Karaoke Trolling in Mae Sot (New Year 2010)
New Year 2009, I was roadtripping in West Thailand with my very best troll friend Sanna, and a Bangkok ("Bangers", for those who know) based Mongolian troll Delger. We spent our New Year's eve in a town called Mae Sot, which is located at the border of Thailand and Burma. We were terribly lucky to have a beautiful villa to stay in, through Delger's contacts, and it was such a perfect place to chill out with some cold champagne -another great arrangement of Delger.
No big party for us, thank you, just a relaxing evening with some bubbly for the three of us, and supposedly the very last cigarrettes ever for Delger. Indeed, he smoked like a chimney the whole evening. Soon after midnight Delger got tired -perhaps from all that smoke, perhaps from driving all day to get us safe to our destination. He went to sleep, but Sanna and I stayed up for what was supposed to be the last drinks.
But it started to feel a little bit too calm...New Year's eve, come on! You do need some action, even when you are far away from everything. And as those who know us can witness, it has never been a problem for Sanna and me to improvise a party whenever occasion presents!
We left the house to explore the town, but at the same time, not willing to go too far as it was dark and the pathways were poorly litten. But we heard music coming from somewhere behind the woods and saw some lights, so we headed towards that direction.
What we found was a karaoke bar, that also doubled as a local girl bar. At this point, our yearning for a cold beer had become almost insuportable, so we decided to step in for a drink.
Our entrance caught the attention of everybody in that little bar featuring plastic chairs, couple of drunk men, colourful lights, loud Thai music performed with high, pitchy voice by local karaoke stars, and lots of pretty girls (or boys - in Thailand you can never tell). All the girls (let's assume they were girls) stared at us with a rather unfriendly look on their pretty faces and one of them started to yell something almost hysterically. I asked Sanna what she is saying and she translated it: ”kick them out, madame, kick them out!!!”, she was screaming. Oops. I got goose bumps: does this mean we are not going to get our New Year's drinks?
But Sanna was as determined as I was to get our cold beers, so we just igonored those hookers who obviously had misunderstood something, and were thinking that we were there to complete our poor academic salaries by stealing their clients. I swear that if looks could kill we would have not lived to see 2010!
Once we were seated in our table, the local Madame Claude herself came to check us out. I guess with her years of experience on the field she could rapidly tell that we are not professionals of love and agreed to serve us our beers.
The music was playing loud and every singer seemed to be worse than the previous one, but trying to make up for lack of skill by increasing the volume. I don't know what they were singing about, but I am 99,99% positive that they were long songs.
Then, I do not remember how this happened but we found ourselves on the sticky dance floor surrounded by those few men who were there. I had no clue how to dance to that kind of music, but no worries! There was a man there to guide me through the rhytm. A little bit obese, sweaty and pretty drunk man, who was about one head shorter than me, but with the most friendly smile you can imagine on his face. He had the allure of a local police officer. But how did he move! With his index finger and thumb pressed together, arms in the air he moved so elegantly, like a lady. The contrast between his sweaty rural man look and ladylike dancing style was so striking that I could not help retain myself from laughing (and perhaps beer and champagne also had something to do with this) while at the same time I was trying to imitate his dance moves.
And what did he do? He stared at me and my poor Thai dancing and he started to laugh too. Apparently I did not pick up the moves as well as I thought, and he exchanged some significant looks with his friends, like saying ”hey look at that white girl trying to dance Thai dances”. When I saw him, his look, his dancing and HIM laughing at ME, it just made me explose -it was just too funny! And again, he apparently thought the same about me and he laughed even louder. It went on and on, until we were not even trying to dance anymore, just staring at each other and laughing like maniacs.
By that time we had caught the attention of absolutely every single person in that bar, including Madame Claude herself, and were surrounded by the crowd, all amazed by this bizarre dancing scene of me and the rural police officer. The general LOL took over everybody and suddenly it felt more like being in a some kind of a cult meeting, where everybody is suddenly filled with joy of the Holy Spirit, rather than being in a Thai border town hooker bar. It even went to such extent that the girl who was on the stage singing karaoke had to stop singing, because she was laughing too much to continue!
