Nudist Cruise

by Hailey McPherson

  Our room was nice, and about three times the size of our cabin on the ship. The hotel bathroom alone was almost the size of the entire ship cabin, and it had a bathtub. Bathtubs are unheard of in Hong Kong. I had not taken an actual bath since our trip to Bali three months earlier.

  It was a particularly hot day in Bangkok, probably around 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The air conditioning in the room was turned up all the way when we first walked in, and it was like walking into a freezer. The first thing we did was turn it down, but it took a long time before the room was not noticeably cold.

  The hotel bed was enormous. Our surprisingly comfortable bed on the ship was just two twin beds pushed together. My bed in Hong Kong is big for one person, but a little crowded with two. The hotel bed was king size. They said it was queen, but it was bigger than any queen size bed I have ever seen. Maybe queens are simply bigger in Thailand.

  Our room also had a great view of Bangkok and the river that cuts through it. The hotel was right on the river and had its own pier. We spent a lot of time on that river and used it to get to plenty of places around the city. Boats used to be the main method of transportation in Bangkok quite some time ago and there are still all kinds of boats going up and down the river every day. That is probably why the river is so dirty. You can’t go swimming in most city rivers, but if you accidentally fell into this one, you would want to take a very long shower. Or a nice hot bath in your gigantic hotel bathroom.

  It was well past dinner time by the time we checked into the hotel, but neither of us was hungry. We made sure to eat just before we left the ship.

  “It’s already paid for,” Liam said. “We might as well eat it.”

  We had a million things to see and do in Bangkok and only a very limited amount of time. Most of the things I wanted to see, like the Grand Palace and some of the temples, were open in the day time. Most of the things Liam wanted to see, bars and naked women, were open later at night. That worked out for both of us in its own way.

  Liam wanted to try out the huge hotel bed, but he did not want to take a nap. I wanted to try out the huge hotel bathtub.

  “If you take a bath now, you’ll want to go to sleep,” he told me. “It’s way too early.”

  He was right about that. After a nice long bath, I would probably not want to go out on the town. This was our first night in Bangkok and it only made sense to go out and see it while we could.

  We reached a compromise and we took a bath together. This way I would not get too relaxed and he could make a mess. This was the first time we took a bath together in a long time, which was sad in its own way because that always used to be one of our favorite pastimes. We can’t even both fit in the shower together in my tiny Hong Kong apartment.

  Liam was ready to go by the time we were in the tub. Liam has a lot of flaws, but impotency is not one of them. I never have to wait around for him to get interested. His age and personality type have him in a perpetual state of interest. We sat together in the tub, facing the same way. I was sitting between his legs and his hand was between mine. His other hand was making the rounds on my breasts.

  “You’re already wet,” he said.

  “I’m in a bath,” I answered.

  “I’m already hard,” he told me.

  I already knew that. It does not take a sixth sense to figure something like that out. One is enough, though two were at play in this situation.

  “Get up a little,” he told me. “I want you to sit on my lap.”

  It would have been an easy shift in position to ride him like a 4-H llama race at the state fair, but our condoms were in a bag near the bed. The water was still hot and neither of us wanted to get out and run naked into the air conditioned bedroom.

  I have known Liam for a few years. One especially predictable aspect to his personality is that when he gets worked up without some kind of release, he becomes very cranky. He is like a ten year old who was refused that toy or candy he wants. I knew that if he did not get something out of our bath together, he would be moody the rest of the night. I also knew that there was no way I was getting out of that tub and freezing my butt off.

  Fortunately, young men are easy to please. A minute later and he was as happy as that ten year old on Christmas. It also gave me some time to rest in the tub while he dried off and got a very expensive pop from the hotel mini bar.

  Within an hour, we were both dry, dressed and ready to hit the town.

  I had a whole list of things to do, but my top priority was getting Liam to buy a suit. That might not be the first thing most people do in Bangkok, but a quality tailored suit takes at least 36 hours and we were only in town for 48. I knew that if we did not get him fitted the first night, it would never happen. The tailors in Bangkok seem to all stay open late and the one we went to was open much later than I would have imagined.

  Liam was not the least bit interested in having a nice suit. In his job, they are completely unnecessary, but I think every man should have at least one real suit. It separates the men from the boys. Thailand is a great place to get a tailored suit if you know where to go, and I knew where to go. At least someone told me where to go.

  Watching him get measured by an Indian tailor was fun. I could tell that Liam did not enjoy anything about the process, but he is always far more willing to do things he does not particularly want to do after he has some happy time in the bathtub.

  “I don’t even know how I’m going to carry this on the plane,” he complained while being measured.

  “People take suits on planes all the time,” I said. “I don’t think it will be a problem.”

  The tailor solved that little crisis by giving Liam a decent garment bag that the suit fit in perfectly. He was amused by our conversation and offered to make a traditional Thai dress for me for an incredibly low price. I’m sure he would have made the same offer anyway.

  I have no need for a traditional Thai dress, but Liam does not have any real need for a suit, and the Thai silk felt so good that I went ahead and got one. Fitting me was a lot easier and faster than fitting Liam. I would have assumed it would be the opposite, but I am much easier when it comes to choosing and wearing clothes. As much as Liam usually looks like a slob, he is very picky about what he wears.

