The Word Cloud

I couldn’t imagine liking karaoke, but it was - hold your breath. Opening scene – people arrive. I am the only Englishman, outnumbered by four Germans with deck chairs, a Viking, and Hanke. The other eighteen are mainly girlfriends of Hanke’s Thai ex, who have come along for the freebies. Food and drink are on his tab. He mumbles under his breath.

All polite.

Next scene – food – a buffet. I stuff pizza and salad down my throat, washed down with 5% Chang Export. Thai ladies eat. Farangs eat. Hanke makes noises, gets up to sing, and the karaoke begins.

First song: Green Green Grass of Home – Tom Jones. I look up. The video is a scene on a beach with dozens of scantily clad women, one of whom is right up to the camera. She is wearing a wet T-shirt and bikini bottoms.

Hanke singing in a lovely gravelly monotone – ‘four grey walls surround me’ they’ll all come to meet me – babes cavorting on the beach. ‘GGG of Home’. The T-shirt lady bends over and shows her bikini bum to the camera. I haven’t laughed so much, it was hilarious.

Well you can guess it pretty much deteriorated into a mega piss-up with dancing and decorum teetering on the edge. One of the German women tells me she only likes one German singer. I say Marlene Dietrich – she says no...

That was Thursday. Saturday I surface. More later.