I planned on being a good boy last Friday night and stay home and perform some selfless acts but around midnight my friend Rob called me and asked if I was coming to the charity event at The Tunnel. I think he may have called it “the model event” because it was a charity event being hosted by a local modeling agency. Rob knows how to sell me.

Well, you know me; wherever the ravages of thirst strike young beautiful models I’m there to buy them drinks. I think they were giving some money to an orphanage or school or something, I can’t really remember.

Luckily for me, and the thirsty models, I live a 10 min walk from The Tunnel. The place is an afterhours club that usually doesn’t start seeing customers until after midnight and gets the zombie crowds looking for booze and music after 2am when the clubs that play by the rules (don’t bribe the police) close.

I entered and was asked for 400 baht (a tad north of $10) and was given a drink ticket good for a San Miguel Light. I looked at the cashier and asked “What the heck am I supposed to do with this?” She said, “You can get a free San Miguel Light.” “I know what it is but who the hell drinks San Miguel Light?”

I was then asked to make a “voluntary” donation by three lovely gals who blocked my entrance inside (if Thais are anything, it’s subtle when it comes to money). I asked if I could donate my San Miguel Light but that plan got nixed so I slipped them a few hundred baht and they cleared the way for me to enter.

The first thing when you enter is a large bar so I ordered a Jack and Coke and meandered around trying to find Rob. I finally caught up with him, Rado, Stevie, and a few other guys. I drank about half my drink when Rob grabs a bottle of Johnny Walker Black off the table and pours what’s left of it into my Jack and Coke. I guess Jack Black and Coke it is then.

The theme was “Be an Angel for Charity” so all the girls where dressed in skimpy angel costumes. The only problem is nobody really thought about the logistics of having twenty or so women walking around with huge angel wings in a crowded nightclub. Every time I turned around I thought I was going to get my eye poked out. That’s all I need a bum hand and blind in one eye.

As the evening and the drinks flowed they brought out some girls who lip-synced some Thai songs. Then they went back to the techno and hip-hop and an army of coyote dancers took to the stages and gyrated to the beat.

For the finale they held a drawing with the winner receiving a dinner date with Miss FHM Thailand (I didn’t win).

You quickly realize how jaded Thailand makes you when you have an EV debate about winning a dinner date with Miss FHM Thailand. The general consensus was that it was –EV unless the cost of the dinner was included in the prize package (which it wasn’t).

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The one in the red is Miss FHM Thailand

Here’s the math.

You’re buying a raffle ticket for 280 baht. They likely have sold close to 100 tickets so you’re getting approximately 100:1 odds on your purchase. On top of that, if you win you can’t really take Miss FHM Thailand to McDonalds so you’re probably looking at another 3000 – 4000 baht for dinner and drinks at an upscale restaurant.

And, you haven’t even met her. She might not speak English. She could be a total bore. You have no idea. Just because she photographs well doesn’t mean she’s a pleasure to be around.

And it’s just dinner. As soon as the check comes she’s no longer under any obligation to hang out with you. No movie. No nightclubbing. Just dinner.

So your real cost is between 3280 and 4280 against a prize that you have no way of valuing.

But what makes it a no-brainer is the relative value of 3280 – 4280 baht. In Thailand you could party like Motley Crue (pre-rehab) on that kind of cash. No, you could rap video bling, bling party on that kind of money.

So you can pay 3280 – 4280 and hope to have an entertaining meal or you can keep the 3280 – 4280 and be guaranteed to have one heck of a time. Hmmmm.

In the end I peeled off a few 100 baht notes and just stuck them in the donation box. Better value as far as I’m concerned.

Oh, and I gave the San Miguel drink ticket to Rado who seemed more than happy to accept my charitable donation.

So I kept my friend in beer, donated money to some orphanage, saved myself 4000 baht, and got to chat with a bunch of models. Not a bad Friday night when you think about it. I could really get into this charity thing.

Thailand Friends

I was going to do this as a separate post but it seems in context here so why not?

A lot of people ask me how I can move to Thailand with no friends or support network. I didn’t. I have tons of friends here. Both Thais and other farangs.

Normally it would be very difficult to move half-way across the world and get to know people but somehow I ran across a site called Thailand Friends several years back. It’s sort of a cross between Facebook, a message board, and a social event planner.

But what makes it different than most sites is that the people on the site actually get together in the real world. At least once a week there is an event that is promoted on the site and the regulars from the site meet up. One week it might be bowling, the next week a party, another week it is a charity event (like the one described above). They even have a book club.

And for the most part, everybody’s pretty cool. They come from all walks of life, all age groups, nearly every country, and somehow the people seem to gel.

The best is when someone stumbles across the site when researching their first trip to Thailand and they make friends on the site and when they plan the big trip someone organizes a party to welcome them. Suddenly the person has 15 or 20 new friends.

That happened with me when I first joined. I had been to Thailand a few times but only had one or two people I actually knew in Thailand. I found the site and told someone what day I was arriving and the next thing you know someone had organized a welcome party for me. Many of the people at that party are still friends of mine today.

And so on each trip back to Thailand I would pick up more and more friends as we met at TF events. By the time I was ready to move here I already knew a very large number of people.

I guess as some quirk of fate, a few years back Rob (from the story above) purchased the site. He and I probably saw each other at a few events but I don’t think we really ever met until maybe about a year ago. In fact, I’ll often mention a TF event and Rob will say “You went to that? How the hell did we not meet?”

When we did meet I was still at Party and he asked me what I did for a living. I told him and he said, “Dude, I’m an affiliate.” It turns out that being an affiliate is his main business. Thailand Friends is something he does as a side project.

Obviously we hit it off immediately. I think he might have even been a reader of my blog before we met. I know he reads it now though as he always gives me crap about not giving him a plug. So this is me plugging Thailand Friends.

Seriously though, if you’re a poker player living here in Thailand or you just happen to read this blog and are thinking about coming here on holiday, check out Thailand Friends. It’s a really great site with some very fun and friendly people.

If you do, my screen name on there is farangfarang so give me a shout.

photocred to Emmy from EM Modeling