Chris's 1st Date

Meeting people in Bangkok is not easy. Most companies have one or two ex-pats working for them at the most (It being an expensive old business bringing people to work over here) so there are not the same opportunities for making friends through work as there are in the UK.

Sorry........struggling to control it........aarrrggggg........rant coming up.......
It is notoriously difficult for women to get work here. The recruitment section of the newspaper is quite astonishing - there are no discrimination laws (at least none that I am aware of) so there is nothing stopping a company asking for a female Thai National who is slim, pretty and who has been educated at a foreign university!! I'm not kidding - one I looked at today wanted a woman between the age of 23 and 28 and stated that applications would be rejected if their weight and a recent photo were not included (This was not for the position of a bar girl - it was for an office manager). God only knows what you do if you are a fat ugly Thai!! This is why there are so many women's groups!!!
Ahhhh........feel better now.......heart rate slowing.........rant over!

Anyway, back to Chris's first date.....Elyssa and I have become good friends over the last few months but the husbands had never met so we arranged a 'date'. In typical Chris style we ended up running late (yep - you guessed it - we have arranged to do something in the evening so something came up at work) actually I didn't feel so bad about this as we got a text message from Elyssa saying that Tim had just walked in the door at the exact same time I had sent one to her saying the same thing about Chris!! (It's good to know it's not just me!!).

We had a great night - we met at a bar/restaurant called Ad Makers in Soi Lang Suan (Note: Lang Suan in Thai actually means 'behind the park' in this case Lumpini Park - well i found it interesting even if no-one else does!!). It's fab - has a good mix of Thai and Farang clientele, a good band (Which starts off not too loud and gets louder as the night progresses - perfect if you want to eat then have a few drinks) and does really tasty cheap Thai food (Can highly recommend the prawns wrapped in bacon with chili dip and the chicken in pandas leaves - ooohhh it's making my mouth water just thinking about it). We had a very entertaining evening regaling each other with funny stories - in our case our trip to Wales last New Year (For those of you who don't know it it's a very comical story involving a hotel on a hill, a staring red headed old man, banjos, a skeleton dressed as a bride and a very unsubtle Tomato (Tom)) and theirs involved some hilarious stories about Tim's Croatian family which involved burials of people who were not actually dead
(http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/hg/dead.wav)
(http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/hg/notdead.wav)
(http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/hg/happy.wav)

and very expressive hand gestures (Elyssa informed me that you didn't need to be able to speak Croatian to understand exactly what Tim's 80 year old grandmother thought about a sexual relationship that was taking place on the island)

We moved on from there and went to a Jazz/Blues Bar called Brown Sugar which is a short taxi ride from Ad Makers. I love this place (been a couple of times before) - it's a laid back, friendly bar with great musicians (the music kicks off around 9pm and is not too loud as to blow your ear sockets so you can actually still have a conversation - Just as a good jazz club should be). We stayed there till Chris and Tim were struggling to keep their eyes open then called it a night.

Very good start to the weekend.