It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and written something with the intention of posting it for folks to read… A quick look back and I realise I’ve not actually written anything since February… Y’know, when I expected a medal just because I dragged my arse to the dentist… Oh, all my treatment is finished now… Now more trouble with my teeth… Thanks for asking… Where was I?… Oh yeah… I’ve not written for quite some time… Something I am now currently rectifying… By sitting here and typing…. I know… I DO deserve a medal.
Life in Bangkok was slowly getting back to normal, we had nowhere near the numbers of tourists wandering around that we had a couple of years back, but things were slowly improving… The bars had re-opened, lockdowns were a thing of the past,… With St Patrick’s day approaching and with there being birthdays amongst our group of friends it was decided we should celebrate by playing “Pub Golf” in the wonderful city of insanity that is Bangkok.
One of our friends devised a scoring system and decided which bars we would visit, so on the Saturday directly after St Patrick’s day (this drinking game simply could NOT have happened on a weekday) we all arranged to meet at an Irish bar ready for the game to begin at 1 pm…The dress code was golf-related, Jo wore her polo shirt, leggings and sun hat… I opted for a polo shirt, shorts and a pair of hideous golf socks.
Me and Jo arrived first and ordered food and water… Starting early with the drinking would have been golf suicide, I had already resigned myself to probably giving up halfway and losing the game… Jo, bless her, was confident she would make it through to the very end… Just before 1 pm all of the competitors were sitting in the bar (two were running a little late) and the bar staff were looking at us in a confused fashion, wondering why we had all decided to sit in their pub and NOT drink… Then at the stroke of 1, it began… Pints of Guinness for everyone!
At this point, I have to confess that what I drank that day is all a bit of a blur so I had to go back and look at the actual score sheet to remember the drinks…
The two latecomers arrived and paid a small drinking penalty to make up for being late… The scorecards were handed out, the required drinks and scores were looked at by everyone, the bars we were not allowed to use the toilet in were noted (water hazard)… Golf strategies and plans were made!
Looking at the scorecards I worked out that if I played it safe I could maybe make it through the night, I wasn’t going to win… But at least I wouldn’t disgrace myself.
We all managed to leave the first bar having scored “a hole in one” which I think was a pint of Guinness followed by a baby Guinness ( A shot of Kahlua topped with a shot of Bailey’s) we then made our way to the second pub on the list…
We were all in high spirits when we got to the second pub… Other people in the bar didn’t seem to be in as good a mood… In fact, they may have found us all a little bit loud and a little bit annoying… I have no idea what the scoring system was for this bar but I know we all walked away having scored another “hole in one”…
The next bar on the list was quite a distance away so it was decided that we all jump in a minibus… A minibus that due to the traffic in Bangkok, took us almost an hour to get us to the next pub… A pub that was on the dreaded water hazard list!
One of our group lost points due to breaking the “no toilet breaks” rule while visiting a water hazard pub… Well, actually he went the extra mile by sneaking to another pub to use their toilet… His crime was discovered…. He was punished accordingly… One of the front runners to win the game was beginning to look like he wasn’t such a sure-fire bet after all.
Again (apart from Mr water hazard) we all walked away from the bar having scored “a hole in one) I was feeling relaxed, but not too drunk… In fact, at this point, I was thinking I could be in with a shot of winning the game… Good old drunken confidence!
We were all having a good time, after a snack, a spirit and a mixer followed by a Jagermeister we left the fourth pub I had managed to keep up my perfect score… The walk along Sukhumvit road to the next bar (Scruffy Murphys ) was fun… We were all in high spirits… All enjoying our day… However, there was something awaiting us at Scruffy Murphys that NONE of us had planned for.
Christo, our friend who had devised the scoring system, had tried to keep the drinks “Irish themed”… Guinness was always there on the score sheet and when available he had placed other “Irish themed” drinks on the scoring sheet too…
At Scruffy Murphys ( Christo had gone online to research their drinks menu) in order to score a “hole in one” you had to drink any happy hour drink….. And a cocktail called “Sail away” or something like that… Sail away was without a doubt the most disgusting thing I have EVER drunk… As we ordered, and yes we ALL ordered one, we could see the waitresses looking at us as if we were insane… The vile, brightly coloured liquid was handed out to us and we all drank… And we ALL regretted our decision.
We had, however, all scored a “hole in one”… I was by now, feeling a little bit drunk and was doubting I was going to win.
The next pub on the list was “the clubhouse” another pub on the dreaded water hazard list… Quite cruel really, as one of our friends, Henry who was also there playing golf with us had actually designed the toilets in this particular pub…
I was feeling… actually, I think we were all feeling quite drunk by this point and there was no way I could score a hole in one (A pint of Guinness and slippery nipple cocktail) so I scored an eagle by playing safe and ordering a wet pussy instead… Others in our group by now had managed to score a hole in one in EVERY bar so far…
I found myself in a bar called the black swan… I don’t have any memory of actually getting there, I just sort of found myself there… I have very brief memory flashes of conversations…. I know I scored birdy by having one a spirit with a mixer… The black swan is all a bit of a blur…. I had no memory at all of travelling to, or drinking in the next bar on the list, a bar called “The game”… I remember taking a glass of wine off a tray and drinking it in one gulp (to score a hole in one) but apart from that “the game” has been erased from my memory…My memory comes back in the next and (officially) final bar on the list… Hemmingways…. By now I was feeling really quite drunk… Christo and Henry had resorted to wrestling each other, drinks were ordered …. As Christo carried Henry around the bar I drank my drink to score “par”… The current game leader ordered a negroni for everyone… But, to my shame, I couldn’t drink it… I was done… I was not going to win… By now we had been joined by our friend Xaviera and some other woman whose name (drunkenly) escapes me, we left Hemmingways and someone decided we should end the night at the beer bar near to our apartment, so off to Rumours, we all headed.
We were all drunk… Very drunk… Too drunk… But we carried on…
I think I had gone beyond the point of drunk by this point and decided I would be ok to carry on drinking… What went on at Rumours is a bit of a blur… I know at some point Christo was laying across the pool table…I know Richard fell asleep while sitting on a barstool… I know Eoin went into self-preservation mode, stood up and just walked out the bar without saying goodbye to anyone… I know that at the end of the night (Well, early Sunday morning) there were only four of us left in the bar… Me, Jo, Xaviera and our Australian friend Georgia…. Me and Jo went home to get some sleep (I think it was about 1 am) Xaviera and Georgia carried on… Xaviera hadn’t been there at the start of the game… I think we all agreed Georgia was the eventual winner… God help her liver.
After a few hours of sleep, I awoke with the mother of all hangovers.
A hangover that left me feeling sick, pretty much for the rest of the week.
All that and I didn’t even win.
Hey, but it’s not the winning… It’s the taking part that counts… Right?
Until next time…