Later that evening, we went back into Bangkok and grabbed some dinner (Meredith is sad because she was starting to feel really ill). And then after we finished eating, we said farewell to Jeremy and headed to...
After getting kicked out of the hotel for our late night piano playing, we wandered around the streets for a little while longer checking out the seedy underbelly of Bangkok's nightlife. And then a little after 3am, we said farewell to Jeremy (he had to get up early the next morning and get his classroom ready for the coming school year) and headed back to our hotel.
After our durian experience, Jeremy took the three of us into some hotel's lobby so that he could loudly play the piano for us and sing (at 3am). Needless to say, he only made it about halfway through his first song before the management insisted that we leave. Hahahaha.
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 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).
After dinner, I had to go to an international calling center and call the founder of Yodle to talk about a potential job opportunity. (I ended up turning down the job a couple of days later, but six months later after the company had grown a bit, I ended up taking it and started there in April of 2008 as their Director of Product Management. Woot!).
Anyway, while I was away on this call, Jeremy took Meredith out for a couple of buckets (he doesn't drink) and when I met back up with them they'd decided that they were taking me to...
Jeremy's a vegetarian too and when he told us that he'd never been to May Kaidee's restaurant, we decided to go back there for dinner (even though we'd just eaten lunch there like 5 hours ago!). Hahaha.
...my friend Jeremy had arrived! I met Jeremy in 1994 at Keystone College in La Plume, PA. (Keystone College was a junior college for fuckups and I went there for two years before I transferred to Syracuse to finish my degree). After leaving Keystone, Jeremy moved to California, got involved with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living Foundation and after traveling around India as a musician, ended up moving to Bangkok in 2005 to teach at an International School.
We'd lost touch for years, but he somehow stumbled across pictures from my first trip to Thailand and emailed me to know that he was living in Thailand! We caught up via email and I promised that if I ever came back to Thailand, I'd get in touch and we'd get together! And sure enough, we did!
