Oong Nuat - Thai Dive Bar

Dawn rises like a broken egg over Pattaya's eastern horizon.

Back in 2007 I lived in Pattaya. Most mornings 99.999% of the population were in bed, but at Oong Nuat the outdoor bar on Soi Bongkod specialized in music by Carabao and exotic Thai whiskey i.e. deadly lao khao , as the night surrendered to a hellish morning for the drunken clientele huddled around rough wooden tables like conspirators in a monstrous experiment dedicated to killing off most of your brain cells.

And they die in the millions for the karaoke singers, bar girls, and errant farangs. I know, because black rice whiskey has stuporized my memory banks on more than one occasion at Oong Nuat.

In the company of the girls from the Buffalo Bar.

Gore Vidal said, "Once is experimentation. Twice is perversion."

However drinking at Oong Nuat more than twice was close to suicidal and I've woken the afternoon afterwards with my kidneys feeling like I had taken a beating by baseball bats, saying, "Never again."

But the Oong Nuat was only a hundred meters from the 7th Day Adventist Church and nothing said godlessness more appropriately than ordering another dirty bottle of lao khao dang, as the bible-thumpers entered the church to pray for our damned souls.

"Drinks for all my friends." I cried out and everyone cheered my generosity.

Drinks were cheap, as dawn bathed your comrades' faces with the blessed make-up of beer-googles, and every once in a while someone took up a guitar and play some Carabao or Marijuana or old Thai rock, which was definitely a change from the Marine Disco II on ketamine.

Chai-yo.

Also someone once said that you don't kill brain cells, because the good ones only disassociate themselves from the bad ones.