Patong, Phuket

Ours Friends from the Capsule Hotel

I never finished my blog. It just takes me so damn long to write these things, that I always had too many other things to do while traveling. And also, I was straight up lazy.

I regret it, because I've been wanting to finish it for a year now, and all the memories are hazy and have faded some. I have a really bad memory as it is, so now in order to finish it, I must rely heavily on the pictures I took, the stories that I actually remember, and Jabo aka Patong, who was there with me for the majority of the remainder of my travels.

Last time I posted, it was about what was happening in March of 2014; my family (aunt, uncle and cousins) had just went back home, leaving Jabo and I to explore the island of Phuket.

Getting off the boat from Koh Lanta, we haggled for a taxi to take us to the main city on Phuket, a city called Patong.

Jabo had meshed so well with my family and I, that when we got into our taxi Jabo tells me "I feel like I just left my own family."

This is the city that I thank/blame for the new phase of Jabo, a phase so powerful, that it persists to this very day, more than 1 year later...ladies and gentlemen, may I present, PATONG JABO, the most powerful Jabo yet.

The city of Patong is a beachside city that is as close to Las Vegas as I've ever experienced. And there is no gambling. The reason I compare it to Vegas is because of the feeling. You know the feeling. This is the feeling of dread, impending doom, and disgust, that one gets after spending longer than 3 nights in Vegas. That is Patong. The street where everything goes down is called Bangla Road.

Staring down the abyss that is Bangla Road

Jabo and I arrive to Patong rather late, with no place to stay, and no plan. We get dropped off on Bangla road, and Jabo tells me that he vaguely recognizes it. This is the place he stayed for his very first night in Thailand, before meeting up with me on Koh Lanta.

We wonder the nightlife-filled street for a couple of minutes before we get approached by a promoter. Usually I completely ignore these people. But he insisted that "his guesthouse" was the newest, cheapest and fanciest in Patong. Skeptically, we follow him this guesthouse. Right in the mix of it all, on Bangla Road, was a place called "Capsule Hotel."

The man didn't lie. It was brand new. And it was awesome. The hotel was based on traditional Japanese Capsule hotels. A few weeks later, while in Japan, Jabo and I would become very familiar with these types of hotels, but at the time, this was a novel idea to the both of us.

Instead of having your own room, like in a traditional hotel, or instead of sharing a dorm room with 6 beds, like in traditional hostels or guesthouses, a capsule hotel has a different concept. Imagine those "cubby" holes you had as a kid in elementary school. In those cubbies, you put your lunch box, crayons, jacket, etc. Now imagine that these "cubbies" are human sized holes with nothing but a mattress in them. That is a capsule hotel. So we pay for a few nights, and get settled in to our capsules. These capsules had a comfortable mattress, pillow, outlets, a light, and a privacy curtain. It gave us the privacy of a solo room, with the atmosphere and price of a hostel.

After showering and getting ready, Jabo and I went out to explore the busy streets of Patong. Now, there are plenty of places in Thailand that are rustic, authentic, and cultural. Bangla Road in Patong is not one of these places. It is a drug-fueled, prostitute-ridden nightclub Mecca. Even more so than Bangkok's redlight district (NaNa & Soi Cowboy), I have never before been to a place where prostitutes (both lady and ladyboy) outnumber real people.

On top of this, the place is incredibly modern. They have a mall right there at the end of the road, that looks like a very high-end american shopping center. There are more recognizable brand names and restaurants on Bangla Road than there are on the Vegas strip.

That first night, after grabbing a couple Big Changs at the 7-11, we met these 2 Swedish girls that were staying at our hotel. That night, we met up with even more Swedes and went to nightclubs till the wee hours of the morning. At about 3 or 4am, Jabo and I were walking back to our hotel. Completely exhausted I went to bed.

Waking up around noon, I look in Jabo's capsule. He's nowhere to be found. In fact, his bag is exactly how it had been the day before, and his bed is still neat. I came to the inevitable conclusion that Jabo did not sleep here.

Laughing nervously to myself, I turn on my phone's wifi and text him on whatsapp. I can see that he is receiving my messages, but is not reading or opening them. I get some lunch, and around 1pm, Jabo shows up, wearing the same clothes as the night before.

He tells me that when I went to bed, he went out for a smoke and randomly saw the same girl he had seen the week before, when he was here for a night. Spending the rest of the night together, he had just now returned. This started the habitual disappearance of Jabo for the next few weeks.

Patong is where we fully understood the concept of Bar Girls. You see, the vast majority of bars on Bangla look completely normal, like any other bar or club you would walk in. This is not the case.

The bars are filled with women that are seemingly playing drinking games, or just sitting at the bar. When a man goes up to order a drink, they are flocked by these friendly women that are eager to talk to you. They even ask you if you want to play games, ranging from connect 4, to the stump game where you need to hammer a nail into a stump. They tell you that if you beat them, they will buy you a drink. However, if they beat you, you owe them a drink.

