Today is World AIDS day, the day to spread awareness to stop the prejudice and also to stop the spread of the infection.

Prejudice against HIV Positive people are rooted in the same things as other prejudices – fear, which stems from lack of knowledge. HIV Positive people are often ostracised from communities and their social circles for various reason, amongst them the fear of the uninformed of somehow contracting the disease.

So let’s inform the uninformed and dispel the fear.

How do you get HIV?

HIV isn’t hiding behind a blind corner ready to pounce and infect you. No, HIV infection only occurs when HIV infected fluid somehow gets into your blood.

Blood, semen, vaginal secretions and breast milk are all good carriers of the virus. If any of these infected fluids enter your body (comes into contact with your blood), through the mouth, vagina, tip of the penis, anus or any breaks in the skin, HIV can be transmitted.

Any form of sex that includes coming into contact with semen (including the clear pre-cum), vaginal secretions and blood, can potentially transmit the virus, i.e. vaginal, anal and even oral sex (ulcers, lacerations, bleeding gums, etc.).

It is also possible to transmit HIV through sharing infected needles when doing drugs or DIY tattoos and body piercings, accidental needle pricks, blood transfusions and from a mother to a child during pregnancy, labour and also breast feeding.

HIV Positive people often don’t look sick, and the vast majority of those carrying the virus, are unaware that they do. Therefore, asking a stranger before sex whether or not they are HIV Positive does not constitute safer sex – protecting yourself with a condom does.

How you won’t get HIV

Saliva, sweat, tears, faeces and urine are not known to cause HIV infections, mainly because HIV in these substances do not appear in concentrations large enough to be harmful. You therefore are unlikely to get infected by casual contact with these bodily secretions.

Mutual masturbation using hands only, is a pretty safe form of sex, provided both partners have healthy, unbroken skin with no open wounds or fresh cuts and sores. Remember, semen and vaginal fluids transmit the disease, but it has to enter your body, which it can’t do through healthy skin.

You also can’t get HIV through kissing, hugging (important, because HIV Positive people needs hugs as much as the rest of us), shaking hands, massage, insect bites, sharing showers and toilets or living in the same house with an HIV Positive person.

If you always use a condom during the entire course of vaginal, anal or oral sex, and avoid general high risk activities, it will greatly reduce your risk of getting HIV and many other nasty sexually transmitted diseases.

Know the facts and pass it on

World AIDS Day is but 1 global opportunity to make a difference. You can help to slow or, who knows in the near future, even stop the spread of HIV by knowing the facts, implementing them in your own life to keep yourself safe, and sharing that knowledge with those around you.

Sources:
http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/hiv?page=basics-00-05
http://www.aidatlanta.org/education/faq.shtml
http://www.mnaidsproject.org/learn/transmission.htm

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The clock struck midnight (that was over an hour ago) and my computer’s clock said it’s Monday, December 1. Where has the year gone?  So much has happened.

Anyway, far from this being a soppy sentimental post about what was and what may be, it’s really just a celebratory post.  What am I celebrating?  The end of a mamoth posting marathon of course.

These blog entries regarding trips that I take are lots of work - the trip to Thailand took me a full week to complete. I should have been able to do it daily really, because I had my computer with me.  But it was for work, so time not working was spent away from the computer. Luckily I had loads of photos to reference, so it was easy to recall.

Anyway, 7 days, 15 posts and over 100 photos later Tour D Tom Yum has been documented.  The typos and grammar mistakes will get fixed up as I read through them again in the coming days, but for now, I’m shattered.

Off to bed I go.

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Sometimes we benefit from lesson we learned from previous bad experiences, even if it is only at the end of experiencing the same thing.

Let me take you back 10 years. I was in London on my working holiday when a friend and myself were feeling naughty and walked into a what a sign said is a ‘free’ peepshow in the back alleys of Soho in London’s West End. Turns out there was no show and it wasn’t free.

We were barely in the door when two Eastern European girls took us to a table each and sat us down in what was an otherwise empty venue. We ordered hideously overpriced drinks – so did the ladies – before we were asked to pay for our drinks, their drinks and the non-existent show before it all started. It was something like 300 quid.

We got up and wanted to leave, but were prevented from doing so by a big, menacing bloke blocking the door. I refused to pay, so first they threatened to call the cops, but when I said there were cops just outside the door on the road, they threatened to call some thugs instead. I kept on arguing that the prices weren’t stated anywhere.  I think my friend pissed his pants in fear.

