Ooohhh, Friday the 13th! Ok, we’re not thinking about that! We are on our own today while virtually all the rest of the group visits the Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha. We’ve been there, done that, so we’re off to explore. After a very good breakfast, we head off toward Benchakitti park, a huge park in the middle of Sukhumvit, one of the big tourist/Farang areas.

But first we have to get there. One of the crazy things about Bangkok is just how huge it is. Everything looks so close on the map, but when you start to really track the distances, it’s a long way to everything! Fortunately, we’re both wearing our walking shoes – so walk on!

We start off our walk down the busy main streets around our hotel, past huge high-rises towering over little wooden houses lining the streets of a local working peoples area, full of little stores and restaurants and totally Thai. For the first 1/2 hour or so, we were the only Farangs around. Then we hit Sukhumvit and there were no Thais around! LOL. Except those in the shops and restaurants working! Total change in scenery.

We stop at a little coffee shop along the main Sukhumvit street, just as much for caffeine as to cool off. It is brutally hot – it isn’t even 10am and already we are melting. the temperature says it is 92 degrees actual, real feel 100. Yep. We can totally vouch for that! So coffee cafe it is. A/C? Check. Cappuccino? Check. Done. Makes for a nice little break after 45 minutes of walking through the hot streets of Bangkok. That handled, we’re back out on the streets heading toward Benchakitti, which is 180 acres of green oasis in the middle of the concrete jungle.

The park has been newly expanded, covering more area than previous, as well as adding a huge “canopy” sort of walk. It is actually just an elevated bridge that winds it way above the ponds and walking trails of the park and makes for great walking. All the while we are surrounded by those huge crazy big buildings – of which they are building more and more! 

Even though we make an entire circuit around the park, including up on the elevated walkway, it still doesn’t take us all that long and we find ourselves done and out of the park way before 11. Nothing left to do other than find an open restaurant and hope for lunch. Heading back up Sukhumvit Alley #4, there are a ton of choices, not all of them open yet. Fortunately, Bunny NaNa is open for business with all the requisite girls hanging out on the bar/seating area above the sidewalk trying to entice people (read: men) inside. Basically a bar with pool tables and TVs, they do have a menu with pretty traditional Thai dishes. Beggars can’t be choosers, and truly the menu is fine and reasonable. We order 2 beers (yeah, no wine) and our food, and we have to pay for them separately! The food comes from somewhere else, delivered on paper plates! We’re pretty sure it is from the food stall next door, but, hey – whatever We had a very good Chicken and garlic dish as well as Pad Thai. It worked perfectly for us.

While we were relaxing in the bar, we reconnoitered our afternoon. Figuring we’ve walked this far, might as well keep going, we decide to head to Patpong to visit the Patpong museum. What? A museum? Hey, we only thought there were bars and shows and other, ahem, paid for activities in Patpong. A museum about the whole area? That sounds right up our alley.

Once again, everything looks so much closer than it is! It is a 44 minute walk to Patpong, made longer because we walked through Lumphini park, and it was so lovely and pretty with all the lakes and greenery, that we stopped here and there for pictures. Oh, and for the freaking huge Monitor Lizard that was hanging out in a puddle in the middle of the sidewalk by the lake. I’m telling you, it was monstrous! And sort of scary when it slithered off after realizing we were there and walking through. Yikes!

Successfully navigating that little adventure, we make it to the Rama VI monument, out of the park and into the busy city streets of Silom. Turning at Surawong road, we easily locate the PatPang alleys and the Patpong museum on the 2nd floor of one of the nondescript buildings on Alley 2. Ok, we’re weird, we know it, but this place? it was an excellent, excellent museum that tours you through 100 years of history.

