We intentionally left the last full day in Bangkok open just in case we had to do some shopping for omiyage before we left, but as it turned out our shopping was finished, and we spent New Year’s Eve just swimming in the pool, Kuniko got another massage and spa treatment, I bought some new earphones for the flight back and generally we took it easy. For dinner we went back out on the streets for some good food – and had a funny encounter with a guy selling watches. We had learned from a website somewhere before the trip that if people were being too persistent in trying to sell you things, you should say “Mai Ow”, which meant something like “I don’t need it, thanks.” Anyway, we had cause to use it a couple of times, and it worked pretty well. While we were eating dinner at this restaurant, however, the guy walking among tables really tried hard to get us to buy his watches. I said “Mai Ow” a couple of times, but he wasn’t leaving. Then Kuniko said it herself, very strongly, and the guy gave her a look of disbelief. For a second I thought he was going to hit her – just a moment of shock on his part, and then he turned around and walked away. We laughed about it afterwards, but there was definitely some cultural confusion going on in that situation.
Since it was New Year’s Eve we decided to go sit in a bar in the red light district and watch the weirdos. The street was right near our hotel, so it worked well as a stopping point. Bars up and down the street were covered with neon, something you didn’t see in a lot of other places in town. Out front Thai women tried hard to entice lonely foreign guys inside, and they were doing a pretty good job of it. During the trip we saw hundreds of grossly overweight white guys walking around with hookers, and it seemed like at least in our area, this was a hub of activity. We went through a couple of beers watching the lonely and the working girls, but security was tight, and it felt like it might get a little more unstable later on. So we left the horny white guys and went back to our hotel bar, and found it filled with Thai people partying. We joined in and had a great time chatting with the bartender and hired help, and ended up having much more fun. We didn’t make it to midnight in the end, however – all the food and beer caught up to us and we went to bed a little earlier than 12:00 a.m.
The next morning it was a taxi to the airport, and a reverse course back through Manila to Osaka. A pretty smooth trip overall, and I’m sure that if we have a chance we’ll be back. But as Kuniko says, there are still a lot of countries out there we haven’t seen.