Playing hammer-your-nail-in-my-stump

Here's the thing though, they make you play a game with strange rules. This is a game that they play all day, everyday. Because it's their job. Therefore, as you can imagine, they rarely lose.

"What the hell I thought, drinks are like $2, I'll play her hammer-nail-stump game." I lost. Badly. So I take the loss with class, and go with her to the bar to buy her a drink.
"What kind of drink would you like?" I ask her.
She looks at the bartender (whom she works for) and says she would like "a lady drink."

Sure, whatever, I thought, this must be some sort of cocktail that they serve here.
The bartender pours her a drink from a pre-mixed bottle, and tells me that it will be $10.
I stand back, SHOCKED. Nothing in Thailand costs that much. That's literally how much I was paying per night to stay in the capsule hotel.

Allow me to explain how the bar-girl system works.
All these bar-girls, like the name indicates, are employed by the bar.
Their job, is quite literally to keep you in the bar and drinking.
But then, they realized that men sometimes like to buy women drinks.
And since they can't have all their employees getting hammered, the only thing they are allowed to drink are "ladydrinks" aka non-alcoholic fruit juice. And they charge the shit out of the guy for it.

These ladydrinks, are how the bar-girls make their money. For every lady-drink they get you to buy for them, they get 50% of the price of that drink. So it is in their best interests to keep you playing their stupid games. However, after buying my first (and last) ladydrink, I caught on.

Jabo, the gentleman and Thai Whisperer that he is, kept right on playing and being the life of the party. I stayed, bought myself drinks and eventually convinced the girls that I'll play with them and Jabo, but without any drink buying.

Smoking is cool, kids. Stay in school.

These bar-girls, eventually double as prostitutes, as seen by the many middle-aged white men who buy them lady drinks all night, and then pay the bartender a "Bar-Fine" to take them back to their hotel rooms.

Bangla road is also home to some of the funniest bar names ever, such as:

2nd biggest regret: Never going in to Suzy Wong's

Jabo fell in love with Patong, so we stayed there a little longer than I had originally wanted to or expected. However, it turned out great for several reasons. We did meet tons of fun people at our hostel, and we hung out with them on a daily basis. Perhaps the most important reason, though, is that Patong was the seed that made Jabo want to move to Thailand.
He still lives in Thailand, over a year later, though he has now moved from Patong to Bangkok.

Jabo in Thailand, circa Feb 2015

Random things that I remember from our time in Patong...

• One night, when going out with practically all Swedish people, I mentioned that they all exclusively wore converse. 

  

  Swedish Proof

• There was also a bar that we went to one night, that was sort of hidden out of the way. The name of this place was "Stockholm Syndrome." I think they were trying to cater to the huge Swedish tourist population. But I found the name terrifying. Stockholm Syndrome is the name given to people who have been kidnapped, tortured, and abused, but end up feeling a strange sort of kinship and love for their kidnappers. Probably the scariest bar name if you ask me, I never thought we'd get out alive...

          SPOILER ALERT: we did get out alive, it was just a normal bar.

• There was another bar called the Honky Tonk Bar, and their logo was....STEAMBOAT! Really weird and, I'm sure, a copyright infringement.

  

  In Heaven there is no beer. That's why I went to Thailand.

Though this may seem strange, I must talk about the toilets in our Capsule hotel. In keeping with the Japanese theme, this hotel had Japanese toilets. They are/were the highest tech toilets I had ever seen. With multiple buttons on the side of the seat, I was terrified to press any of them. Turns out they were all different sprays, to spray your bum while seated. It was scary, and kind of nice.

Para continuar en Espanol, oprima numero dos.

• One day, we decided that we'd get out of the capsule hotel for a night and Ball Out of Control. So we got ourselves a huge multi room suite in a fancy beachside hotel. We invited the friends we had made and had ourselves a hotel party. The bathroom had both a shower and bath, and the bathtub had a window that opened up to the master bedroom. Later that night, I had been sleeping in the bed of the master bedroom for several hours, when I hear Jabo and one of the girls talking in the other room. She thought they were alone in the suite, so when Jabo went to the bathroom, in the pitch darkness, she snuck into the master bedroom and started digging through his backpack. I awoke, sat up in bed (she still hadn't seen me) and said "What are you doing?!" I scared her so bad, I nearly gave her a heart attack. She claims she was looking for a comb, but I think she was trying to steal something. In the video, you can see me wearing a man-robe. Like Hugh Hefner. Because when fancy hotels give you robes, you wear them.

• We also found Jabo's twin in the shopping mall.

From left to right: Jabo, Mannequin

• The McDonald's there serves double Big Macs. DOUBLE. So naturally, we had to get one. This happened at noon, on our way to check in to our party suite.

