TRIP REPORT: Three weeks in Bangkok and Pattaya - by Billy Idol.

[Bangers and Gash]

 

''Once again, I was very depressed, and though I tried to carry on regardless, my condition did not go unnoticed by those around me. Rude Dude leader Harry Johnson urged me to take a break from recording, so, at his suggestion, I chose this moment to fulfil a wild fantasy. We struck out via jetliner for Bangkok, throwing caution to the wind, along with any fear of the Golden Triangle. What made us decide that this was the time and place to seek out our destiny? Was it the stories of young damsels to be found there? Or the overabundance of crazy things one could get up to? Whatever the reasons, it was with no trepidation whatsoever that we braved the high humidity, which I personally dislike, and danced into the mystical realm of long-lost tales.

We flew out of LAX, telling each other we were only going to drink and not do any drugs while we were there. The plan was just to spend as much time in the brothels as possible, with as many girls as possible, and that is exactly how it was for the first few days. We settled in at the Oriental Hotel, in the presidential suite on the top floor, with a panoramic view of the city....... The brothels around town were many, and typically each had about fifty girls behind a huge glass window, all scantily clad in blue see-through sarongs, wearing numbers to allow you to easily identify which girl (or girls ) you wanted. After a while, all the women started blurring together, and so I would say to Harry, ''Just pick me a few you'd think I'd like, mate,'' and we'd go back to the hotel.

Harry took Polaroid photos of our female companions and had over a thousand shots by the time our trip was over. Things were in full swing after a week, when we both decided drinking and jet lag were taking their toll. So we thought, quite innocently, ''What if we scored a little blow just to even out the booze?''. We asked a taxi driver if he knew where we could get some and a twinkle appeared in his eye as he exclaimed, ''yes!'' in Thai, and drove off to get it for us. After about an hour he returned. We climbed into the back of his tiny cab, where he slipped us a long, thin vial, about eight inches in length, filled with white powder. The size of the vial looked suspicious, to Harry took the vial and, with his little finger, tasted the powder. I could see by the look on his face that something wasn't exactly right. ''This isn't blow'' he mouthed to me. My eyebrows raised and my eyes widened as I incredulously asked him - without actually saying a word - ''What could it be, then??'' Though I had a fucking pretty good idea...

On getting up to the hotel room we examined the powder and yes, sure enough, it was the strongest China White heroin I'd ever touched. You only needed to smoke a pinprick of it to get high. And when I say high, I mean zombie high. Shit, my best dream was coming true - or more likely, my worst nightmare. I hadn't had any smack since halfway through 'Whiplash Smile' in 86, and here was the best stuff in the world. A junkie just can't say no to that! I definitely couldn't. One big problem was that we didn't have any tinfoil. After a few hours spent searching through Bangkok markets, we eventually realised they didn't seem to use tinfoil at all in Thailand, so we headed back to the hotel and used the chocolate-bar wrappers from the mini-bar. Junkies are nothing if not resourceful!

The hotel staff were embarrassed by the seemingly continuous parade of hookers through the lobby and corridors at all times of the day and night, be we didn't care. It was an over-the-top kind of fun. I still have a little bit of video we took: there we are, pale ghosts flitting through the suite, zombielike and somnambulistic. The hotel asked us to move so that the president of Cambodia might have the entire top floor. We refused, thus continuing to wear out our welcome at the Oriental. The king's bodyguards stood glaring at the other end of the hallway night and day, but we were so high we didn't give a shit about that, or anything, really.

Eventually, about two weeks into the trip, the dope started to run out and we started to think about our next moves. We decided once the vial ran out, that had to be it, or we would just keep going. But we were so hooked at this point, we knew the heebie-jeebies would be hell if we stopped cold. We went to a pharmacy and bought every knockout pill they stocked. You can get everything over the counter there, so I'm sure we got some codeine and the like, but nothing made much of a dent in the descending agony of coming off that stuff. We decided to get out of Bangkok. Our time was up in the hotel anyway, but not before Mel Gibson and family, horrified, saw me passed out in the elevator with the door opening and closing on me. Harry, who was trying to help me to my feet at the time, later told me that Mel offered a polite, ''Excuse me,'' as he led his family to the next elevator.   

Next we moved to the Royal Cliff Hotel in Pattaya, a seaside resort to the south. Harry had met a Vietnamese bird and she came with us, too. The only English she knew was ''boom boom'' and ''out go the light.'' I suspect Harry had taught her. With the heroin gone, we used the pills. So now, instead of lying low and staying quiet, we were loudly roaming around, getting drunk and tranquilised at the same time. We hired jet-skis, and while playing chicken with Harry, I didn't steer out of his way in time and my jet-ski got dinged and started to sink. For good measure I took off my swimsuit and was nude as it sank. I gave the family $25,000, which hopefully set them right. The jet-ski was their livelihood. Looking back, I feel just awful about it, but I really was too sick and stoned to fully appreciate the situation at the time.

We retired to our hotel and downed more pills. Before long, I passed out on my bed. When I came to, it was a nightmare and Harry had gone out, leaving me with two hookers. I became enraged, and with all the power I could muster through the workouts I'd been doing for the past year and a half, I picked up the five-foot log that was serving as a table and threw it through the glass sliding doors that filled an entire wall of the room. When the hotel owner saw it in the morning, it took $20,000 to calm him down and stop him from calling the police. We decided it was best to get out of Dodge, or in this case, Pattaya, and head back north to Bangkok.

This is where things get hazy. I have only flashes of the rest of the visit in my memory. Phone calls were coming in for me thick and fast, insisting I return home, but I knew I had to get through a week or more of coming off smack before even thinking about the fourteen hour plane ride back. In 86, I had smoked crack to avoid the hell I was now facing, and coming off heroin is increasingly worse each time. All I remember now is people pleading with me to take my friend and leave. I'm sure my mate was dead worried. I was such a loose cannon, smashing things up in a tranquilised hell that I'm sure Harry thought we'd be arrested at any moment. I was crazy, then sane, and then crazy again. One minute you could reason with me and then I'd be gone again - the Billy Idol version of 'acting out' I suppose. All told, I smashed up three hotels and dished out many thousands of dollars to placate hotel management.

In the end, the Thai military were called to help escort us to the plane. I think they got a nurse to come and give me a shot, and they strapped me to a hospital gurney and wheeled me away out of the hotel to the airport with four soldiers armed with rifles marching beside me. I remember seeing them in one blurry moment of consciousness before I blacked out again to wake up puking at the airport. Wonderful! It was during this mad vacation that Harry coined my crazy side's identity by calling me Bilvis. Zool had been usurped by Bilvis. We returned to Los Angeles to finish making my fourth solo album.''

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[Jerboa]

Fucking hell! That’s some Rock & Roll right there, you would think why they weren’t arrested, truth is then and now in Los big money talks, 95% of the time.

[Goodfellas000]

Celebrities or not discussing their exploits is fine, but as soon as drug taking is openly bragged about I switch off zzz zzz

[blueruin]

and the jet ski mafia have been fleecing tourists ever since...

[Jerboa]

and the jet ski mafia have been fleecing tourists ever since...

Fucking Billy Idol started it all, the wanker!