Lady boys, Elephants and Ping-Pong - made in Thailand

Phuket’s night life -  something for everybody’s taste

After three days of following Chinese people on Vegetarian festival (about that in my next blog) and after long hours of being lazy at the beach we decided it’s time to move our cute bottoms and explore more of this incredibly fascinating island of Phuket and it’s night life.

We rented a scooter as it seemed silly to spend most of our budget on taxi, which is really overrated, comparing to everything else. It turn out to be the best decision ever, as the temperature was perfect, traffic wasn’t too bad, probably because October is low season and beside the fact we saved huge amount of Baht (Thai currency), we ended up seeing much more of local life than we could ever do in taxi.

My Love and myself at this stage in life we don’t have kids so we have the luxury of time for ourselves, but night clubbing, drinking and that sort of things aren’t our game anymore. We left that style some time ago as we entered thirties.  So after browsing endless number of leaflets and web pages we chose Simon Cabaret show as our first night out destination.

It’s a lady boys show, and I was very curious about it as I never saw a lady boy before. “Let your imagination fly” is their logline and I felt, as a very promising show is about to start in this luxurious theatre with high-tech sound and lighting equipment. The curtain came up, amazingly beautiful creatures with even more stunning and glamorous costumes came on stage and they start to sing. Sing?!!!? ON PLAY BACK… oh what a disappointment, as most of them were mainly out of sync… Was it too hard to learn the lyrics of the songs? And as the show progressed I realized that many of them don’t know how to dance either, and it felt, as they were hangers for outstanding, extravagant costumes… 

My Love and his favourite performer :) 

So, being unable to enjoy their performance I studied their looks. How amazingly beautiful and feminine some of them look like… and I admit I look a lot in their pelvic area trying to find a clue that shows that they are actually man beneath those amazing “bikini” dresses, but the sign I was looking for wasn’t there… some of them looked like 100% woman, and more… anyway, even though their performing wasn’t up to Las Vegas standards, time went really quick and I have to give them some credit as most of them walked and danced in more sensual way than lots of women I know, including myself… we took some photos after the show as they were grabbing us along other tourists to make an extra buck and in that point they weren’t so classy and feminine anymore. For 900 Baht (app. 30 AUD) I satisfied my curiosity about lady boys and we giggled a lot, we had fun in our own way so at the end it felt like worth going. 

Next destination on our bucket list was Fantasea show at Elephant Palace.  Phuket Fantasea is like Universal studio made in Thailand. It’s a cultural theme park design to make you spend every step you take on multitude of activities and entertainment; heaven for kids. With our 1900 Baht (app. 64 AUD) VIP ticket, dinner was included, we couldn’t miss the biggest buffet in the world with 4,000-seat theme restaurant. If you are a vegetarian who is not fond of Indian food you’ll end up spending too much for French fries, but if you don’t have food limitation like my Love, you will really enjoy the food eating probably three times more than you usually eat for dinner. Show starts at 9 pm, and 40 min before you start line up in the queue:  first to enter the most amazing Palace and then to deposit the camera, smartphone or any other object designed for audio-video recording… they are very serious about it, fines are huge and you better do as they tell you…. Just before entering in the theatre, you are given the possibility (for 200 Bath) to have a photo while feeding baby tiger or posing in between baby elephants holding their trunk… Finally we were in our seat, ready to experience the magic… Sound of drums, flares carried by performers in outstanding costumes and spectacular entrance of 16 Elephants who walked through the seated crowd to the stage. Opening act promised a lot. It’s a family show and I’m not sure what we expected but beside the marvelous entrance, few more acrobatic acts and the fact that there were 16 elephants on the stage once more at the end of the show doing circus acts, everything else was, I don’t know…disappointing, leaving bit of a bitter taste in my mouth as it felt like paying too much for such a cliché story which was announced as a true story of Prince Kamala and his people. We do like to know about a history but this was no where near…It’s a classical tale about a Prince who meets Princess, who gets kidnaped by the Evil until Prince saves the Princess.  Not one twist, not one surprise and thank God they use some special effects and acrobatic acts to break this annoying storytelling. 

Next day, we decided that we need something to spice our holiday a little as last night felt like a retirement break, so even though we are not into drinking and clubs we thought to give a go to the Soi Bangla road, the most fringe street of Patong. 

After the sunset, traffic gets closed and this street becomes a liveliest party zone with huge variety of beautiful girls and ladyboys from all over the world with aim to please you hoping you’ll take them for the night… I hold my Love’s hand very tight as I saw the look in his eyes which reminded me of a look a chubby boy would have in a candy shop… A girl or a boy (it’s hard to tell) approached us offering to take us to free of charge ping pong show… Heard some stories about it, and why not? My Love tried to tell me that it could be little bit too much, but I was convinced, as girl said we just pay for the drinks, show is free of charge and we can stay or leave when ever we want…Sound naive, ha? So we climbed the stairs, passing by some very dodgy looking characters that make you wonder will it be so easy to get out, as it is to get in. And there we were, in this small and dirty nightclub with too loud music and too little light. On a small stage, right in front of our table three beautiful women were sensually moving their naked bodies.  Waitress came with the drink list, and that was the first shock: they charge 900 Baht for a beer which outside costs 80 Baht…I said no, we are not staying, no way I’m paying that much for the beer! My Love grabbed my hand saying: “you can’t just leave now, remember those dodgy characters?” Because of load music I didn’t hear him well so I kept on insisting that price is too much and the waiter who saw Croatian bully in me said we could have two beers for 1000 Baht (app. 34 AUD). Ok, we stayed seated not knowing that those dodgy characters anyway won’t let you out until you buy some drinks.  Three beauty finished their dance and much older, not that nice looking lady came on a stage with a little tank full of water. She placed the tank under her intimate parts and six little fishes came out, swimming into the tank. WHAT? Oh yes, out of her vagina… later she did it with two little turtles, and after it with a little yellow bird!!!???  and yes, all of it from down there…

Between her acts there were those beautiful girls dancing and playing with the guys who weren’t too disgusted to lay down on stage without their clothes, covered with little towel…

photos are from the street, no pictures allowed at ping pong

Actually, those moments were fun and much needed to recover from what you previously saw… Then there was another old lady with very angry face who lay down on the floor while a guy was standing holding balloons and she released arrows from her vagina, hitting straight into the balloons. At one point she came back to the stage and pulled out of her intimate parts 2 meter long cord, on which every 5 cm, was a razor blade attached. That was too scary to even look, but to prove that razors weren’t fake she cut a candle after pulling them all out. I have to say it made me speechless, I mean it takes lots of time to learn how to do all this things, it’s not like they were born with that talent… Couldn’t that energy and effort be used for something more constructive? After tipping the waitress, we tipped the show as well and that got us a green light to leave this disgusting premises. We went and sat on the beach; it took us one hour before starting to talk, as we both needed fresh air to take away those images from our heads.  

Few days of holidays we still had, we decided to spend it by being lazy on the beach during day and night time? Well, nothing can beat simple romantic candle dinner holding hands, whispering about love while looking into the eyes of person you love the most.