  

  Hilarity did NOT ensue

  
  

  

  Later that night, in our room. Photograph compliments of the table where I set my camera on timer

  
  I was famished, so instead of eating the DOUBLE big mac, like a normal human being, I inhaled it, like a vacuum cleaner. About 3/4 of the way through, I stop to actually taste it. It seemed a little off. The 4 burger patties were nearly raw, barely warm. I asked Jabo to show me his, it was normal. Disgusted, I showed the manager and he gave me another one. Since I'm an idiot, I ate about 3/4 of the new one, and then hated myself. Checking in to the fancy hotel, it became very evident, very quickly, that I was going to get food poisoning because of that damn burger. But I also knew that we had chosen this night to go all out. Therefore I COULDN'T get sick. I had to find a solution. I decided, that even though I hate vomiting, I would have to purge my stomach. I didn't want to get it on my clothes, and it was hot, so I walk into one of the bathrooms in our room, strip down all of my clothes, and sit on the floor next to the toilet. Picture this, I am completely naked, green in the face because I'm so sick, and I am sticking fingers down my throat. That doesn't work; nothing happens. At this point, I am pot-committed and take it as a personal challenge. "I want to puke damnit! I control my god-damned body, IF I SAY PUKE, IT SHOULD PUKE!" So I proceed to stick my entire arm down my throat (obviously not, but that's what it felt like). As I'm eating my fist and getting sick into the toilet bowl, something catches my attention from the corner of my eye. It's Jabo, standing in the doorway, looking at me. He snaps a picture as I say "This is what I've become *pukkkke*." (I asked Jabo for that picture, and either it doesn't exist, or it was lost when he got his phone stolen.)
   He said the same thing to me the next morning when he woke up in the other room, completely naked, his lady friend gone, and stuffed his face with a cold chicken sandwich he had gotten the night before. Not our best moments, but they happened, so it belongs in the blog, no censorship, this isn't communist Russia! 

  

  In his natural state, The Jabo.

• Later in the day, Jabo took a small nap. I wasn't tired and wanted to walk around. I decided to leave him a note in case he woke up and wondered where I had gone.

  

  Sadly, I returned empty handed. GOT HEEM

• On the last day we were in Patong, we had decided that we would fly to Bangkok for our last few days in Thailand. Our flight was the following day at 2pm. There were earlier flights, but I specifically chose this later one so that the nocturnal Jabo wouldn't be so grouchy. For our last night in town, we decided we wouldn't go out. That we would just stay in, and watch a movie at the hostel. Yeah, that didn't work. We went out with our friends, and at about 3am, I called it a night. I asked Jabo if he was too, but no, he definitely wanted to make his last night in Patong count. I reminded him that we had a flight to catch, so if he could just sleep at the hostel, so we wouldn't miss the flight, that would be awesome. He promised me he would, and that, worst comes to worst, he would be back to the hostel at 10 am. The airport, is 1 hour away from where we were staying. So, though the flight was at 2pm, we had to leave the hotel by noon. I go to sleep. Wake up at 10am, and peek into Jabo's capsule. It's empty. No sign of him.
  "No big deal," I think, "I'll text him, go shower and get ready, and he'll be back by the time I'm done."
  After getting ready, I check my phone. He still has not answered. Hasn't even received his texts. That means his phone is dead. I'm not worried for his safety, but I do start to wonder if we'll miss our flight. I pace back and forth, sending him increasingly urgent texts. By the end I'm screaming at him (in all caps). It's now noon. The shuttle that we paid for comes by to pick us up. I take his laptop from his backpack, put it in mine, leave all his stuff in his capsule, and get on the shuttle. If he can't make it to the god-damn shuttle, he can just meet me in Bangkok whenever he finally comes to his senses.
  The shuttle takes just under 1.5 hours to make it to the airport. I have about 30 minutes until we take off, so I buy myself lunch at some fast food joint. I'm just about done eating, when I catch a glimpse of The Jabo, with his golden crazy hair, wandering around the terminal. Turns out, he woke up around 1pm, plugged in his phone, and realized he was completely screwed he was so late. He got a ride from the girl on her scooter, got his bags, and then flagged down a taxi. He told him that he needed to get to the airport in 30 minutes.That same trip took me nearly 1.5 hours. He told the taxi driver that he would double the fair. In SouthEast Asia, your dollars go a long way, and so driving like a maniac, the driver made it.
• Getting off the plane in Bangkok, it had been more than 10 hours since his last cigarette, and Nicotine Withdrawal Jabo was starting to come out. As people were filing out of the plane, the lady in front of us, trying to pull her luggage, was not moving fast enough for The Jabo. Shoving his way through the crowded airplane, he could be heard screaming things like "It's like watching f%$#ing monkeys drag sacks of rocks!"

  

  Namastay in bed.