“Handing out flyers is like selling crack in Camden” Welcome to Khaosan Road

In Bangkok foreigners are everywhere, it’s almost as if a whole bunch of countries from around the world decided to curb their overpopulation problems and drop a crate full of people in the middle of Thailand. But that’s just a crazy notion. Yet it just seems that people come here to lose themselves, work or just experience something new for a while.

We played two shows this weekend, we got invited back for the third time to Noriega's, and we all agreed that it was the most demoralizing show of our trip. We played to about 2 people, plus the waitresses and bar staff so it was a pretty “swuck” experience, although the two people, who were there, actually almost started skanking by the end of the show and clapping along so that made it worth it.

After that we hanged out with these really cool girls from France who are studying in Bangkok. We drank shit loads of cheap booze on the streets and hit the town in a big way. French people have the coolest accents ever, I could sit there and listen to them talk all day, they could be telling me to go eat a bag of shit and I’d still just blush and go “o that sounds so cool, what else can you tell me in french”.

So we ended up getting home at about 5 in the morning, the cab driver was so damn keen to party. Plus he was the only guy we could find who was willing to take us to Bang Na from Silom. At one stage he had some cheesy techno music blaring, and he was literally dancing in his seat, then he even let go of the steering wheel for a while. I think if we all weren’t so wasted, we probably would have been crapping ourselves, but we just joined in and started having a party with him.

The next day we had some pretty interesting stories to tell, we were playing in the infamous Khaosan Road that night, at a place called Immortal. Khaosan is basically foreigner central; people from all around the world invade this street on a continual basis.

It’s kind of like a carnival of night clubs, street side pubs and restaurants, backpackers and bright lights. There is something new to see around every corner. This was also one of our first experiences of handing out flyers in Thailand. We thought it would be a good idea to make our own flyers for the show. Yet we were pleasantly surprised to find the venue had made posters and flyers for our show already and they had two pretty girls standing on the road handing them out. So we decided to join them and we spent the night leading up to the gig doing just that. We met this really crazy drunk guy from Devin England, at first I thought he was part of the venue because he was also doing the whole flyer mission but after a while I realised his technique was a little floored. This is how it went:

Step 1- Get as drunk as you possibly can and continue drinking, until you nearly fall over.

Step 2- Scrunch up the flyers as much as humanly possible and leave them in your pocket.

Step 3- Look as suspect as possible as you hand out flyers, under your shirt, or behind your back.

Step 4- As patrons refuse to take your scrunched, damp piece of paper, harass them or run after them, shouting and screaming.

 “Handing out flyers is like handing out crack in Camden” – Strange wired drunk, crazy flyer guy.

Later on that night I realised that this guy was the result of over indulgence in the substance LSD (this is a warning hippies; you really don’t want to end up like this guy). I honestly didn’t know if I was scared or thought he was a new found friend. At one stage he said “I’m off to find some skanky woman and if she asks me for money that’s when I pull out a knife, don’t laugh because it’s true”. “I’m into deadly deadly metal, the type where only one person rocks up to the show, that gets me going”.

The club we played at advertised on their MySpace page that they were a metal bar. But all that was blaring from the speakers was drum and bass. I’m not sure if I like drum and bass very much, its ok for about 3 minutes, the beats are fairly intricate and cool, but after that it doesn’t really change, so you pretty much just get over it.

The show was pretty rad; we had plenty technical problems like the keyboard not working, all the power cutting out. But at least the venue had monitors. So we were stoked to be on a proper stage, the sound engineer was a really awesome guy as well. He organised to get us a bucket of some sort of alcohol after the gig which was much appreciated since we are poor hahaha.We played to actual people which was nice, not barstools and tables.And there was some punk rocker from Germany there that was really stoked with the show.

So we got some more gigs coming up pretty soon, if you find yourself in Bangkok come party with us.