Cabaret!

Thursday 9 October
Bangkok

So for a want of anything better to do in Bangkok, we take a commuter boat trip (25p flat fare for any journey). The good Doctor has done most of the touristy stuff in Bangkok already so it's kind of hard to find something to do. But that's OK, we just take it easy.

So we board a boat and head up river. There's not that much to see from the river though, just the roofs of the Grand Palace and the odd Wat (temple) here and there.

The guidebook says the boats stop at a certain pier, but we find out that they don't, and end up going too far north. No worries though, we take the next one back and stop somewhere to eat some food in a cafe.

Then we take a taxi to a Sky Train station. Now the good Doctor has a phobia of Thai taxis, having had some bad experiences in the past. However over the following days I took a bunch of them and had no problems at all. In fact the only time I had any problem was on this occasion, when the first taxi we found triedto charge us 200 THB flat fare, and not on the meter. No worries again though, as there are so many cabs about we hailed another within seconds and he took us on the meter, eventually costing about 90 THB. Maybe bad taxis can sniff out doctorates, or something!

Anyway later that evening we head out with Pete and Catherine to this random German-themed venue. It's a large arena with a stage, it has its own brewery in house brewing German-style beer (made in Thailand), and then they have a series of performances on the stage while you eat which vary from the ridiculous to the sublime. The beer is served in four foot high clear cylinders with a tap at the bottom. And the food is Thai-German fusion, if you can possibly get your head round such a concept. Frankfurters with oyster sauce. Coleslaw with beansprouts. Sauerkraut with crispy duck. For some reason, and god knows how, it actually works.

But it's the performances on the stage that steal the show. We came in to a fat guy singing a heavily Thai-accented version of Delilah by Tom Jones. There was an impressive acrobatic display. There were guys singing saccharine Thai pop hits. There were other covers including an acoustic (and accented) version of a Scorpions song that wasn't Winds of Change but sounded so similar it was irritating that you weren't hearing the more famous song. There were Chinese dragons on large balls. There was a version of that rap song Low complete with full dance routine. All the music and singing was live though, and pretty impressive and skillful at that.

But the biscuit was taken by some bizarre cabaret performance that involved a guy and another guy dressed as a woman, moving as though they were marionettes or automatons, playing out a story, you know, the usual robot-boy meets robot-girl-who-is-a-boy-in-drag, kiss, get married, have a child, arguments, what looks like some domestic violence, and it all ends with a man in tight pants pretending to be a baby crying but actually looking like some freakish paedophile. We've all been there.

It was all in Thai so who knows what subtle subtexts and piercingly observant social commentary was really going on, but Pete thought it was a freakshow too so maybe my inital thoughts were right. A truly unique experience.