Then the con-woman behind the counter, likely exasperated by all my arguing, ordered the con-man in front of the door to fetch the con-menu to show me where the prices were stated. Doing so he left the door unguarded. I wasted no time and grabbed my friend. The last the peep-show con saw of us was their curtain flapping in the breeze, as we ran out into the cold London night and all the way to Trafalgar square where, after we made sure no thugs had followed us, we had a good laugh about it.

Ten years later and 10,000km to the east

Today, this con is alive and well and living in Bangkok.

Following the outstanding trampling the Boks gave the Roses, Julia and myself was up for a bit of a night out. We thought we’d start by checking out Patpong to see how the original compares to Soi Cowboy. We were well prepared with Julia’s heavy research – which bars to avoid, which ones are more trusted and what to do when you get in trouble (which b.t.w. is don’t argue, get the receipt, find the tourist police). Based on our Soi Cowboy experience, we were feeling confident we’d be able avoid trouble.

While watching the game we inevitably met another South African. Against my better judgment we befriended him. He obviously fancied himself a bit of a bad-boy, so when we said good-bye and that we’re off to Patpong, he asked to join saying he knows the area well (apparently he lives here - in Bangkok - so he claimed to have street-cred).

I told him that the last guy who claimed to have street-cred based on the fact that he was resident in the city, gave us 100% crap advice. He assured me he was the man. The very inebriated man. The man who, in this tale of Deja Vu, would reprise the roll of my pants-wetting, friend from 10 years earlier.

Our first warning bells went off when he directed the taxi to Nana Plaza – nowhere near Patpong. More bells went off as we walked down the road and he was extremely rude, almost violently so, to the touts. Bad karma.

A bar on Patpong called Tattoo

We arrived at the bar, saw the touts who were saying “free show” and went upstairs. Inside there were other tourists, which put us at ease somewhat, but the girl writing something on the floor with a pen sticking out of her vagina was fat and her backup dancers were fully clothed, so we should have turned around and run from Tattoo that very instant.

Instead, erroneously secure in our companion’s supposed local knowledge, our guard was down.  We sat down for a drink right next to the stage. A menu was shown to us with every single item, from beer to coke, at THB100. Bargain, thought our dulled minds before we ordered a beer each, only a dull bell ringing somewhere far in the background.

A girl came up with a glass of what was probably Fanta Orange and asked us to buy her a drink. We said no, but she put the glass down anyway. On the stage the fat girl had started popping plastic caps of glass bottles, which were flying in our direction, so we moved back and sat away from the stage. A big ladyboy appeared and moved the Fanta Orange to our table.

A bar girl came up to the lone South African (because I’m with Julia they stay away from me) and offered him an array of services involving her undoubtedly naked body. He declined and she disappeared. The big ladyboy came back with a bill and demanded that we pay – I saw “lady drink” for THB300 on the menu before anything else, and declined to pay for it – so she scratched it out with the pen she had ready and was obviously expecting to use and tallied up the new total holding it back to me.

The Tiger Show in Tattoo turns ugly

It said something like THB 3,000. Three beers at THB100 each and THB900 for “the show”. To the dread of the other South African, Julia and the ladyboy, I laughed out loud purely because of the similarity of this con. I leaned forward in a taunting way, which, in retrospect I realise probably made things more difficult, and said “you know I’m going to go and call the tourist police”.

“Go call”, said the burly ladyboy angrily and defiantly, “I pay them much money, what I say they do”. Ignoring the good advice from Julia’s research I retorted in an over-confident way “we’ll finish our beers, I will pay you the THB300 for it, and we’re going to leave”. Her demeanour didn’t change, but she became visibly more menacing and said as she turned away “You speak to the manager over here”.

I might as well have been back in that Peep Show place in London 10 years earlier. We headed for the door, but it was blocked by a heavy and mean-looking woman.

The manager, aggressive and rude in an obviously attempt to maintain his intimidating edge, was outdoing my upset with his own. He was apparently outraged by my mere suggestion that his quality show could ever be free - this is after I said we came in because his touts told us it was free, nowhere did it say anything about paying for the show - certainly not THB900 each. The argument went in circles for several rounds.

The other South African with an Oscar-winning performance as my pants-wetting friend, tried to add to the argument, but he was horribly drunk and visibly shaken.

