Fifth of March 2007. It is the first day of the agarwood conference. Started the day early in the morning although I was a little reluctant to leave my cozy bed.
Like all other conference that I attended. We begin with an opening ceremony which is boring in my opinion. Then we continue with some presentation from delegates from around the world. All the presentation was interesting but I felt sleepy nevertheless. There are more to agarwood than I have thought. Farrah arrives to the conference during the first tea break.
Well that covers most of the first part of the day. The exciting part of the night just started. It started as an innocent trip to a shopping complex right after dinner. I was dragged out by Farrah who insist on going out for shopping. We took a taxi which drop us in a shopping complex called MAH. It was refreshing to see a big shopping complex that is different from those that you can see in Malaysia. Even though with all those differences, the people inside the complex all looks so familiar with all the Chinese, Malay and Bumi excluding Indian. Alas!!! All the goods there were expensive. So we decided to leave that place and took a MRT to a place which is suppose to be an open market. We got some direction from a Singaporean couple to go to a market called “PatPong”. We did not know of the terror or should I say the surprise that awaits us there…
We finally found our way to the market. The entrance that we found was in an alley which we thought were safe since there is a lot of tourist and people around it. Not to mention that there are a lot of shoplots along the alley so it was brightly lighted so we assume that it is safe.
The first shop that we came across in the alley is a shop selling leather goods. Leather goods is one of our buy list. So we browse the goods in the shop. There is quite a l;arge variety of leather goods. Ranging from the most common cow leather to the exotic sting ray. Nothing reallyn interest us so we move along the alley. We were impressed by all those leather goods for sale. Without realizing it, we came across a dark corner of the alley. We were quite shock by it. Farrah was so excited that she was staring at the shop for quite a long time. It look like a bar with a few exception of female bondage statues on the wall for decoration.
I thought I could find a picture somewhere to prove my point here but it is nowhere to be found. Dang it!!! I should have look for the pictures earlier!!!
Back to the story, reluctantly, I was dragged away by Farrah to the open market which is known as Pat Pong. Guess I did not regret going there after all. Well, Pat Pong is not your typical market like Petaling Street in Kuala Lumpur. There are all sort of goods and not to forget a variety of “services” that you can acquired there. There are tons of stuff that you can get there. One of those are leather goods. All of these are pale in comparison to the strip bar around the market. There are a lot of girls in bikini with their butt-swinging dance. I was rather curious to go in and have a look but like what they always say, “Curiousity kills the cat”. Once again I am grateful that I have Farrah around or else I will surely go in and have a beer or 2 (although I do not know how to drink).
I bought 2 leather belts there along with Farrah. The most important when you go shopping there is that you have to haggle for a good price or you will most probably get yourself butchered. Lucky me, I got Farrah around with me. A lot of people mistook her for a local Thai. If only she could speak Thai then we might be able to save alot more in our shopping spree. =P
Where as Farrah bought some leather belts along with some clothes and jacket for her brothers and herself. We saw a lot of interesting stuff on that trip. It was something that you cannot simply see here in Malaysia. How I wish I can actually visit Bangkok again in the near future.
