Every now and again the entire country seems to close down. For the most part this is for celebrating things like the New Year, religious festivals and so on; in total there are something like 15 public holidays. One of them is quite curious, it's the Queen's birthday on August 12th. Everything shuts down, but what's even worst for the alchohol fueled traveller, is that this includes the bars.

There are two odd things here. Firstly it's still possible to buy alchohol in restaurants and second, you can still buy it in the markets or if you're really that desperate make sure you've stocked your mini-bar fridge with as much beer as it can contain and you can drink, a tricky balancing act. The second is that this rule really only affects travellers, tourists and ex-pats. These are the ones that haunt the bars along Sukhumvit road, hoary old men with faces that tell of too much drinking and little else to do but imbibe, watch sports on television, tell tall tales and fuck the thousands of bar girls that ply their trade around Sukhumvit. The ones with wiser, older heads can actually be good company, they've learnt to pace themselves, get a structure to their lives and are replete with a stock of cautionary tales. There are a few bars that I frequent where you can find such company and on such holidays as the Queen's birthday, they all simply let their regulars in throught the back door while the metal grill covering the front facade stares lifelessly back at a disapointed stranger saying firmly 'Shut so bugger off.'. So the only effect is to disappoint the tourists who wander around bewildered in the dense heat, desperate for a beer or ten, unable to sate their desire except in the pricy restaurants.

Sukhumvit is an odd place, it's the heart of the Bangkok business, shopping and sex industry all wrapped up into one seething seedy whole. The skyline is dominated by lofty towers where the rich of Bangkok live in splendid condominiums, twenty floors up away from the sordid activities that occur at street level. For on every corner there are freelance girls and the odd ladyboy hoping to get lucky with a passing punter. Touts offer prostitutes and pornography waving lurid and explicit picture cards at blushing puffing men as they heave their stomachs down the Sois. Filthy, belching, noisy, two-stroke tuk-tuks rev and roar, snap and scream zipping in and out of parking spaces from where they try to rip off tourists with exorbitant fares.

Most of the bars have bar-girls in tow, but they are usually pretty laid back and leave you in peace if that's what you want. But there are other more notorious bars, such as the Garden bar where the girls won't stop hassling you until pay them some attention, their sole objective is money, to get you into bed and to get to you wallet. Ourside the bar there's a rogues gallery of mug-shots of girls known to rob customers. The Garden bar is where the male tourists and ex-pats come to get drunk in the afternoon and take a girl home before freshening up for the evening and heading for places like the notorious Nana Plaza where they repeat the process in a seedy three floor complex of bars, strip shows, sex shows, dancing girls and ladyboy bars. On two of the upper floors are 'short time hotels', rooms where men go to fuck the girls and ladyboys they've paid to have sex with from the various joints in the Nana plaza. As a rule of thumb, the higher up the floor, the more extreme the behaviour of the girls and ladyboys becomes - anything to get you to pay their barfine and take them to a short time hotel.

The place is flooded with businessmen out for a bit of fun as they fly around the world doing whatever it is that they do. Bangkok being the asia hub airport, these men usually make sure they have 2-3 days in Sukhumvit to sample its unquestionable delights. One of the odd things about the Nana plaza is that there's an altar to the Buddha just by the entrance. The working girls and ladyboys all perform the wai before the four bodied buddha and leave an offering of strong scented garlands, incense sticks, fruit and food. The altar is thick with fat black flies that rise in clouds when an offering is placed. At dusk they magically disappear and for the first time I remember wondering where exactly do all the flies go at nightime? Where do they sleep? At the altar, I wondered what those who stopped to pray briefly were asking for. A way out of this life? A husband? A prayer for a sick relative? Or enough luck to get a customer this evening?

Back on Sukhumvit, it's the Queen's birthday still, and the girls displaced from the closed bars and Nana plaza (also closed down) don't miss a beat. There are still men with fat wallets and greedy for sex to do business with. On every quiet corner there are gangs of them pulling at you, pouting, pawing you all over. It may be the Queen's birthday but there's money to be made. You've got it, they want it and they've got what you want. Simple.

I sit at the corner bar, reading my book and watching the mayhem around me. Hawkers try to sell me sunglasses, maps, wooden rasping frogs, maps, lighters, lottery tickets and bags of nuts. Occasionaly Issan women pull up with paniers on bendy bamboo poles laden with honeycombes and jars of thick fresh honey from their land up north. The shoe shine boys and girls are busy scurrying around at your feet. But the worst are those hawkers that sell tiny birds. The idea is to set a bird free and by doing so you 'make merit'. If you make enough merit in this life, then in the next things will be better for you. But these heartless bastards carry half a dozen cages around stuffed full with panicking tiny birds, there are no real perches for them, no water in this cloyin heat. Some off the poor things lie exhausted or dead at the bottom of the cages, while the rest squabble around them, all desperate to be free from this living hell. When they offer them to me I look at them in disgust - jai din, I say reprovingly, 'bad heart'. If things balance out then things will be surely the worse for them in their next lives.

Everything closes down officially at 1.00pm. But there are always bars open somewhere for people to get mindlessly drunk in. Outside the Nana plaza there are usually people throwing up, the occasional fights, the young Ferang behaving disgracefully. Even later, the ladyboys prowl the streets looking for a drunk to rob, usually working in pairs, one to distract, the other to relieve him of his watch and wallet. Even at 5.00am in the morning, when I was once up, there were still girls hoping beyond hope to catch a late punter. Only when the dawn came would they finally give up and melt away with the failing night, waiting to try again the next afternoon and evening.

yechydda,