The man wasn’t listening - this was an aggressive con and intimidation was how they achieved their goal. He threatened to make a call and, holding up his mobile phone, said “if I call, there will be many, many men here”.  This was likely true.  I’ve read how that if you get into a fight with a local, friends will appear seemingly from the cracks of the walls.  But he didn’t call, much like the woman in London didn’t call her thugs either.

Reprieve

So keeping very calm and being very polite and respectful even, I kept on stating my case.  Eventually, after much more discussion, explanation and general stubbornness, it surfaced that I was South African.

By this time many suckers customers not only left silently, but none had come in – his con was costing him more money than he was going to make. So it all ended with him annoyed and screaming “just go, you don’t have money anyway!” (one South African Rand can buy only THB2). The door opened.

Unlike 10 years earlier we hurried not into the cold London air, but into the hot Bangkok night, into a taxi the hell away from Patpong. And I wasn’t laughing.

Tattoo bar on Patpong, like I can imagine most of the upstairs ping-pong / tiger bars in Patpong, is best avoided, because, did I discover after I Googled “patpong ping-pong scam”, you can find this kind of adventure in most of the upstairs bars in Patpong.

Stick to Soi Cowboy.

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This is an explicit post. Prudes, turn back now.

Like it was in Phuket, beers in Bangkok are cheaper in the mini-markets in Bangkok too. I pick up a large Chang (I know I said I wouldn’t drink it anymore, but I forgot) for THB50 and Julia gets a Smirnoff Ice for something like THB 60.

It’s 11pm already, but after the Subway sandwiches we had shortly after checking in to Maxim’s Inn, we didn’t really feel like dinner.  So obviously now we’re a bit peckish. With beers in hand we walk down the crowded sidewalks around Sukhumvit looking at all the t-shirts, shorts, shoes, watches, bags, you name it and food, packed in so tightly that there’s really only room enough for a single file of people to walk past.  Where do people stop when they actually want to buy something?

Julia walks past something she’s craved ever since we got to Thailand: pigs-in-a-blanket.  These little cholesterol bombs are annoyingly delicious pork sausages wrapped in annoyingly moreish bacon.

I quietly damn my cholesterol gene to hell as we sit down and order a few pigs-in-a-blankets and a selection of other nibbles from the vendor’s colourful cart.  These types of food often go well with beer, and we’re happy that we have some.

Once upon a time in the west…

With our stomachs full and not sleepy at all, we discover that we’re just around the corner from Soi Cowboy. Soi Cowboy is what I imagine Patpong was a long long time ago – it’s a short street full of what they call a go go bars. A go go bars is a meat market – it works much like the little stalls you’ll see on the sidewalk – people exhibit their wares, you choose what you want and pay accordingly. Only the ‘wares’ in Soi Cowboy are female bodies. Having read much about this, we’re a little curious.

There are, of course, many debates, feminist and otherwise, around such practices and supporting it, but we choose to ignore those tonight as we head around the corner to Soi Cowboy. My memories now of Soi Cowboy, for some reason, are in shades of black and white – I’m not sure why this is, because I remember it being a very colourful place with loads of neon signs everywhere, with men and women hanging outside their establishments with an assortment of funny ha ha and funny peculiar signs.

There are no upstairs entrances in Soi Cowboy that I saw, unlike we read Patpong has, so all the bars front the road, which is probably about 100m long. We did some research about what to expect and where to go and after walking the length of the road once and doubling back, we find ourselves in front of Susie Wong’s, one of the safe places we read about. They have a small veranda fronting the road, so we sit down for a drink – Small Chang for THB100 and a Bacardi Orange for THB 150 – quite reasonable.

After people watching for a while Julia gets curious and decides to peek inside. Then she urgently asks the doorman if we can go in with our drinks and after confirming that we can, she hurries over and tells me “come, you have to see this.” I settle our bill (different prices inside) and we go in.

And now for the explicit part

The club is not huge, but it’s a lot bigger than the little broom-cupboard we went to in Patong. Seating, about 3 rows deep, encircles an elongated, oval stage. At present there are 4 rather sexy girls in pairs on stage, all butt naked, with one of each of the pairs on their knees between the spread legs of the other, their tongues playing their parts in this lesbian show.