We decided that the night out in Mae Sot had exceeded all the expectations, although -remember?- we did not even have any expectations at the first place, and we sneaked out from that crazy laughing crowd and returned to our peaceful villa to finally catch some sleep.
No big party for us, thank you, just a relaxing evening with some bubbly for the three of us, and supposedly the very last cigarrettes ever for Delger. Indeed, he smoked like a chimney the whole evening. Soon after midnight Delger got tired -perhaps from all that smoke, perhaps from driving all day to get us safe to our destination. He went to sleep, but Sanna and I stayed up for what was supposed to be the last drinks.
But it started to feel a little bit too calm...New Year's eve, come on! You do need some action, even when you are far away from everything. And as those who know us can witness, it has never been a problem for Sanna and me to improvise a party whenever occasion presents!
We left the house to explore the town, but at the same time, not willing to go too far as it was dark and the pathways were poorly litten. But we heard music coming from somewhere behind the woods and saw some lights, so we headed towards that direction.
What we found was a karaoke bar, that also doubled as a local girl bar. At this point, our yearning for a cold beer had become almost insuportable, so we decided to step in for a drink.
Our entrance caught the attention of everybody in that little bar featuring plastic chairs, couple of drunk men, colourful lights, loud Thai music performed with high, pitchy voice by local karaoke stars, and lots of pretty girls (or boys - in Thailand you can never tell). All the girls (let's assume they were girls) stared at us with a rather unfriendly look on their pretty faces and one of them started to yell something almost hysterically. I asked Sanna what she is saying and she translated it: ”kick them out, madame, kick them out!!!”, she was screaming. Oops. I got goose bumps: does this mean we are not going to get our New Year's drinks?
But Sanna was as determined as I was to get our cold beers, so we just igonored those hookers who obviously had misunderstood something, and were thinking that we were there to complete our poor academic salaries by stealing their clients. I swear that if looks could kill we would have not lived to see 2010!
Once we were seated in our table, the local Madame Claude herself came to check us out. I guess with her years of experience on the field she could rapidly tell that we are not professionals of love and agreed to serve us our beers.
The music was playing loud and every singer seemed to be worse than the previous one, but trying to make up for lack of skill by increasing the volume. I don't know what they were singing about, but I am 99,99% positive that they were long songs.
Then, I do not remember how this happened but we found ourselves on the sticky dance floor surrounded by those few men who were there. I had no clue how to dance to that kind of music, but no worries! There was a man there to guide me through the rhytm. A little bit obese, sweaty and pretty drunk man, who was about one head shorter than me, but with the most friendly smile you can imagine on his face. He had the allure of a local police officer. But how did he move! With his index finger and thumb pressed together, arms in the air he moved so elegantly, like a lady. The contrast between his sweaty rural man look and ladylike dancing style was so striking that I could not help retain myself from laughing (and perhaps beer and champagne also had something to do with this) while at the same time I was trying to imitate his dance moves.
And what did he do? He stared at me and my poor Thai dancing and he started to laugh too. Apparently I did not pick up the moves as well as I thought, and he exchanged some significant looks with his friends, like saying ”hey look at that white girl trying to dance Thai dances”. When I saw him, his look, his dancing and HIM laughing at ME, it just made me explose -it was just too funny! And again, he apparently thought the same about me and he laughed even louder. It went on and on, until we were not even trying to dance anymore, just staring at each other and laughing like maniacs.
By that time we had caught the attention of absolutely every single person in that bar, including Madame Claude herself, and were surrounded by the crowd, all amazed by this bizarre dancing scene of me and the rural police officer. The general LOL took over everybody and suddenly it felt more like being in a some kind of a cult meeting, where everybody is suddenly filled with joy of the Holy Spirit, rather than being in a Thai border town hooker bar. It even went to such extent that the girl who was on the stage singing karaoke had to stop singing, because she was laughing too much to continue!
We decided that the night out in Mae Sot had exceeded all the expectations, although -remember?- we did not even have any expectations at the first place, and we sneaked out from that crazy laughing crowd and returned to our peaceful villa to finally catch some sleep.