We pay for our hour long tour and are introduced to our tour guide, “Sucky.” You can’t make this stuff up! Anyway, he is an older gentleman who is very knowledgeable in all things Patpong. Sucky went to the States as a young boy to study, worked with the US Army during the war, met Udom Patpongpanich, who actually developed the Patpong area, and he even trained with the CIA and met Jim Thompson there. Ok – I’m getting ahead of myself, but suffice it to say, Sucky knows his stuff!

Over the next hour, we tour through the little museum, getting the history of the area. Luang Patpongpanich, the father of the aforementioned Udom Patpongpanich, came to Thailand from China in 1881 for a better life. Once here, he established himself as a good trader, started a business, married a local Thai woman and was bestowed an honorary title by King Prajadhipok. He was wealthy enough to send Udom to the States to study, where Udom joined the Seri Thai – a freedom fighter movement trained by the CIA to fight the Japanese in WWII. It is here that Udom meets Jim Thompson, and they form a life long friendship.

In 1946 Udom’s father, Luang, purchases a banana plantation that would eventually become Patpong. Contrary to what you might think, Patpong didn’t start as a strip club/prostitution area, but as a business center. After Luang passes away, Udom takes over the company and convinced major corporations such as Caltex, Shell and France Air to move their office headquarters to Patpong. Soon after the Plaza hotel is built, the first hotel with hot water, A/C and an international telephone line in each room. By 1964, Patpong had become the Central Business District by day, and an entertainment district by night, with mostly bars and restaurants where American servicemen and CIA used to hang out during the wars. It became a defacto CIA training/spying/working area once the Vietnam war started. In 1969 and ex-US Air Force pilot named Rick Menard opened his second bar, called the Grand Prix club. At this point there were no gogo bars in Patpong at all. One night a woman started dancing to rock music on the stage. The police came in and told Rick he couldn’t have entertainment because he didn’t have a night club license. Rick replied that this wasn’t entertainment, the girl was just dancing. Of course the policeman’s come back was that dancing wasn’t allowed without a dancing license. Rick then said, she is all by herself, how can this be dancing? To which the cop agreed and left. And thus, by happenstance, began a decades long style of gogo club in Patpong.

Of course it has developed and morphed into prostitution and “naughty” shows upstairs in bars, but the whole thing started out a a legit business area, if not a wholly subsidized CIA training ground! Fascinating! Sucky tells us all this history as he guides us through different displays including a huge diorama model of the Patpong alleys, a movie about the history – mostly focused on American Military involvement, newspaper articles and information about The Serpent, the man who murdered a string of women and men who ended up one way or another in Patpong – there is even a NetFlix movie and a book which you know we are now going to have to watch/read, and a bar where we can have discounted drinks. Fun! We can do that.

And while we are having our drinks, we have entertainment. No, not that type of entertainment! It is Sucky on the piano, serenading us as we relax with our beers!

The last part of the museum has videos of the Ping Pong shows – ugh. But at least this means we don’t have to go a real live show now – like we ever would!!! Ugh is all we can say. Double ugh, even!

Now it is back to the hotel – walking through Indra market which is supposed to be a great place to shop and eat, but Warorot is better in our opinion – and what do we need really? Nothing. The food markets weren’t anything special either, the ones closer to us were equally as good. It was actually a good thing we walked through and found it unexciting. Now we don’t have to walk all the way back here.

Back at the hotel, we spend time cooling off after our 16 miles of walking today. Phew! That was a fun day. When it is time for dinner, we head back out to a Filipino restaurant we had passed on the way back. There is another one somewhere close by as well, I had researched that one, but we decided just to stick with the one we saw, as the menu looked perfect. And it is perfect! A little tiny place with locals and Filipinos – we’re the only Farangs – where we simply ordered at the counter and the food was delivered to our table by lovely women who obviously owned the place. Pancit! Yay! and Pork Adobo! Double Yay! Both excellent and perfectly done.

We’re stuffed! Back at the hotel we hit the 2 for 1 bar, take our drinks up to the room, watch some videos then hit the sack fairly early. We have a 5:30 wake up call tomorrow – so early it must be!