At 2am, the bars closed and we wandered around Nana Plaza talking to people and watching the madness of drunk tourists scrambling to secure "company" for the night. Here's Meredith and Jeremy posing with a kid who was selling flowers that wouldn't leave Jeremy alone because he thought it was so funny that Jeremy spoke some Thai. Hahaha. (Bonus points to the little kid for flipping the bird).
Meredith was totally blown away by all the Thai ladyboys walking around and all sorts of questions about them that Jeremy couldn't answer - so Jeremy being Jeremy, he proceeded to ask every single ladyboy that passed Meredith's questions. Some of which included "Do you still have a penis?" and "When men hire you, do they want you to act like a man or a woman?"
Most ladyboys are not shy AT ALL so when Jeremy started asking questions like this, it led to AWESOMENESS. My favorite part of the night was when Jeremy was asking a ladyboy a bunch of questions and working up to the "Do you still have a penis" part, the ladyboy was like "All your questions are making me excited. Here, I want you to feel my excitement" and proceeded to put Jeremy's hand right on the erection that was starting to form inside her miniskirt! Hahahaha.
The best part was, Jeremy wasn't even phased by it. He just laughed and then was like "So, if I wanted to party with you, how much would it cost and what would we do?" The lady put Jeremy's hand back on her penis and was like "1,500 Baht. You fuck me..." (then she leaned in and lowered her voice to a man's timbre and finished) "...then I FUCK YOU!" Hahahah. Oh, man. It was epic.
The night was really funny. The girls also LOVED Meredith's big blue eyes and kept telling her that they didn't usually "go with" other ladies but that if she was interested in one of them "that was ok." Hahaha. We ended up getting really drunk and hanging out with the girls and answering a lot of questions about life in New York City.
...the infamous Nana Plaza for my birthday! Nana Plaza is one of Bangkok's really famous red light districts (and was featured prominently in John Burdett's book Bangkok 8 that I was reading at the time). The place is sort of a mind fuck. At the onset it seems like any other bikini go-go bar, except that the girls there are all prostitutes. They each have numbers on their bikinis so you can order them (!!!).
Most of the girls there are from small rural towns in the middle of nowhere and are sent to Bangkok to work in the sex trade so they can earn money for their families. They realized right away that our group wasn't there for sex, but thought it was really funny that we were just there to hang out and have fun. (And they all LOVED the fact that Jeremy spoke pidgin Thai).