the following are videos from samed island, our first destination in thailand.

have you ever seen a dog to that before?

shawn living the dream.

jenna demonstrating how to eat thai oysters.

jenna suggesting destination number 2 of our thai trip.

BangkokCA
BangkokCalifornia
BangkokKalifornia

Route66, home of my favorite memories in Bangkok

I said it in the recap, but I think that Route66 is the best nightclub in Bangkok. Granted, my sample is relatively small, as I really haven’t tried every one out here. And there are other clubs that people have talked about, namely the “superclubs” that are throughout the city. But everything I know about those seems to tell me that they’re like the better Hollywood clubs out there.

I’m from L.A. If they’re anything like a Hollywood club, I don’t want any part of it.

Instead, my night at Route66 was the best of our entire vacation. I’d like to remind our audience that I held a fricken’ baby tiger a week earlier. (Lots of photos, so more are here.)

Most of the crew that came to Route66. Drunk and headed for food.

@Route66 Nightclub

If you haven’t noticed, Angela and I have taken the journalistic mission of this trip to heart, as it was used as the mitigating factor in pushing us into seeing that Pattaya ping pong show. So when we finally arrived to the Route66 Nightclub, the spot that was recommended by a friend back home, it was for more than your customary raging. Angela brought the SLR and we decided to go to work.

After asking a few people at the door about who we could talk to for a tour, we met Golf, the club’s PR guy who immediately hooked us up with a few Singhas. “Welcome beers,” he called them. We toured the whole place and it was definitely impressive. There’s four areas, split into North, East, South, West. Each plays a different type of music, with the hip hop and live music drawing the larger crowds. One of the first spots that Golf took us was the women’s restroom. I was first confused, but I get why. It was ridiculous. The thing was decorated like a penthouse apartment and there was a live band playing just inside. Angela was gushing over the sax player below. It also was big enough to avoid the obligatory Hollywood line outside.

found her in the pop area.

The women's restroom. For some reason, a lot of our photos are in there.

All of our group shots somehow turned out like this.

DJ Ono

Angela's Cobrasnake impression

he had such a sweet face, reminded me of john.

After all of this, Golf was nice enough to hook us up with a table and a bottle of vodka, which was especially nice because we had about a dozen people. I’ve had bottle service and a table at a club before. It takes more than that to impress me. And what really did it was how accessible everybody was. I thought that the DJ’s hypeman might have been from L.A., noted this to Golf in passing, and he brought us up there to meet the DJ and shoot some photos. After, Angela decided to do her best Cobrasnake impression and just snap people throughout the club and disappeared while we all danced.

Adit before he went brain dead

The ratio was better than good, which was surprising because they weren’t unnecessarily holding people at the door. The drinks were cheap (I think a bottle and mixer cost me about $35). The hip hop set by DJ Ono, who also plays at the “superclubs” that I checked out, was solid with the only hiccup being 20 seconds of the new Linkin Park track (saw some dude try to sing their new song on Academy Fantasia…I don’t understand the infatuation with either). We danced all night and it’s really just kind of a blur of awesomeness.

Most importantly though was that we just showed up and were treated like fricken’ royalty. I feel confident that I could recommend the spot to another friend and they’d have just as good of a time as I did. Just ask around a bit and they’ll be more than gracious to make you feel welcome. We did and got hooked up. Anytime Golf saw me, he’d introduce me to someone else. It was like we had a personal host. That kind of attention goes a long way for me. And we didn’t have to pay for it like it was Hollywood.

Golf is in the middle. That's me glowing at 3 a.m.

The gang

Afterwards, the eight of us drunkenly piled into a little Honda (Kanu and Adit went home because the latter had so much “fun” that he got sick) and headed out for some food. We had to pass through a sobriety checkpoint, which didn’t seem to worry anyone at all despite the fact that the thing looked like a clown car. Our driver Thay was sober though, so they just waved us through. Maybe I had too much to drink, but it looked like the cop’s flashlight actually had a Singha logo on it too. If anyone can confirm that for me, I’d appreciate it, as that seemed like the most ridiculous thing to me.

For the eight of us to stuff ourselves at 3:30 a.m., it cost us 940 baht. That’s $27. It was also the first time I ate fried pork intestine and a squid stew after a night of partying. We took a cab ride back, watched the beginning of Penelope (why?) and passed out.

Doing work on fried pork intestines and squid

Also, there are little details to the night’s partying that pushed it over the top that I am leaving out. It is these things that made it the best night that I’ve ever had at a nightclub and my favorite of the vacation. If you’d like to know, just ask me. If you go, I bet they’ll happen to you too. But I’m not putting them up and ruining any chances of a political career. You know, just in case.

Friday
We got up on Friday and loafed around a bit at Adit’s house. Sumo, his little dog that formerly wanted to kill us, eventually warmed up to us. We watched Asian pop videos because it was too hot outside. At this point, Angela and I didn’t necessarily feel like we had to do much anymore. Our quota for technicolor adventuring had been reached. Sitting around watching creepy bubblegum K-pop music videos was okay as a case study for Asian insanity. So many “whys”:

When it finally cooled, we did make it out to this night market by the big pagoda in town. They went the previous night, but I had knocked out around 9 p.m. It was good enough for them to want to go the next day. And it really was. We gorged ourselves on seafood: crab, prawns, snails, scallops, mackerel… It only cost us about $35 total. I think I ate the most this time and declared myself the winner.

When we first arrived

The seafood cart that we ate at. I think this says 'Delicious'.

Snails were first

Our food being cooked on the grill

Scallops?

