Cabbages and Condoms

Bangkok is a centre for retail therapy and thus an ideal habitat for that Nice Lady Decorator. Counter balancing this nicely is the heat and humidity, and, although it is not enough to cancel out all retail desire, I think one could call it retail mitigation.

Once the humidity had done its job, we decided to take a boat trip around the city. Hiring a 30 seater boat for just the 4 of us seemed a little extravagant until we worked out that for a total of £16, in other words £4 per person, we could take a private tour on an arrow shaped boat attached to a car engine, firstly  at 30 miles per hour on the rather choppy river and thereafter , still often at 30 miles an hour, around the canal, entered by lock.

It was a great way to discover the city and see what it was really like away from the built up and busy modern centre. Amongst the places we saw along the canal was a “Fish feeding Place”. That is what was painted on the wall and there was a chap there selling loaves of bread for 20 Baaht, about 10 pence.  Now call me a cynic but this seemed a little like a tourist trap but, persuaded to part with a little money, as soon as piece of bread was dropped into the water, thousands of quite large fish, many over a foot long, fought over it and 5 loaves were fed to the fishes (there is some kind of biblical reference here but I am not getting it). It may be that there is a picture today, but then maybe not as I seemed to have screwed up the settings on my new iPhone 5 so that it will not send or receive emails, from where I normally access pictures for this column. It is something to do with icloud which is totally beyond me. I went through a railway station yesterday called Pholen Chit, and at the moment that sums up how I feel about it. If I manage to solve it, I will have a picture of the fishes or maybe Cabbages and Condoms below.

Fish feeding frenzy

Cabbages and Condoms is a restaurant in Bangkok to which we went last night. For a blogging rascal like me, it is too much to resist. The place has a number of figures made, it seems, entirely out of condoms, and we haven’t even been to any of those shows for which the city is renowned. It is a great fun place with great food set mostly out-of-doors, but no one was able to explain satisfactorily to me why it is so-called, or what is the relevance of the name.

Today we will have a little more retail therapy before heading off out of town somewhere for dinner with friends of friends. I am not entirely certain where we are going but being picked up, wined and dined and then being returned to the hotel seems like a carefree enough plan for me not to argue. With luck, after dinner, we will go to see a “comedy” show in Patpong, the most famous red light district in the world. As I am always prepared to be exposed to a bit of culture, you will know that the only reason I am going is for research. You never know where you might find a new customer for Currencies Direct, but an internationally renowned area with a distinct internationally appealing culture would seem to be an obvious starting point.

Then tomorrow, the next leg of the trip will unfold with an overnight flight to Adelaide via Sydney, in readiness for the cricket festival.

Chris France

@Valbonne_News