The Ice-capade

Those of you who have visited the walking street in Pattaya know that shit that goes down there is the stuff of legends for the rest of your life. And for me it was no different.

It was sometime close to 3am and the drinks had been flowing for more than 12 hours. 13 to be precise.

My four buddies and I were laughing and joking, wandering around walking street, marveling at the girls in the windows upstairs. I remember my friend saying “Hey, let’s check out this one” before turning towards a door and whilst still talking to him, I put my hand out in front of me to push open the glass door -

Except there was no door. The gentleman entering before me has crashed straight through the black glass and I hadn’t heard a thing because music was blaring at me from all sides and I’d been drunk for a while.

All I remember is a large shard of glass entered into my right-hand palm and I pulled it back hard — so hard, it spurted blood everywhere.

“What the fuck” I screamed and looked at my friend who was still laughing but somehow managing to register what had happened and desperation was slowly creeping into his face.

I didn’t wait.

I walked straight into the bar across the road which was incidentally the infamous “ICE BAR”. So basically, everything in this bar is made of ice, and you’re given jackets to wear while you numb yourself out, drinking shots of tequila from ice-shot-glasses.

I put my hand right on the counter and watched in amazement as the blood pooled, then seeped into the table itself, crisscrossing it’s way across the table with amazing speed and agility, and no defined course.

I looked up and saw the two women who were seated at the counter screaming, one eventually coming up behind me, grabbing my hand, and tying it with what looked like a really long piece of cloth.

She kept wrapping and wrapping and the blood just would not stop. My friend’s were meanwhile apologizing and ordering drinks, being catered to by the other woman.

“Just another Wednesday night at the Walking Street” I thought to myself as I reached for one of the shot-glasses out of the 5 that had been presented to us.

Next morning, I recalled this incident quite clearly, but the rest of the night was blurry, and I literally had no recollection of how I’d gotten back into bed at the guesthouse we were staying at.

My hand was properly bandaged after I woke, and I winced as I picked up a beer with it. “Goddamn, never again, that’s it. We’re not going back to the walking street tonight. It’s too fucking crazy.”

We were back there, sipping from buckets around 7pm.