boy oh ladyboy

Returning from Ko Chang and swinging through Bangkok for one final night before our flight out to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the next day, we went to the world-famous kathoey cabaret, Calypso, at the luxury Asia Hotel - where we definitely were not staying, by the way; our home for the night was a way more budget joint, coincidentally called the Malaysia Hotel. The Malaysia had been recommended to us by our old friend Max from Vietnam - he told us that it's a place with a dark past, the onetime hangout of serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who preyed on Western tourists in the Seventies, luring them to their deaths with promises of cheap drugs. Now, Max told us, the Malaysia was a gay hotel and the best budget place to stay in Bangkok - as long as you didn't mind all the "poofs mincing about," as he put it. We didn't.

In fact, staying at this notorious hotel with its blood-spattered history and going to see the Calypso cabaret seemed like the perfect way to bid farewell to Thailand - and to celebrate the eve of the 3-month mark (Dec. 5) of our trip.

The cabaret, in particular, was fittingly insane. The theater was exactly what you'd expect of a cabaret - all plush red-satin seats, little round tables with small, dim lamps on them, and overpriced drinks. And the show was a kitschy, flamboyant, sometimes hilarious mix of dancing and lipsyncing to classic showtunes, frenetic flamenco, cheesy Asian ballads, really cheesy techno, etc., performed by a cast of, I'm guessing, 50, at least 30 of whom were ladyboys. And not just any ladyboys, but the most convincing, glamorous, and, in some cases, dropdead gorgeous transvestites and/or transsexuals probably anywhere in the world (definitely click the link above for a look). As a straight man, I can say that it was truly a night of mixed emotions - attraction, dismay, disbelief, confusion, more attraction... Maya and I had read in BK magazine (which is kind of like Bangkok's Village Voice), that while, in the States, the average age that people have sex-change operations is in their 50s, the average age in Thailand is the mid-to-late 20s; this made me think that probably most of the ladyboys in the show were post-op and, for all intents and purposes, women, and so I didn't feel quite so conflicted admiring their voluptuous forms and sultry moves. As for Maya, this was one of the few times when she had no absolutely problem with me ogling scantily-clad "ladies." And she found my "issues" to be hilarious.

It was with similarly mixed emotions that we left Thailand the next morning. It definitely hadn't been our favorite country so far, and it wouldn't be our first to visit again, or our first to ever call home, but it had provided us with some of our greatest challenges and strangest - and gayest - memories.