Men, Women and the Lady Boys!!!

One of the wonders of being in a middle income East-Asian country is that you can find photocopies of almost everything, and I mean everything. In BKK, you can find big shopping malls with fancy shops that will give you CDs of anything from songs to movies and fancy statistical softwares. One of my friends bought Stata, SPSS and Mathematica, all in one CD for 100 Baht, which is 3.33 dollars. Finding fake designer clothes, hand bags and purses is another common thing. Another friend of mine bought a PRADA purse for 200 Baht. However, these are minute things when compared to copy apple appliances.

Couple weeks ago, my visiting friend had few hours before her flight to do some last minute shopping, which included original Maybelline and Cover Girl make up items, couple silk ties, some I love Thailand t-shirts and a fake iPad. So we went looking for iPad first since it was the most important and perhaps a challenging one to find. We went inquiring shops that had the iPad signs at their displays. When we asked the vendors if they had iPads, they would usually show original ones. Then we would ask if they had copy iPads and some of them would give a strange expression, almost making us guilty for asking. We finally came to this lady who had a copy iPad 1, which she claimed to be eped, or at least that is how she pronounced it. When we looked at the box, it was written e-pad, which means that she was half right with the name.

The price difference between the original iPad and the ePad was almost thrice, it seemed almost pointless at to buy the same exact looking material with same functions for thrice as much price. Amazed at its similarity, my friend asked her why the price difference was so great between the original and the rip off version of iPad. Shocked by her naïve question, the shopkeeper replied, “man/woman and ladyboys”. Hahaha. This was the best communication method I had witnessed in a long time between two parties that hardly spoke a common language. Her referral to the original iPad was man/woman and to the rip off was ladyboys. For a woman, who hardly spoke English, she just baffled us with her explanation.

As much as we liked her sense of humor, we could not get our price range so we moved on to the next store and asked for eped this time, but were presented with Super Pad instead. It was fascinating to find that each type of the Copy iPads had its own unique style, for example, some had 3D flip screen and some had 2GB memory, others 1GB, some had webcam, others MS Word compatibility. The iPad had gotten more versatile in the fake market. We also found a nameless iPad that my friend finally settled on after complete 2 hours of looking around and bargaining. We decided to call it the Awesome Pad. During the process of bargaining, my friend even managed to flirt with the lady and exchange friendship notes as well as gestures, haha. Although buying the ties and make up stuff took less time, the tiring process of finding an ePad was definitely entertaining and of course I can never forget, the man/woman and the lady boys!!!

Monica! O My Darling!

It was a Saturday evening and I was sitting on my bed playing with the Internet, chatting with some friends online when I got a call from a friend in BKK. At first I did not recognize her voice because I was in a lazy holiday mood until she told me her name. The idea was to go to a gay bar in Silom, which is the area where I once accidently landed in Pat Pong (Ping Pong show and red light area).

Although the idea of giving up chatting my friends from overseas, did not appeal to me, even my friend on Skype suggested that I went. So I decided to go. It was 10 PM and would take me at least half an hour to get there, meaning I had half an hour to get ready. When I reached Silom, I was glad to find another friend right when I got off the taxi because I did not want to be walking alone in that area. We waited for our third companion for the night for a few minutes and went to DJ Station bar. Once we got in, I noticed that the bar was filled with gay people of whom more than 90% were males. There were only couple straight couples. There was a stage at the center of the bar and we found out that they would have a performance in few minutes. At this point, I was excited because I had never seen any of those gay/lady boy shows before.

The bar was overcrowded but thankfully they had 3 floors. We decided to explore the top floor but were disgusted by the piss and vomit smells as they had restrooms on that floor. So we decided to get down to the second floor, which had plenty of space to stand and you could see the stage as well. So I decided to stay there and wait for the show to happen. There were about 5 kinds of shows, couple of which were in Thai, couple in English and one in Hindi. Most performers were nicely dressed lady boys with glittery clothes and big breasts. One thing that kept bothering me was why would the performers in a gay bar have big breasts? I

During one of the singing shows, the performer forgot his/her line and the tape kept playing, HAHA. It was hilarious!!! My favorite was the Bollywood one. When the famous classic Hindi song, Monica O My Darling, started playing, the performer was turning her back to the audience and had a shawl held up in the air, which covered upper half of his/her body. The audience was shocked when she/he turned around. She/he was huge in size with a long skirt, transparent stretchable quarter sleeved green blouse with big and perfectly round breasts peeking out of them as she/he was not wearing any bra and a big belly poking out from his/her body. She/he had an awful make up with black strikes on her/his face and a big flower in her/his hair. Out of all the performers, this one certainly got the most amount of money from the audience.

After the performance, we got down to join the dance floor but there was no space to even stand, let alone dance. So I suggested that we take the stage as it was empty. Couple of us had to pull our third friend who was too shy to join us at the stage. She was relieved when others decided to join the stage as well, which made the stage overcrowded soon. Some guys even started stripping so we came back down. It had been a long time since I had been in such overcrowded place with such loud music so I decided to leave by 1 AM and so did my friends.

I found this quote in the book that I am recently reading, “everything that can be tested should be tested.” Although I do not completely agree with it, it was good to see something new at a new place.