ladyboys

"How much did you pay?" The man smoking cigarette asked me. I was waiting for my driver. He had gone to the bathroom.
"40 Bhat for four stops." I said to the fat Thai man. He was sitting in a narrow slice of shade under a building ledge. He was dressed in slightly soiled white linen. Beads of sweat popped up on his forehead as fast as he could mop them up.
"That's a good price. How did you get that?"
"I was sitting under a tree on the other side of town. A woman came up to me and started chatting me up. She's a midwife at a hospital in Chang Mai. She made a list of places for me to go. Then she got me a Tuk Tuk and she made the price with the driver. What's the deal with the fish?"
"Special fish. They come here to the temple to feed. Only catfish, no other fish."
Past the buddies temple down a narrow ally between the out buildings there was a rusty metal dock. The pea green water there was roiling with catfish.
"I saw a young couple putting baby fish into the water. What was that?"
"What do you think?"
"Something to do with the full moon tomorrow? A special blessing for a baby or wedding or something?"
"Yes. Setting them free. In the next stage of life the catfish will be people. If they see you and remember you and you have no money, they may help you."
At the top of the ramp there had been a man selling food for the fish. I had bought a bowl and sprinkled it on the murky waters of the Chao Phraya. As each little nugget hit the water hundreds of fish vied for it, squirming one on top of each other. If one of them spotted me in their next life I was covered.
"This is a local temple. Not many tourist. Where else did you go?" He took a long drag on his cigarette pulling the blue smoke into his flat brown nostrils.
"I saw the Big Buddha."
The big Buddha is an enormous golden statue on a tiny little park. The key word being "golden". I sat on the grass there text messaging back home. The park is surrounded with small two story concrete houses one next to the other. Once brightly painted, now faded, each house has a porch awning. Scrawny cats prowled around the food vendors there. A mangy yellow dog came up to me and sniffed my hand. He looked at me with sad eyes, whined and then wandered away.
"Where to next?" The cigarette man asked.
"I don't know, some place called "Voglee."
"Oh, very special place, you saw it on TV?"
"No."
"No? Even if you have a million dollars you cant get into there without a membership card. I have a gold membership card." He held it up for me to see. "You know Armani?"
"Sure."
"They make all the suit for Armani. They make you an Armani suit for maybe $300. You get a special card and your measurements are on file for life. Every year you get a new catalog in the mail. This week they have a special promotion. For the first time they let tourist in for seven days. Today is the last day. Very good quality, 100 percent cashmere, I know I'm a lawyer."
The driver showed up looking relieved. We took off.

A Tuk Tuk is a little motorbike that has been outfitted with a metal roof and sides and two upholstered seats in the back. Every color of the rainbow is represented in broad stripes on its body and vinyl seat covers. The drivers are little hustlers and you cant trust them. They are forbidden by the government to charge any more than 100 bhat for any trip. They routinely try to get three or four hundred out of you. The local price is 10 bhat per trip. If they take you to a fancy shop, even only to look, they get a kick back of a full tank of petrol from the shop keepers. If you know this, sometimes you can bargain for a free trip.

I was fitted for a suit at Voglee. Then I went to the golden mountain. Later that evening I met up with Jenni. We had dinner in Khaosan, kind of a miniature sleazier version of Las Vegas. The backpackers and the whores go there to mix and mingle. Special extra strong drinks are available in all the bars. They advertise that they don't check IDs. I told her about my day.
"What do you want to do tonight?" She asked.
"Lets go see a ladyboy show."
She laughed.
"Well I figure you're a farm girl from Montana. You moved to Seattle and a few weeks out of college you're now an international business woman. You're already in the outer stratosphere. By now you must be up for anything."
"Ladyboys sounds fine to me." She reached for her purse.
"No, let me treat." I offered.
"No, let me expense it." She countered with a sly smile.
I had been trumped.

The ladyboys are Thai transexuals. So many tourists are fooled by them that the Thai women insist that there is a law that demands that they inform anybody who picks them up, of their gender transformation.
"I think they're just bitter." Jenni told me. "Some of them are more beautiful than any woman. And none of them have asses." Jenni is quite proud of her latina ass.
One Thai man, a self proclaimed playboy, told me that there are 10 million Ladyboys in Thailand or one sixth of the population. Hmmm.

The show was a rip off in style and tone of a Parisian cabaret. The dancing was lame. They did have wonderful costumes and the boys, albeit lip-synching, gave it their all. An Asian sensibility permeated all of the numbers. In one bit a James Bond type guy marries a virgin princess. He them proceeds to shun her for shall we say more experienced women. To please him she transforms herself into a vamp. He rejects her and forces her to once again don her wedding vestments. In the final moments of this tragedy she starts to shoot herself, and then shoots him.

After the show Jenni and I parted. We couldn't stop laughing at the show, especially the ending that featured three Asian ladyboy Marylins dancing in unison with a chorus line of boys with white tophats and tuxedos. I hugged her and kissed her cheek. She jumped into a cab. I rode back in a Tuk Tuk. The next morning she called me. Her boss was sending her to Hong Kong.