Patong Beach on the Thai resort island of Phuket certainly has its fair share of sleazy bars. If I had a hundred baht for every fat foreign bloke in a wife-beater I saw sitting on a bar stool with one hand glued to a bottle of Singha beer, the other hand glued to the thigh of the young Thai lass on the stool next to him, and his eyes glued to the footie playing on the bar's flat screen TV, well, I'd be several hundred baht richer. And this is in the middle of the day. Heaven knows what it's like at night.
Actually, I probably would have spent the money shopping. Or on a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. That's another thing Patong Beach is famous for. The shopping. They sell everything from T-shirts and hats to DVDs and sunglasses. At first I didn't realise you had to barter. So I probably spent way too much on stuff to begin with. But I soon got the hang of it, and ended up getting a real good deal on some of those Bay-Ran sunglasses. Just like the ones Michael J. Fox wore in that movie Big Lights Bright City.
That was a great movie, by the way, except I didn't really understand the bit at the end where the Michael J. Fox character swaps his Bay-Rans for a loaf of bread. I mean Bay-Rans are worth a lot more than a loaf of bread. Even second hand ones. Maybe it was just to emphasise how much of a loser he was. He sure couldn't barter.