I’m not sure where to look. The movements are slow and sensual and I think a song by Celine Dion was playing. The room, currently lit by black-light only, is pretty full with a mix of mostly single men with bar girls, a few couples, and a group of foreign girls, all transfixed on stage where one of each of the pairs is lapping up the womanhood of the other.

As the music finishes, so do the show, and nonchalantly the girls pick up the pieces of clothing, which they undoubtedly took of slowly and sensually before we came in, and exit the stage into a dark corner of the club. Some neon lights come on, but the lighting stays dim. Then about 14 girls spill out from some area towards the back of the club and as they make their way onto the stage they whip off their tops.

Some more upbeat music comes on and they start to dance, each holding on to a pole. Some of them look like they’re having fun, but most seem to be staring into space – all of them are young and fairly pretty. Each has a number pinned to the lower part of their skirts, like the top-less segment in a Miss World contest. The idea here being to whisper the number of the desired girl to your hostess, who will then bring them over and have them entertain you in any way you may want to pay for.

Julia and I sip on our drinks and discuss the surreal nature of it all – the venue, the spectators, the girls, us sitting there together. The topless girls stay on stage for about 4 songs and then grab theirs tops, putting it back on as they disappear off the stage back into the back of the club. At the same time another set of girls come on, but after getting into place at their chosen positions next to the poles, they disrobe completely and start dancing nude.

Long Gun - Cocked and ready to shoot

They stay on for 3 songs before being replaced by the only-topless girls again. With our drinks finished Julia and I decide to go check out another club. Back on the Soi Cowboy we head to the end of the road, dodging people selling bags of veggies for THB20 to feed their elephant with and end up in front of Long Gun. This is another of the safe venues we read about and as there’s no outside area to have a drink at, we head straight in.

Long Gun is heaving – the music is loud, the venue, with a very similar layout to the Susie Wong’s is packed and on stage there are 3 good-looking girls, full clothed at this stage, dancing. They’re all wearing black outfits with boots that come up to their thighs. The crowd consists of more group of people – groups of men, mixed groups of men and women and even a few groups of woman only.

All the seats away from the stage is full, so we’re ushered to sit right next to the stage, cranking our necks up to see. The strip show is spectacular, the women using the poles with acrobatic agility, hoisting themselves up, flipping over and ‘walking’ on the roof. The heels of their boots are heavy, and as they fall down from the roof and land, doing the splits, the heels slams loudly on the stage floor. The crowd is captivated.

After a while of dancing they slowly start to disrobe, with each item of clothing doing more tricks, people sticking money into their underwear and boots. Eventually, apart from the boots, they are naked and continue doing the somersaults and the splits. At one point one woman holds on to the poles, does a somersault with her booted legs stretched out and lands with one heel each on Julia and my shoulders. She drags her legs off slowly as she hoist herself back up the poles, forcing us forward.

After they’re done, to huge applause from the crowd, they exit the stage and are replaced by 3 or 4 other girls who proceed to dance. The club cleared a little bit so we move towards the back, just in time to see the girls pull unbelievably long cords of coloured flowers from their nether regions. A Tiger Show, we think as we look at each other, but with much better looking people than Patong. The show continues with shooting darts to pop balloons and a smoking cigarettes, before they too are replaced with dancing girls.

Having experienced what we wanted we head out back into the relatively cool air of Soi Cowboy and make our way home. The merchandise stalls that littered the sidewalks before has now been replaced by food stalls and informal bars. They are packed with people drinking for relatively cheaper and eating delicious looking food. Julia convinces me to stop for a meat-ball soup and a Thai salad.

The soup was great, flavoursome, fresh and spicy. The salad was decent too, although it was the hottest thing I would eat this holiday – the first thing to literally burn straight through me. There was also a crab claw in the salad, which we didn’t eat, but I’m always suspicious of seafood – so the ‘burning straight through’ might have had something to do with that.

Having learned our lesson from Phi Phi, our night ended with loads of water.

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We left Phi Phi two days ago and spent 2 more nights in Patong, me working, Julia shopping, eating Tom Yum at almost every conceivable meal and spending our nights at Rock In Dice Bar in Soi Dragon playing games.

