The Ladyboys of Bangkok

Ingredients

17 Thai Ladyboys x 2
£50 of free money
4 friends for a stir-fry dinner
2 nightclubs
1 ferry-boat
(add suncream as required).

Method

Where to begin? You will need plenty of free time for this recipe, and matching stamina. It’s a delight though, and will leave you feeling replete when it’s over. I started on Monday, quietly, by having an easy night at home doing not very much. I find this is the best way to go about a Monday evening: it takes a hell of a lot out of you getting up on a Monday morning so I think the evening is best spent recovering from the shock. As it turned out, this was the only night in I had this week, as James had managed to swing half-price tickets to see The Ladyboys of Bangkok for the following night.

Forget anything you know about female impersonators: this show was quite simply astounding. James I rolled up to the venue expecting a seedy, crass, sexually risqué event (note how we still went along anyway), but what we got was none of those things (well except the risqué part, perhaps). The theatre they had constructed on Bristol’s Castle Park was a giant replica-Thai nightclub complete with bar, mini-restuarant and gardens. The audience sat at tables throughout the auditorium to give it a proper ‘revue’ feel. This gave us great fun speculating with everyone at our table about ‘where exactly do they put it?’ during the interval. There’s nothing like talking about the truly personal with total strangers: how many euphemisms for ‘breasts’ can there really be?

On a Tuesday night most of the gay venues in Bristol are closed, so the place was rammed with the staff and regulars thereof, not to mention the most ostentatious drag-queens I have ever seen: the atmosphere was electric before the curtain even went up. When it did, the crowd went wild. The show itself was nothing like we had imagined: it was just amazing. No crass, cheap, penis gags. No nudity at all (though some extremely skimpy costumes that boggled the mind with their gravity-defying engineering). Considering they’re telling the same joke over and over again (men dressed as women, ha ha ha) it was fantastic fun and never got boring. Artist after artist rolled up, looking amazing, to lip-sync to classic and contemporary numbers, each deserving and receiving more applause than the last. My favourites were the Pussy-cat Dolls (amazingly less trashy than the real things, given the circumstances), the Can-Can, Tina Turner, and an exceptional impersonation of Shirley Bassey singing “This Is My Life”. The standing ovation at the end was well-deserved.

Aside from the quality of the show, there was of course the small matter of the quality of the impersonators: how convincing were they? Alarmingly convincing is the answer. All of them could have passed for women in every day life, though there were two or three that were something else! In the programme, and at the start of the show, they reassure you that everyone in the show is a ‘male Thai national’, but even with that knowledge there were a couple that made you think again, such was the tranformation they underwent for the show. Perhaps they live life as women full-time, and why not? If you can pull it off like they can, go for it, I say! At the end of the show, by which time me and the strange woman next to me (cheering as though it were up to us to keep the whole thing going) had become best of friends, and could only declare that yes, we were jealous of them. Absolutely remarkable.

On Wednesday we had friends over for dinner and it was all we could do not to rave about the show all evening. Fortunately we managed to talk about other things as well, or else everyone might have become quite bored, but not before we had planted the seed of a return visit to show everyone else what they were missing. Thursday was KTN night as usual and then the weekend was upon us! Hurrah!!!

Friday was my last day at the AHRC and after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I said my good-byes to my co-workers and cleared my desk. I think I would have quite liked to stay there permanently, visiting post-graduate fairs and advising people on how to get funding for Arts and Humanities courses, but I think it’s for the best: at the end of the day it’s just another office job and I don’t want that again. So, on to the weekend.

That night was a free night out, thanks to the miracle of mystery shopping. A friend of mine introduced me to the company and this was my first time – a mystery shopping virgin. I always thought it was a funny thing to do but everyone I’ve told seems thrilled by the idea: £25 for a night out, the only stipulation being you must visit their choice of bar at least once after 10pm. What could be simpler? Doing two venues in one night meant double the funds, so it was only fair that I take my visiting friend, Basket, along with Jim and couple of others to share in the free booze (what on earth would I do with £50 worth of drink on my own that my liver would stand?). I think we were rumbled in the first venue (Babylon), since my every request was anticipated and resolved before I even opened my mouth, but Po Na Na was great fun and I think we pulled it off there. I wasn’t really expecting much of the night but going to places I haven’t been for about ten years was a refreshing change and it turned out to be a BRILLIANT night. I think have the charm of a night out is the anticcipation, or rather the lack thereof. Invariably, if you think it will be an amazing night, it turns out to be mediocre, but when you don’t plan them, or you do it on the spur of the moment (remember all those ‘cheeky ones’ after work, hoochies?) it turns into the stuff of legends – The Ladyboys of Bangkok are a case in point.

Battling the inevitable hangover on Saturday morning, we headed out for lunch in the sunshine. The British summer is upon us and anyone who lives here knows that while the sun shines, you get the hell outside and enjoy it. Thus, instead of the mooted Wagamama lunch, I demanded somewhere with a terrace to “get some sun on your pasty legs”, and the waterside Mud Dock fitted the bill nicely. After a lovely salad lunch in the sun with friends, we saw Basket off at the train station and returned to the city centre on the ferry boat. Can you believe this is a commuter service? It’s a lovely way to travel – congestion free, on time and value for money to boot – arguably the best transport system Bristol has to offer, and yet wholly under-rated. James and I promptly switched from citizens of Bristol to excited tourists as we disembarked from the ferry, splashed around in the city’s water features and photographed the whole thing for posterity. The rest of the day was spent chilling out at a barbecue recovering from our phenomenal sunburn, before taking friends back along to see the miracles of make-up and implants at the Thai Pavillion. I know I’m harping on about it, but if you get the chance to see it I insist you go – you will not believe your eyes!

Next week: More summer fun, more barbecues and doubtless more drinks. Perhaps I should start some kind of a cocktail book…