The sky that night was crazy

We hopped on a bus and heading back into Bangkok around 9:30 p.m. Angela had to pee for the last half hour and was visibily freaking out about it. When we finally got into town, it was drizzling, so we headed back and ended up just passing out.

Saturday
I don’t know what it was, but we woke up late. Around 2:30 or so. Which was a good thing because the night ended up lasting longer than expected. After finally getting out of the apartment, we headed to Siam Plaza. Got some food at this one Japanese place called Rice. It was good, as pretty much everything out here is. Angela slid a magazine across our table and knocked over Jenna’s iced green tea everywhere. Remarkably, we still don’t hate each other.

Angela goes wandering around looking for shoes for that night while Jenna takes me to go get my hair cut. The area we were in is supposedly the center of all Bangkok trends and there was definitely a lot of flashy teenagers meandering about. It was also the first time that I saw one of those boutiques where you can have little fish clean your feet or whatever. I remember hearing about that in Korea or Japan a few years back, but Jenna told me that it was a new thing out here, which only reaffirmed my position that Bangkok is serendipitously behind the rest of the Asian world. I’ve never had more time spent on my hair than that cut. Jenna said the receptionist did a double take with me because she probably thought I was Chinawut with my sunglasses on. Now, whenever I say that name, Angela punches Jenna. I say it often.

We all met up after we did a little shopping and Corlid soon joined us. We sat around in CentralWorld again, with Angela shoe shopping and the rest of us enjoying the air conditioning. A little more shopping, some food at McDonald’s in preparation of the evening’s partying and we hopped in a cab to change at Jenna’s place. Which was absolutely horrible. Angela burped from her watermelon smoothie (which she gets everywhere) and Corlid and Jenna were giggling about the driver’s surprised reaction. They then laughed more and commented on his response, which was to drive faster in disgust. This only exacerbated the problem and he started driving like a man with a death wish. Bangkok cabs inexplicably don’t have seatbelts in the backseat, where there was 4 of us crowded inside, so I closed my eyes because you’re more likely to survive an accident if you don’t expect the collision. This is a thought that went through my head. We made it back okay.

So we got changed since we had plans to check out BKK nightlife, which we tried doing on Monday but was sort of a bust. I was a bit apprehensive because none of us, Angela and myself included, are the clubbing type. On a recommendation, we went to this nightclub called Route66. It turned into my favorite night of the trip and I’ll say that I’ll definitely return one of these days. For my money, Route66 is the best Bangkok nightclub out there. More on this later.

Sunday
We woke up. They went to the Internet cafe for a bit. I loafed in the room to stay away from the sun and edited photos. We finally left in the late afternoon for food. Afterwards, to the Suan Lum Night Market that we previously went to. Angela and I got massages and we plan on heading back on Wednesday. A slow day, but I needed it to recover.

This is not our photo. That is why it sucks. We'll get a better one on Wednesday.

Basically, it was an awesome weekend. So great that I’m seriously considering the flight change penalty as a necessary evil and staying longer. We’ll see.

anyways, shawn became pretty popular among the crowd. as he looks like some thai singer previously mentioned, rich and most importantly, american. with his newfound celebrity status, shawn is even considering his stay here till the end of the week. and as much as i love thailand and the abundance of good and cheap food, i’m ready to come home. because i miss looking for parking in la, i miss paying $12 for an entree as opposed to $0.85, i miss not being revered for speaking english, i miss paying bills and i miss my friends.

we’re all done doing the tourist-y stuff, we’re mainly just hanging out with our new thai friends, casually shopping for gifts and stopping by internet cafes to listen to girls generation.  g-g-g-g-baby-baby-baby.

Please do not forget to take those malaria pills. You have to take them once a week. also be careful of what you eat, you can catch all kinds of diseases like hepatitis. And next time , wear a helmet.

Love yo and keep in touch!!

Mom and Dad

me and jenna.

yawning monkey. gross.

today we explored adit’s hometown, rachaburi. home of the original floating market. we had a rather nature-filled day as we explored some mountain, a waterfall, a sheep farm and even a bat cave! first we went to the floating market. it was hot and sticky. we didn’t ride the boat because we were lazy.

floating market.

very calming.

some guy fishing.

goodbye, old man.

we have nicknamed shawn "ddim" because he is always sleeping or the first to fall asleep.

as we went left for the other side of the lake, we found ourselves surrounded by monkeys and emaciated cows (even the cows are skinnier than me ).

gross. at least they weren't as hostile and aggressive as the previous ones we saw.

mama and baby. still gross.

a tired jenna.

if you notice, his clothes are still dry. meaning. i could've helped him.

there's another person in the back, but he went in intentionally.

dork.

post-fall, climbing.

group picture.

pretty flowers.

i love lamb!!

yuck!

looks like smoke, MADE OF BATS!

large flocks of anything disgust me.

singha makes shawn talkative.

as previously mentioned, thailand is a bit lacking in the alcoholic drinks department. while their streets are lined with carts serving fresh fruit smoothies (i’m completely obsessed with the watermelon ones, as i have to have at least two a day) and their 7-elevens are filled with various teas and juices, they severely lack any variety in alcohol.

every time we’ve tried to order a drink, we had to make some compromise with the bar b/c they don’t have it. most of the time we’re left taking vodka shots or jack and coke. it seems like most places carry just johnnie walker black and some generic vodka. some places don’t even have oj to make screwdrivers. and even if they do, it takes over half an hour to get our drinks.

that said, it’s just easier to order a tall singha beer, maybe two because Shawn doesn’t want to share.