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The Search for Funky Thong Lo

Posted by Stuart at 12:33 PM on July 09, 2006

My time as a TV Star didn't end at Au Bon Pain last night. The next stop was Sukumvit Soi 38, my favorite place to eat great Thai street food. At this location they filmed me taking pictures of the various stalls and the food they have on display.

And then our last stop was the Colosseum, just off of Soi 38. The Colosseum is a two-story beer hall that serves Thai food and has a great stage show that starts at 8:00 PM. The stage show is complete with a house band, surprisingly talented singers and dancers, and a few kratoey (ladyboys) thrown into the mix for comic relief. On the wall on one side of the stage is a huge mock-up of Mount Rushmore, complete with 20-foot tall faces of Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Lincoln. On the the other side of the stage is a 20-foot tall Thai version with equally important (I'm assuming) Thai Prime Ministers.

Here, the TV crew wanted to film me walking in to the Colosseum, sitting down, ordering a beer, and enjoying the show. I didn't want to walk in alone though! I can just here the voiceover now: "And here is the friendless foreigner, who, after taking pictures of street vendors all alone, goes to the nightclub to drown his sorrows."

Luckily, I saw four of my students from the University. I asked one of them if they wanted to be a TV star, and he agreed. But it turned out that he was much more nervous than I was. By this point, I was very comfortable in front of the camera. (Plus, the beers with dinner helped relax me a bit.)

So they filmed the two of us walking into the building, and then followed us with bright lights shining on us all the way through the crowd and to our seat. The band was playing but no one was watching them, for sure. They all wanted to know who the farang and his Thai friend were.

When it was all over, the crew interviewed me again and asked me if I thought that this part of Thong Lo was funky. I had to say yes, it doesn't get much more funky than the Colosseum. If a Thai version of Mount Rushmore isn't funky, I don't know what is!