Trip 4 - Day 5

14th August

Off to the Tuesday market at Soi Buakaow to buy some new reading glasses and a couple of pairs of shorts for A No 'splashing out' with food at S&P this trip, we eat at one of the cafe places in the market and I have a fried pork dish with rice and a bottle of Coke. The cost for the two of us is 80 baht and then after wandering all round the market, A finds some shorts that she likes and two pairs cost 150 baht. I also get my new reading glasses and that's another 95 baht spent. We also fiill the scooter with fuel for 90 baht.

Later in the afternoon, BM CasperUK and his lady Wan come round and the girls disappear off to sit and chat with some of the neighbours, whilst I discuss the housing requirements for Kevin with him. It appears that he's also looking for new accomodation, so he's been looking for Kevin as well. He says that he found one really stunning place, but at 60k baht a month it was out of the price range for either him or Kevin. For those that might be interested it was at a development called C'est Palais ( http://www.thaithani.co.th/ ). We continue chatting and the time just flies by. It's now past 18:00, so we go and find the girls who are all sitting round eating and chatting.

CasperUK says that he'll go straight to Noi's for the curry night, however I'd decided not to go as A had said that she was going to cook tonight. It seems that this has slipped her mind though as she's eaten with the other girls and is now "Im". CasperUK says that it's no problem and the curry will be his treat, so we head off up the Soi .

The bar is already quite busy when we arrive, but we find seats and order up our first drinks. Several other BM's arrive for the curry including Mulphy, MM, Scumbag & Helicopter. After eating, we're sitting chatting when the girls suddenly arrive, so they grab a drink and then go inside to play pool.

Myself and CasperUK go to watch and it's actually quite entertaining as they are both lousy pool players. A few games pass and then we move to the lounge bar where the Nintendo Wii is hooked up to the projector big screen. The four of us play 10 pin bowling and I must admit that it's quite addictive and my competitive nature takes over, however I am gutted to lose to the girls in all three games that we played.

We finally settle up at around 01:00 and head back home. My checkbin is only 240 baht as CasperUK has paid for the curry (which included 1 free drink).

As we are getting ready for bed, A then says to me 'Why your friend think I no good for you?'. This has me somewhat confused and it takes some considerable effort to get at least part of the story out of her. It seems that when the girls have been talking, a few comments made by some of the Cherry Bar girls to CasperUK & Wan have been relayed to A. One story is that the gold bracelet (bought on Trip 3) that she is currently wearing is not the one I bought, but simply a trinket bought in the market as the original has been sold off.

Other stories are that she hasn't gone to work in a shop, but is simply working at another bar somewhere and that she has been seeing other 'customers', otherwise why would they be giving money as tip to her? (I'm pretty sure that it's not the case and I do know of a couple of the BM's that have given her money). I try my best to convince her that it's only jealousy on the part of the girls spreading the rumours, but she's not convinced that I believe her I think. She is also convinced that Adam (Hammer) also thinks she's like that as I know he's joked with her that the scooter and the gold would be sold as soon as I got on the plane.

It is quite scary how insecure the girls can be and also how bitchy they can be to one another behind the scenes. Other stories are told and I find it surprising the lies that they tell one another for what would appear to be no other reason than a simple 'my falang is better than your falang' scoring game.

We finally settle down and in the quiet dark night, I reflect on some of the things that we've talked about. A is back to work in the morning and I really need to snap out of 'holiday mode'. I've been out too much already and whilst I haven't been going mad on the spending, I haven't had a night in yet. This is party town and there's always something going on, but I need to be selective and decide which events I'm going to attend.

For me, the weekly Thursday night bar crawls have always been fun, so this will be my primary night out for the week, however I shall need to call time on the trips to Ban Chang & Soi 6 as I know that my resolve will weaken. I will also need to be honest with Avatar Girl and make it clear that I will only be able to see her to buy a few drinks and nothing more for now.