K.C., Honey Mae, and Epril at the
beach. I don't know what is up with
the ever-present peace sign.Geoff and John both were dubious about how much they would enjoy going to the beach, but once they saw my secret secluded beach location, they sat down and relaxed, and spent what they claimed was one of the more enjoyable afternoons they had had in a while.
We ate shrimp and crab, drank beer, and chatted away the afteroon.
Epril and Honey Mae with the fish.
Honey Mae and Geoff playing around.
John and K.C.After that, it was off to "Underwater World". We had driven by it the other night in a quest to find the restaurant Sharky's, and Honey Mae was keen on going insinde the place. One nice thing about Filipina girls is that they do look quite a bit like Thai girls: We only had to pay the "Thai price" for the girls and not the "Farang price." (So good of the Thai people to charge based on skin color, isn't it?) Anyway, 600 baht per couple... 200 baht for people with brown skin, 400 baht for people with white skin.
The place is really quite nice, dual pricing aside. Lots of fish obviously, and lots of photo opportunities. We had fun looking at all the different species, and some of the large freshwater fish from the Amazon were quite impressive.
After that, we went home and listened to music. Epril didn't know who Freddy Mercury was... or Queen for that matter... until I played Bohemian Rhapsody, and she claimed, "Oh! That's my favorite song!" She's like that with music, I find.
In the evening, it was back out to TQ2, where Epril and I met up with Stan and Alf and Lance (Russ' son), and had a few drinks there. Epril stuck with Coke, although she did drink a small vodka tonic at one point. The waitresses are very nice to Epril, and seem to be taking her under their wing, taking her out of the bar and showing her the street food vendors, and running to the store and buying her peanuts. It is such a nice group of girls waiting tables at TQ2 these days... not like the thieving, conniving, and lazy girls they used to have... and fortunately fired.
After that, it was off to Champion AGoGo (of all places). Yesterday, I was introducing Epril to the owner of Champion, Jiu, and I explained to her that all the dancers there did the Full Monty (called "bold" in Tagalog, I'm told). Epril insisted we go there tonight to see such a spectacle. (I suspect that it was the first people in their birthday suits that Epril had ever seen... other than babies and perhaps herself.) Epril had a lot of fun staring at the "milks and the clams" (think about it... or if you speak Thai, you know what it means).
From Champion, it was straight home at about midnight... thankfully avoiding McDonald's. The secret is to feed Epril before heading home from the bars, so that she isn't interested in stopping for food along the way. (Of course, I'm always interested in stopping for food... but I follow her lead in whether or not to actually stop.)
5 comments:
some places in Europe charge an EU citizen price and a non-EU citizen price.
Absolutely fair too, if EU citizen taxes pay for the upkeep and functioning of some tourist attraction, they should have a discount. (In America, some local beaches don't charge local citizens because their property taxes pay for the maintenance of the beach.)
However, a private enterprise which receives no tax money, and is charging solely on the color of people's skin (not their nationality, mind you), is improper and racist, regardless of what excuses they give for their pricing structure.
If it was economic, and they say, "Well, Thai people can't afford to pay 400 baht", they wouldn't be charging poor Thai people 200 baht to get into Underwater World, they would be charging 20 baht, because very few Thai people could afford 200 baht for a 30-minute visit to look at fish.
The seemingly ubiquitous peace sign is an "Asian" thing. The Chinese and Japanese in particular will almost always do that for pictures.
At least that's my experience.
http://www.worldofstock.com/slides/PMO1955.jpg
Yes... I remember when I was watching the world 9-ball championships in Taiwan, and when the television camera panned over the audience, each and every person who saw the camera flashed the peace sign. It was actually kind of weird.
Of course in Thailand, they don't do that, instead they make the "gun sign" under their chin.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Oh... it was also amusing at first, because Honey May was giving her peace sign backwards, which (as most people know) means "f__k you" in England. (Note the photograph of Honey May from this past Friday.)
At least she isn't doing that anymore... after we explained it to her.
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