  When we went back on our last day, Liam looked so good in that suit that I wanted to tear it off him and jump his bones right there in the tailor shop. Liam was also impressed.

  “It actually fits,” he said, astonished.

  He has worn suits once or twice before, but they were never the right size for his skinny frame.

  “I think that’s why it’s called a tailored suit,” I answered.

  We took the BTS Skytrain several times in Bangkok. I don’t know how often the people of Bangkok see skinny white guys carrying garment bags on the Skytrain, but no one seemed to notice us. In Hong Kong, people look at me everywhere I go. In Bangkok, nobody was interested in staring and pointing.

  The Skytrain is a transit system that is all above ground. They have a subway in the city, but you can’t see anything underground and we wanted to see where we were and where we were going since this was our first trip to Bangkok. The Skytrain does not cover as much area as the subway, but it went to most of the places we wanted to go, and our hotel had a free shuttle boat from the hotel pier to the nearest station.

  Liam wanted to go to the red light district, of course. I was less than interested, but I had already been to the red light districts of Amsterdam and Hong Kong with him. Amsterdam’s red light district turned out to be a harmless little area with nice architecture and an impressively old church, and Hong Kong’s is just another shopping street with a few more adult options than usual. I assumed that Bangkok would be somewhat like Amsterdam, and mostly like Hong Kong.

  Patpong is just two small streets filled with too many people selling too much crap. Someone told me it was like Temple Street in Hong Kong, but they did not seem at all alike to me. Everywhere we looked there were counterfeit watch
es and purses and bootleg CDs and DVDs. Everything was cheap and fake, and all at inflated prices. It was all very appropriate for a street with prostitutes and weird sex shows.

  Liam was not interested in the prostitutes. Not only because I was there. He is absolutely terrified of catching AIDS, and ten dollar Bangkok prostitutes do not exactly seem like the safest bet. What he was interested in were the weird sex shows.

  We have all heard about what goes on in Bangkok at night and this street had plenty of men with menus showing what sick and perverted things the women in their clubs will do for a dollar. They actually had menus. Some of the items available to the discerning gentleman traveler were “pussy smoke cigarette”, “pussy cut banana”, “pussy magic razor blade”, “pussy change water” and of course, “pussy ping pong”.

  The cigarette and ping pong things were obvious, but I had no idea what “change water” was. I had the distinct feeling that I did not want to know. I had heard about the razor blade thing and that just creeps me out. I don’t know who originally thought of putting razor blades in a woman’s vagina. Obviously a man. Of all the things women put inside themselves for a man’s amusement, razor blades have to be the stupidest.

  “I just want to see what it’s like,” Liam said to me. “It’s part of Bangkok culture. When you go to Bangkok, you have to see a ping pong show.”

  “You know,” I said to him, “Bangkok probably has thousands of years’ worth of history and culture that have nothing to do with women shoving ping pong balls in their pussy. That might be what Americans think when you say Bangkok, but I’ll bet the people of Bangkok think about a million other things.”

  “You said pussy,” Liam responded, smiling.

  He always gets turned on when I say sexual words. The word “vagina” does nothing for him, but “pussy” always catches his attention. I only said it because the word was everywhere. It was all over every menu, there were more than a few t-shirts with it and several of the bars and clubs had bright neon signs with “pussy” prominently displayed, or even in the name of the club itself.

  Just seeing and hearing the word so much got Liam excited, but I was standing in a very noisy and dirty street with about a thousand people all trying to sucker tourists out of as much money as possible. I was nowhere close to aroused.

  “If you want, we can go back to the hotel and you can shove ping pong balls up your ass while I throw dollar bills at you,” I suggested.

  That did not sound like the same thing to him.

  “That would be degrading,” he said.

  “You think?” I asked, rhetorically.

  We never saw a ping pong show, much to Liam’s disappointment. I told him that we could find a show with some Thai “ladyboys”, but he did not seem to like that idea either.

  In the same neighborhood as the people selling women and bootleg CDs, but not on the infamous street, was an Irish pub.

  “We should go there since you’re Irish,” Liam suggested.

  “I’m actually American,” I replied.

  “You know what I mean,” he said.

  I knew what he meant, but my ancestors were from Scotland, not Ireland. Liam always gets them confused. My great-great-great-something grandfather was actually a powerful Highlands clan chief who fought with Robert the Bruce for Scottish independence. It might not be all that important now, but Ireland is an entirely different country.

  Instead of the Irish pub, we went to a popular bar on the roof of the Banyan Tree Hotel. The drinks were nothing special and I’m not a big drinker anyway, but the view was amazing. We could see pretty much all of Bangkok. It was a nice bar, so Liam did not get drunk. If he goes to a cheap dive, he will drink until he falls down. At an expensive bar where the bartenders wear bow ties and vests, Liam behaves himself.

