Harmony and Hamburgers

Ayutthaya, 6/24/11

I meet Flemming while we are both lounging at Tony's Place's airy foyer drinking Chang out of tall frosted glasses. He is a tall, blond 25-year old Dane who wears geometric black framed glasses and studied business. Flemming introduces himself while I am relaxing and getting serenaded by the hostel's brilliantly terrible resident Thai lounge singer. Tonight he's covering all of Elton John's hits. His version of Elton's "Harmony" is a terrifically and unintentionally ironic.

Post-concert, Flemming and I hit the night market a few blocks away, which spans for about 200 meters. We pick up a quick snack of Som Tom, quite savory this time with plenty of fish sauce, and then head over to Malakor for dinner. The restaurant overlooks Wat Ratchaburana, which is basked in a golden light at nighttime. We sit on Malakor's teak porch, the only patrons of the restaurant. Flemming continues to drink and, as they are out of their signature soup, I order a green curry chicken fried rice. It looks like a pedestrian fried rice, but has been cooked with green curry broth instead of water, so it packs a pungent, herbal, spicy, coconutty surprise punch.

We miander back to our guest house, whose bar at 10pm is only 20% full. The nearby hostels follow suit so we decide to take a walk around the area looking for more lively establishments. We stumble upon "Gun Bar", an open-air, narrow watering hole filled exclusively with Thai locals and one gigantic golden retriever whose father was likely a grizzly bear. Retriever-bear is so excited to meet caucasians that he follows us all night.

As we drink our Chang's, we're greeted by a gregarious barman who, upon hearing I'm from New York, grabs a photo album from beneath the bar to show me images from his family's 1992 Manhattan vacation. "Sad about the Twin Towers" he says in broken English.

As we near the end of out beers, a trio of twentysomething Thais call us over to join them at their table. In the center of the table is Stiky, the sole female, English speaker, and clear queen bee. She is flanked by two male friends who laugh at most of her jokes throughout the night. Stiky introduces herself between sips of her neon Blue Hawaii. Her male companions have whiskey bottle service, which is cheap and lacks all pretense in Thailand: A bottle is placed on the table next to a couple bottles of soda water and ice. I'm thrilled to see Jack Daniel's is their spirit of choice, but the bartender proudly announces that it's actually cheap local whiskey which he has just funneled into the American bottle. He's also done this with Johnny Walker and other fine brown liquors, if I'm interested. It's not like I care, I'm here for the company. And mutant dogs.

Stiky is thrilled to hear that I worked in advertising as she used to be a commercial actress in Bangkok. Unfortunately, her mom got ill, so Stiky quit the entertainment business and moved back home to Ayutthaya to be closer. She now serves as a local DJ ("DJ Stiky") and after bemoaning the lack of good burger options in her hometown, opened "Stiky Burger" across from Wat Ratchaburana. She shows us photos of her new menu offerings -- pork, beef, chicken, tofu burgers, which I must say looks quite scrumptious. We urge her to take us there now, but she's closed shop for the weekend due to an excessive amount of DJ gigs. It seems in music and burgercraft, Stiky is a one woman show.

More whiskey and blue curacao later flows and by 3am, Flemming and I have convinced Stiky to open her shop tomorrow especially for us. 8pm it is, by the giant Vegas-esque burger statue.