Thai me up, Thai me down

Just back from a holiday in Thailand - my first time in the country. It's a fascinating place and I feel that I've only scratched the surface. We started off in Bangkok, which is overcrowded, polluted and frantic, but with a great mixture of the traditional and the modern. We checked out some of the culture, including the Reclining Buddha (pictured right), but like many other tourists we also headed for the Pat Pong area on a couple of evenings. If you're looking for a sexy young Thai girl - or ladyboy - you can't go wrong, as there are literally thousands of them in the beer bars offering sex for not much more than the price of a few drinks. Since I was with my girlfriend I didn't partake, but there were plenty of middle aged potbellied Europeans who were.
From Bangkok we went on to Phuket which had come highly recommended. Unfortunately it rained most of the time - the monsoon season is running late this year - so we didn't see or do very much. Finally we went to Pattaya, which has a reputation as one of the great fleshpots of the world. It's a reputation that's well deserved. The main entertainment area - Walking Street - makes Bourbon Street look very very tame, with hundreds of of clubs, sex shows and beer bars and again thousands of girls on offer. There are a lot of expats living there doing little more than drinking and shagging and they seem quite happy with life. As for music, we found a place called the Blues Factory - a decent enough club with a Thai band playing rock, rather than blues. The singer was crap, but the guitarist was pretty good, so not a complete disaster. Will we go again? Yes, probably, but next time we have to see the real Thailand - not just the tourist bits.