blame it on the boogie? (... or *shhh* patriarchy? ;) )

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This weekend, I went out with Aurélie (Lily), my beautiful French friend. On her way to my place, she had a Thai taxi driver who could speak very little English except to say “Zidane - good!” and “French women - big boobs - good!” The last statement was also accompanied with hand gestures, indicating the squeezing of breasts.
Anyway, we went out dancing which was fun. I had the slightly odd experience of being ignored by all the men - the Thai men were mostly gay, and the farang (foreign) men were interested in the Thai women, some of whom were in prostitution. They even ignored Lily, who usually turns heads. This was odd, because bars are fairly sleazy in Australia so usually one receives a few leers; (and, of course, if men aren't sleazing onto you, then the women are sizing you up).
Thai bars close at midnight and clubs close at 2am, but a friend has told me that you can ask a tuk-tuk driver to take you to an illegal post-2am bar. So we found ourselves a tuk-tuk driver who very confidently said that he could take us to a place where we could drink beer… off we go in our tuk-tuk, rock up to a suitably dark place, have the door opened by us… only to be greeted by the sight of 20 or so Thai women sitting on a raised platform, wearing short skirs and tight tops, all of them with numbers on their fronts… he’d taken us to a brothel! Of course, where else would two young women like to go and drink beer? He said that he didn’t know of any other types of post-2am places. We then agreed that Taksin, the Thai Prime Minister whose government is responsible for the social order which decrees that there be no nightlife (apart from prostitution) after 2am) is a very bad man and that he wouldn’t vote for him in the next election.

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