I mean, it's famous; and famous for sex, no less. We love sex. And though we were aware of the all-too-seedy underbelly, we were assured by more than a few people that the current version of Patpong was a watered down from its nefarious predecessor. The last time the New York Times recommended something "gritty and dangerous" it was a Michael Moore film. The real question, then, was should we go to a sex show? They're all the rage and we were curious. In our heads, it was a s burlesque: sultry music and scantily clad women dancing around a stage, perhaps with a horse whip.
Good times. In hindsight, maybe we should have known that a place like Thailand — where the last prime minister was ousted when he went to the U. So we shouldn't have been surprised when the cab dropped us off at Patpong and we were immediately approached you could call it "assaulted" if you wanted to get technical by men inviting us to sex shows.
Each one promised that his show was the best. To prove this, they would show you a list of what the show offered, like an X-rated Broadway playbill. The first time Brooke looked at one, her reaction was a mix of surprise and indigestion. I lingered a bit longer studying the card. There is an inherent fascination to combining the word "pussy" with other surprising nouns like "chopstick" and "rainbow": a Finnegan's Wake of sex show menus. We took a lap around the market to get our bearings.
All around us were scantily clad women lingering in doorways, some leading Western men arm-in-arm to nearby hotels. A boy walked by selling lighters that projected a small image of two people fornicating — so you don't have to stop watching porn when smoking. Brooke and I ordered one more round and looked deep into each other's eyes. This was the second to last night of our sixteen-day trip. We'd been through a lot. We were tired. All along, we had followed the "When in Rome" logic.
Eat Vietnamese street food! Get massages! Steal a Cambodian baby! Brooke almost did. Perhaps now was the time to let that ideology go by the wayside. Just get some curry and hit the sack. It would have been a great idea, except for three nagging words: ping pong pussy.
