Bangkok

The first time I came to Bangkok I was not particularly enamoured of the city. We arrived in the midst of a torrential tropical downpour and within the first 5 minutes that I stepped out of my hotel the biggest frikking cockroach this side of the equator attempted to scurry into my knickers via my left leg... The bloody thing managed to get as far as my knee before I noticed and screamed the whole of the Khao San Road down in complete hysterics... You must understand; This was no normal cockroach. This was the mother of all cockroaches: Roachzilla,  a living, breathing roachasaurus about the size of an enormous lobster. I shit you not! Well, OK, maybe I shit you a bit - but the thing was still the biggest bloody land crustacean that I've ever had the misfortune to come across and our moment of undesired intimacy really set my Bangkok experience off to a bad start! 

My first impressions of the city, and more specifically, Khao San were that it was a seedy, overly touristic place with nothing but a bunch of pissheads on their gap yaars (not a typo) practising excessive consumption in prep for some appalling Full Moon Party... I was completely right of course, but the mistake I made the first time round was to not embrace it all. I tried to do cultural things, like visit temples and palaces (which were actually quite impressive) or go to museums, but it was not a mistake that I would make again. 

I've had a bloody awesome time in Bangkok this time! Drinking out of buckets, eating deep fried insects, buying tie dye dresses, getting pushed, pulled, squeezed, twisted and cracked at massage parlours, whizzing around in tuk tuks and even watching women shoot ping pong balls out of their vajayjays.

Now, if I'm honest, every last bit of moral fibre in my body was screaming at me not to go to a ping pong show. The minuscule and often ignored angel on my shoulder was having a panic attack 'Don't do it Kate, it's degrading to women. These girls are being exploited. It's going to put you off sex forever. It'll make you feel that your private parts are not fulfilling their potential' ... All these and a million other reasons not to go... Each of them as valid and as true as the next... And yet, next thing I know we were following a man who had presented a 'menu' of visual delights such as 'P*ssy opens Coke bottle' ... No... We aren't talking about cats here. P*ssy does WHAT?!?! Off we went in a tuk tuk to lose what remained of our innocence. We walked straight in to a live sex show. No, not a sex show in the sense that a strip dance is technically a sex show. An actual intercourse show! Pretty sure I didn't read that on the bloody 'menu'! Holy crap where the hell are we?! Once the lovely chap and his leading lady were finished showing off their acrobatic skills the actual ping pong bit started - but ping pong was only the warm up in Bangkok's vaginal olympics - coke bottle opening, candle blowing, cigarette smoking and of course my particular favourite - a lovely lady with fantastic grip, balancing and coordination skills writing 'Welcome to Thailand' without the use of her hands. I won't describe it any more than I already have... Just... If you are ever in Bangkok... And that little angel is screaming at you... Pay attention for goodness sake! Now my life won't be complete until I can burst a balloon by blowing a dart out of my hoo-ha and god knows it's not something I ever actually want to try! 

Can't believe I just released all that into the public domain. Thank god my grandmother doesn't own a computer...

Spicy grasshopper anyone? Surprisingly tasty:

How can anythig go wrong when you start your day with this? :

Happy tuk-tuk times:

The local food market for when you just fancy snakes, turtles or frogs for dinner: