The Underbelly

Life has slowed down considerably from our past 5 weeks and we are swinging into the island life with ease. Ivan, while not gigging (it's hard here cause of the work permit thing) has been jamming at a few bars around Patong and Kata area. It's fun for him to play with the locals and they are all very curious about his playing style and grooves. The night before last we went to hedonist bar district with our dude Simon from Harley bar. He took us to the steamy nightlife street where anything goes. It's all rather shocking initially with young girls gyrating around all the bars and sticking on to the foreign men like velcro, hoping to get a hand permanently implanted in their pockets. Lots of skin and lip licking and smiling and beguiling. Simon took us to a go-go bar where all the men stand around gazing up with glazed eyes and lust at a bevy of Thai girls who show all while dancing seductively above the wolf pack. While it is initially shocking, it is really pathetic after all, and actually rather boring in the end as the faces of the girls are blank and removed from their actions and they all look remarkably like one another and hey, when you've seen one...

The interesting part is watching the Gtoys, as they are called here, or transvestites, enticing all the men to come with them, they are very beautiful and striking (plastic surgery is a huge industry here) but you can tell them apart from the females as they are all rather taller and have distinctly different body shapes than the girls. A lot of the men don't know this though and we watched one guy (most of them are very drunk) being pulled down an alley by two Gtoys with Simon chuckling that he may be getting more than he bargained for. While most of the action takes place on the strip, there are little alleyways that we have been warned not to go down as these are the places you can get ANYTHING and that it can be quite dangerous. We are not tempted.

Going into town today to visit the marina and see what possibilities emerge for a trip down the coast to Malaysia.