Falling Rain

I'd forgotten the way that nights just snowball out of control here in Chiang Mai. On Friday we went to see Roy who I became good friends with when we worked together on the set of Sniper 3 a couple of years back. We found him at What's Up, the little bar that he owns and we enjoyed a few drinks together. Dave and the others then went off to The Brasserie to watch the live music but I was happy just hanging out having a quiet drink with Roy... inevitably a few hours later some more friends had turned up and I was on the back of Roy's motorbike headed for Atlantis, one of the big Thai nightclubs that specialises in the typical Euro-dance music which is so popular here - I swear they even played Crazy Frog. Then sometime between 3-4am we moved onto Sharky's, one of the late night bars in the city, and as I walked through the door I brushed past a pretty Thai girl and we both stopped dead and did a double-take... it was Fon.

Fon is probably my closest Thai friend, she's certainly the one girl I've spent the most time with during my last four trips to Chiang Mai. We never attempt to keep in touch when I'm away from Thailand, but we somehow always manage to find each other when I'm here, even though she left the whole bar scene a few years ago. The last time I was here she was working in one of the computer plazas in the city, but this year I just wasn't expecting to see her - Dave and Sean hadn't spotted her once in the three months they've been back, and we'd all assumed that she'd moved away. Which is actually what's happened; her mother died last year after a long illness and Fon decided to move back to her home town of Doi Tao. She's just back in Chiang Mai for a week staying with some of her old friends, so we were really lucky that we managed to bump into one another. Last night we went out for dinner and a couple of games of pool before she met up with her friends, and tonight we've arranged to go out for a few drinks.

Btw, was I drunk last night or did Chelsea really get hammered 3-0 by Middlesbrough?

I'm currently reading Private Dancer by Stephen Leather. If you ever wanted an all-too-accurate insight into the whole 'girlie bar' culture in Bangkok and understand why you should never get romantically involved with a bargirl here, then this is the book to read.