  It was fairly late, but we were both hungry, so we went to a taco place that was open 24 hours. They were not the best tacos in the world, but we live in China. Average tacos in Bangkok are better than the best tacos in China. For one thing, Chinese people don’t like cheese all that much. You can’t have a taco without cheese. They also like to put in Chinese rice, which is nothing like Mexican rice.

  Liam had a giant burrito, but I stuck with the tacos. He said it was the best burrito he has had in years. I could believe it. I have never seen a good burrito in China. Rice paper, white rice and red bean paste is not a burrito as far as I’m concerned.

  We took the deserted Skytrain to the river and our free shuttle boat to the hotel. The Skytrain had been jam packed with people most of the night, but it was late enough that most people were home.

  Inside our hotel room, we looked at each other, knowing that there was not going to be any happy time in our immediate future. We only get to see each other when we are on vacation. We are supposed to get on top of each other every day. That has to be some kind of rule. But we were full of expensive drinks and inexpensive Mexican food. There would be no ping pong shows in our hotel room that night.

  We started the day on a giant cruise ship somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, spent most of it frolicking naked on the ship, rode on a bus for two hours to Bangkok, navigated their transportation system, did a little clothes shopping and walked all over the place while being visually assaulted with neon signs, pimps and aggressive trinket sellers. We were both too exhausted to even think about anything but sleep. I had been awake for about twenty hours. I wanted to climb into that giant hotel bed and sleep until Christmas.

  Chapter 25: Off to See the Buddha

  I always wake up earlier than Liam. Even when I wake up late, I still wake up earlier than he does. We had a very late night, so I woke up very late, by my definition. Liam would say that I woke up at a normal time, by his definition. By anyone’s definition, he woke up late. Rip van Winkle would say he woke up late.

  We spent most of the previous night going in a big circle around Lumphini Park, without going into the park itself. On this day, or at least morning or early afternoon, we stayed closer to the river.

  We took a boat from the hotel pier up to the Grand Palace. I don’t know if the king of Thailand still spends any time there, a few of the buildings were off limits, but most of the area is now open to visitors.

  While walking from the pier to the Palace, which are very close to each other, we ran into someone who tried to scam us. We could not even walk one block without the hustlers coming out of the woodwork.

  Some random guy approached us and told us that the Palace was closed that day. I had already read about this scam months ago and Helena told me about it on the cruise ship, so we knew exactly what was going on when it happened.

  The Grand Palace is open 365 days a year, morning to evening, but people like to hang out in front of it and tell tourists that it is closed. Their goal seems to be to get people to take extremely expensive taxi or tuk tuk rides to places where nobody wants to go.

  Despite being told that it was closed with words like “I promise” and “you can believe me”, the Grand Palace was very much open when we got to the front gate. It was so open that there must have been hundreds, or even thousands, of people there. There were tourist buses full of people coming and going, and a sizeable crowd milling about the front gate. You would have to be a bit of an idiot to believe that it was closed. It is a big place with plenty of space for large groups of visitors, but it was very crowded.

  The Grand Palace is actually quite a few different buildings, mostly temples. Some of the buildings are very small. Some are enormous. The most crowded was Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. I read somewhere that it is the most important temple in Thailand.

  It is not a very big temple and the Buddha itself is tiny, but people were crowding in to pray to the statue or stand at the back and watch. The Emerald Buddha is not even made of emerald. It was carved from a chunk of jade. I think Temple of the Jade Buddha sounds better, but nobody ever asked me.

  There were a lot of shiny buildings throughout the compound. Many of them were co
vered in gold with ornate decorations and gold statues all over the place. In the afternoon June sun, they were almost too bright. I suppose that was the effect the people who built it all were going for.

  After the Grand Palace, we went to Wat Pho, which is right next door. On the five minute walk there, two different guys told us that Wat Pho was closed that day. It was like they took turns approaching us, and they probably did. Liam and I had to laugh. The scammers had no idea why we were laughing at them, or they did, but they were pretty good at pretending they did not. I suppose if you are going to be a scammer, you have to be good at playing innocent while lying in someone’s face.

  Wat Pho is similar to Wat Phra Kaew, but a lot less shiny. There were more white buildings and it looked a lot less garish to me. Wat Pho seemed more comfortable, like on old neighborhood coffee shop. Wat Phra Kaew was more like a fancy restaurant you only go to on Christmas.

  The big attraction at Wat Pho, and I do mean big, was the largest reclining Buddha in the world. A lot of temples say they have the largest Buddha – either the largest sitting Buddha, the largest standing Buddha, the largest outdoor Buddha, the largest indoor Buddha – but this reclining Buddha was pretty big. It is lying down in a big, long temple and you can’t even see the whole thing unless you are standing at its head or feet. It barely fits in the building, so there is no way to get a profile view.

  When we were on the cruise ship, Tina told me she was going to see the “giant sleeping Buddha”. This was it. I looked around while we were there, but I never saw her. The odds of her being there at the same time were exceptionally small anyway.

  When Liam and I left the temple grounds, another scammer approached us.

  “Where are you?” he asked us.

  “Thailand,” I answered.

  I was not sure if this was a trick question. Maybe it was philosophical. We had just been in several Buddhist temples, after all.

  “No, so sorry,” he said. “Where are you go?”