offered to see a Mouse Show, Balloon Show, Cigarette Show, as well as 20 or so others. We decided against seeing one in Patong, but it seems likely that we'll frequent one in Bangkok, just for the experience, god only knows what it'll be like!

We finally made our way through the Ping Pong advertisements and into another bar. Here, we took advantage of the Happy Hour deal and got ourselves 2 Long Island Ice Bulls, which is basically a Long Island Iced Tea but with Red Bull instead of Coke. If you're not sure what the drink contains, it's a 5 shot mix of white spirits; more specifically Vodka, Gin, Tequila, Triple Sec (Cointreau) and Rum, a potent enough combination in the UK where licensing laws dictate that they have to be 10ml measures, but in Thailand, it was a drink that went straight to our heads! That didn't stop us though, as we noticed the bar we were in sold Pimms. We'd not seen cider in Thailand thus far, let alone Pimms, so we couldn't leave this bar without sampling some. The bartender had to break the seal, and had no idea what the strange spirit was she was pouring, let alone what to serve it with. Luckily we told her to stick it with Lemonade, which she did, just nowhere near enough, it was strong as anything!

With our heads spinning, and stomachs beginning to give in to the potent mix of spirits and food we decided to hop in a taxi and go home. A bit of bartering and a 500thb taxi ride later we arrived home, slumped into bed and went to sleep, the end of a busy night!

I'll update the blog tomorrow with another big update which should cover the remaining few days I've missed! :)