For our very first massage in Thailand we also went to a clearly decent place.  Oh how I wished we went for a dirty massage, because our therapists clearly knew nothing about decent massages.  I walked  out feeling worse than when I went in and Julia also noticed a previously unnoticed crick in her back.  We also ventured to Karon and Kata beach last night though, completely different to Patong, to play putt-putt on a course like the set of Jurassic Park. It featured a variety of dinosaurs, a volcano with smoke effects and wicked lighting, water falls and streams, all in a tropical jungle setting.

But it was also speed putt-putt, because the course was exceptionally crammed with punters with no time to lose before the people behind you were breathing down your neck. In the end, we both sucked, but it was a nice little distraction.

Racing back to Phuket International Airport

This morning, with plenty of time to spare, we arranged an airport transfer with one of these guys standing next to the road with the Taxi sign, but after he said, for the umpteenth time, “just two more minutes”, we realised that his brother-in-law or cousin or whoever he phoned, wasn’t going to make it to Patong from his far flung village, so we took our stuff and headed for the main road.

Eventually we found an informal, Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) taxi which offered to take us to the airport for THB300. The taxis that use petrol refused to go below THB600.

At Phuket International checking in for our Air Asia flight was quick and seamless. At the boarding gate however, chaos ruled. There were no lines as such and the Air Asia ground staff didn’t bother creating any kind of order either. Everybody just squeezed in from all directions and we ended up towards the middle-back of the bundle.

Air Asia non-Assigned Seat Air-rage

We made it to plane with two seats left in the emergency exit row and an elderly-looking gent sitting, by himself, on the isle. Julia and I know this tactic well. He’s sitting on the isle hoping nobody will want to squeeze past to sit by the window so that he can save the space for his friend. Unfortunately, or in this instance, fortunately, Air Asia is a free-seating airline.

Pay attention people, this means you’re not allow to block a space for somebody if somebody else wants the seat. Of course, kind gentle souls that most of us travelers are, nobody actually ever argues when somebody blocks a seat, because who wants to risk loosing such an argument in front of an audience (and make an enemy in doing so)?

I do.

So as we walk up to these two, prime, empty seats, I eye it. The gent sees me eyeing it, and he cranks his neck to see behind me in the hope that his friend is somewhere behind us. But I walked fast, dragging Julia almost running behind me, so we’re well ahead of the next wave. I stop at the row and load our carry-ons into the overhead compartment before motioning for Julia to scoot in so that I can sit in the middle.

“Excuse me, sir”, I say politely to the rather elderly gent so that he can move his legs a bit. Without looking up he growls back in a heavy European, already on the defensive, “This seat is reserved for my friend”. The Air Asia stewardess is standing just to my right, so I feel empowered.

“I’m sorry, sir”, I say in a sickly calm, air-steward-like tone of voice, body language indicating that I’m waiting a little while longer for him to move before I climb over him, “Air Asia doesn’t reserve seats, we would like to sit there”.

“But my friend is going to sit there”, he growls again, seriously cranking his neck to see down the isle, willing his friend to appear there so that he can say ha, there he is. But he isn’t. “I’m sorry, sir, but I need the leg space”, which is true.

Julia jabs me in the ribs and says in my ear “just leave it, let’s find another seat”, but the elderly gent is getting up and moves to the side so that we can get in. “From the states are you?”, he hisses through his teeth. This pisses me off, because it’s racist and ignorant. Obviously he’s referring to “rude Americans”, a stereo-type attached to some Americans who don’t know any better. So because he couldn’t place my accent he automatically assumes I’m American.

“I’m not, actually” I say back politely as I let Julia go in first and sit in the middle. The man sits down. He fidgets and remains red in the face for the rest of the flight, clearly uncomfortable. Possibly the longest flight of his life. The rest of the flight is uneventful.

After collecting our bags in Bangkok, we dodged the touts at the arrivals exit and headed upstairs to the departure lounge. Tip: we snagged a taxi dropping somebody off to take us to Bangkok for THB300 including tolls. It’s also an NGV taxi, we notice.

Eventually, in Sukhumvit, about 2 blocks from our hotel, we abandoned the taxi as it was stuck and traffic and had moved all of 50m in 30 minutes. At first Maxim’s Inn looked a bit dodgy as all along Soi 7 there are girlie bars with loads of girlies hanging about outside pestering other men rather aggressively. Luckily Julia, acting as my talisman in this sort of situation, protects me from girlie hell yet again.

The hotel itself isn’t bad, so we settle in, I rig the wireless connection (free with the hotel) and settle down for some work and rest before heading out again later on.

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