Greetings from Bangkok!

It’s good to be back in Bangkok, a city I have fond memories of. Y’see, my family came on a holiday here a few years ago, on the way to Phuket. Beyond the floating market and the Golden Palace, there’s not a lot to the place. Except sex tourism. So, naturally, we went down to Patpong Road, the seedy strip, found an establishment called Pussy Galore and watched Thai women pull a variety of objects out of their vaginas in various ways.

This is how we enjoy spending our time together as a family.

Having done the tourist thing last time I was here, I thought Bangkok would be a good stop over destination to spend a few days on my way back to Australia. I’ve never one to sneeze at a life experience opportunity, however, so I have tried something new.

I’m staying at a gay resort. Well, I say resort: it’s a bed and breakfast attached to a sauna. Reportedly the biggest in the world. And it is freaking massive. Beyond what you’d usually expect to find in a sauna, they have a disco, two bars, pool, fully-equipped gym, and a sit down restaurant that appears to be black tie, but that would be impossible as the diners would be in little more than a towel.

Above the sauna complex, they have what they call the barracks: simple rooms with two beds and a TV. There’s no bathroom, as there are shared facilities – including shower – in the hall. I did my research on Google and found that these rooms are “cruisy” at all hours.

So I paid double to stay in the garden suites next door. I have my own bathroom. I need not be cruised when I’m going to drop the kids off at the pool of a morning.

Now, I’m not a gay tourist or a sex tourist – I’m down with saunas, but ordinarily I wouldn’t elect to live in one. But now ‘gay holiday’ is one thing I can check off the list of Things To Try. So now, in the off chance somebody queries if I’ve stayed at gay resort, I can raise my head high and say, yes – yes I have. And boy it was fucked up.

It shouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, but the average age of the other tourists staying here appears to be in the late 50s. The average aesthetic age of the Thai boys they’re trying to attract appears to be about 12. And there’s me in the middle, wondering, what the fuck am I doing here?

I went to dinner last night, and the restaurant was packed with twosomes: old, lonely Caucasian guys sitting next to young, disinterested Thai guys. Both staring straight ahead, not really engaging. Assumedly both are involved in a transaction that appeases both parties.

Rank.

As I filed in for breakfast this morning, I realised how out of place I am. Old seedy men heaped toast and cereal onto their trays, making small chit chat that I was sure masked their true conversational desire of swapping the best tactic for enslaving a poor population of Asian people as their modern sex slaves. All the while, the locals sat round and did their best pretty impression.

I half expected someone to approach me, grab my arm and whisper, you don’t belong here.

I say expected, but I actually wanted someone to approach me and tell me that. I check out in a matter of hours anyway, so I suppose it’s inconsequential. But I know, if I had the choice, I would house a whole array of comical items up my clacker before engaging in this seedy decrepit world of Western tourism gone wrong.