Patpong and Pingpong

The only way to calm down after the excitement of the ladyboys was to visit the Forensic museum at the local hospital. A short journey across the river later we were looking at bits of the human body in jars, mmmmm. The question is, why go to a forensic museum? Obviously we're nurses with an interest in anatomy, but more than that, we've got an unhealthy interest in the macabre! The museum is split into several parts, one part being normal anatomy, another being about parasites and the third section being devoted to forensic medicine, which in this case, meant the mummified corpses of various serial killers. The parasitic section was particularly gross, featuring lots of worm type things that can end up inside unfortunate parts of your body, which always happens to be the genital area doesn't it. They had on display the biggest scrotum in the world (well it must be musn't it?) and I managed to get a sneaky photo, unfortunately there were to many people around to take pics of dead serial killers (sorry Flan).
Due to the Thai language on most of the displays I'm unable to give you a full report on the serial killing antics of See Uey, sufficed to say that he's definitely dead, you can actually see the bullet holes from where he was executed.
Feeling ever so slightly sick we decided the best cure would be the zoo. Now we've heard Asian zoo's are pretty grim and having seen first hand their pig killing methods, we were pleasantly surprised to find a well kept zoo in Bangkok, full of some very healthy looking animals. The whole range was there, the big cats, elephants (you can't move for them over here), hippos, birds (boring, Sorry Christina), monkeys and the always enjoyable reptile house. We sauntered round practicing our wildlife (and not so wild) photography and then came across an Orangutan which took up the rest of our memory cards it was so cute.
On the Wednesday after phoning Rachel and wishing her a Happy Birthday, we took a taxi to Lumpini park. We've been taking taxis everywhere in Bangkok, cause the Tuk-Tuk's are such a rip off and half of them are psychos, how I hate tuk-tuk drivers! They all try to over charge you and it gets very tedious bargaining with them and you save yourselves hastle and money by getting an air-conditioned metered (no bargaining) taxi which will take you across half the city for only a pound. Lumpini park sits smack in the middle of Bangkok and is a tranquil oasis away from the hecticness of the rest of the city. Its pretty much like any other park in any other town or city, except for one minor detail.....giant lizards! Theres no mention of these beasts in the LP, so we were mildly surprised to see them hauling themselves out of the lake and strolling about the grass. They look a tad scary, but if you got to close to them that would just get back in the lake and swim off. Very cool creatures indeed. After wasting a lot more memory card space on wildlife (this time really wild) we walked through the rest of the park, through the masses of Thai's doing aerobics, jogging and weight lifting and made our way to Patpong. At one point during our walk, I stopped to fiddle with my camera and then became aware of music playing, I looked up and every single person in the park was standing still, even Sam. It must have been the national anthem, I forgot to mention that went we went to the cinema, immediately before the film they play the national anthem and the whole cinema has to stand up. Luckily we didn't get the giggles and their anthem is miles nicer than ours, quite uplifting stuff! After the park I wanted to go to the night market (true this time) and Sam wanted to see the red light district. The market was extortionate in Thai terms, they were trying to charge me 4 times the going rate I'd previously paid for a t-shirt and their was a severe lack of redlights as well. On the other hand we did notice a lot of girls dancing around poles scantily clad (it was a hot night) and i was consistently asked if I wanted to see 'pingpong'. Now Bison will testify that I'm quite partial to a game of table tennis from our days working at the Pysch unit together, but these girls looked like they'd been practicing and I didn't want Sam to see me beaten by a girl! To shouts of 'pingpong' we left Patpong and that was out time up in Bangkok!

Now we are on the island of Langkawi in Malaysia and are meeting Andy and Emma tonight! Hooray! Malaysia blog to follow soon.