After running all around Bangkok we finally reached the lazy beach portion of this trip. Phuket, an island on the central east side of Thailand, appears to be ground zero for Russian and Australian tourists.
The flight here, while short, at least provided the possiblity of our first real sex tourist sighting. Unfortunately it wasn't.
Right across the aisle from us was an australian guy, 50's, heavy set chatting up a Thai girl who couldn't have been more than 20 years old. Chatting up is probably incorrect, he did all of the talking and I didn't hear her say more than one word. He kept going on about his weight loss plans (needed) and that he doesn't talk to his daughter anymore (which makes sense, since he was probably hitting on all of her friends).
Immediately we were shocked. We had figured the sex tourist thing was sort of a one shot deal at a brothel or something, not a situation where you fly some young Thai girl to a resort getaway and force her to listen to you drone on about your previous trips to Phuket. All sorts of etiquette question arose. Do you pay for both flight? What about meals, do you get her something at the airport or just rely on the airplane food? What about bags, can she bring an extra over the 2 bag limit? Do you pay for that too?
Sadly are hopes were dashed when we realized at the end of the flight that while he may very well be a sex tourish, she was just some poor Thai girl stuck next to him on the flight. He offered her his phone number which she dutifully listened to and appeared to ask him to repeat, all the while never writing it down.
After the bad sleep in Bangkok, we both came down with a little bit of sickness, so have spent most of the paast two days lazing at the pool and drinking Orange Squash. It's not squash, but rather some orange juice concentrate that you add water to until it tastes, well, a little more like orange juice.
We're off to the beach town of Patong tonight, which promises to be kind of like the jersey shore, just more australians and transvestites/transsexuals.
1 comment:
We saw a couple of "odd" couples like that too - at our fancy Bangkok hotel and on the flight to Cambodia. And yes, the old white dudes do squire them around and act like they are their boyfriends, even though the women clearly look like they want to be elsewhere. It's disturbing.
But otherwise, sounds like you are having fun!
Chris
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