It has come to my attention that the name Jake is a name that Thai people are completely unfamiliar with. Just about everywhere i go i am being referred to as 'Mr. Jack'. This was most evident this morning when i accidentally tipped the front desk lady a considerable amount of money.
She was arranging a private car for me to take me into the city to my new hotel. As she was explaining all of this she mentioned the price of the ride. I thought she was asking for payment, so i proceeded to give her a 1000 baht bill. She quickly took the bill and asked if it was for her. I frantically said yes and she proceeded to freak out at my unintentional act of generosity. She kept proclaiming 'THANK YOU SO MUCH MR. JACK!' over and over and then bowing to me.
Although an unintentional tip, it was rather gratifying. She then proceeded to give me her personal cell phone number and said she would take care of me next time i was in town. Being as i have no idea what she meant by that i will stay away from that offer.
When i arrived at the hotel the driver had to drop me off a block away because it was on a one way street. As i walked to the hotel i was approached by a man who said he would drive me around town for about 2$ an hour. After discovering my room was not ready for another two hours i took him up on this offer. This is how i met Mr. Daeng Sak.
He insisted i call him Mr. Daeng but I really just wanted to call him Mr. Sak. Partially because i found it mildly funny but also because he was kind of a sack.Mr. Daeng spoke some English but it wasn't much. He told me he would show me the city no one else saw but his tour pretty much consisted of taking me to his friends shops to try to get me to buy something while he got a free gas card for the referral. Normally this would have pissed me off but i had nothing better to do at the time. The first stop was at his friends tailoring business. In the absence of parking spaces, Mr. Daeng simply pulled his truck onto the sidewalk and drove all the pedestrians away so he could park.
Sidewalk driving is the coolest Buying a custom suit was something i was interested in before i met Mr. Daeng so i ended up buying from his friend. Im not sure if i could have talked him down more or not but i ended up getting a suit, 4 shirts, and a tie. He will be coming to my hotel room tomorrow to do the final fitting. After the tailor we went to this dumb gold shop and then he took me to a place for lunch. I don't know if it was a bad Thai restaurant or if American Thai places are super authentic but it tasted like dishes i have had before. The only difference is my curry had some sort of small bitter fruit on it that looked like jumbo peas.
Mr. Daeng sacked it up some more by trying to eat my food. After lunch he took me back to the hotel and my room was finally ready. This room is quite the improvement from the last. I guess it was worth it to pay a little extra for the 'Royal Suite'.
This was really the icing on the cakeMaybe i was being naive but i didn't realize how open everyone is here about soliciting prostitutes to Americans. Even the bell hop who took my bags to my room was telling me that the advantage of this hotel was that they do not charge extra to have a hooker in your room. Mr. Daeng was pretty set on taking me to a brothel which i had to decline on multiple occasions. He also tried to get me to 'rent' a girl for the week and attend the 'boy girl fuck show'. I'm holding out for the ping pong show.
