The Hangover (3)

We've flown to Bangkok and we're staying in a hotel whose proudest boast is that The Hangover 2 was set there. I've lots of misgivings about this. (And not just that The Hangover 2 is a terrible title - why didn't they have The Hangover: Electric Boogaloo, or Another Hangover, or Still Hungover, or were they saving those for the eventual sequels (Hungover and Furious 4, perhaps?)

I thought the original film was ok, although it clearly felt it was the only comedy ever to be filmed, ever, ever, ever, and by the sounds of it the sequel was the original with extra Asian-stereotypes, and I'm now old and jaded enough that the mere existence of ladyboys doesn't cause me to chortle with glee. Still, it doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of a 5-star hotel that it had several dirty Americans drinking enough to get amnesia.

But the advertising is everywhere. In one of the lifts there's a huge picture printed onto the doors of the three stars looking hungover. Well, looking like fried shit, if you want to be technically correct, and sitting on the steps of the glamourous bar upstairs. Glamourous bars don't look so glam when you have three men who look like they spent the night sleeping rough, sitting on the steps contemplating the horror of the universe. But I'm not in advertising, what would I know?

Because of the advertising, or the film, the place is crowded with booze-tourists. You know, men with tattoos instead of a sense of irony, stinking of stale beer, making a pilgrimage to the 62nd floor of this hotel, or sitting in the lobby looking strangely dejected. Perhaps they were disappointed that a hangover isn't as fun as Hollywood makes it look. Which would be a strangely appropriate fate for them.

It's got so bad, one can infer, that they now enforce a dress code at the swanky bars saying no shorts, beach shorts or filthy, dirty sandals. Now I don't know about Bangkok, but in the rest of the world most customers of swanky restaurants don't dress that way anyway, which makes me think that a never-ending crowd of scruttily-dressed impressionable lads have been trying to get to the bar to have the same sort of Hangover that they've seen on screen. Gullible, badly dressed young men. Oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Or perhaps they want to stay in one of the rooms. And that is where the hotel seems to take flight from reality utterly, or at least reason.

Yes, it might be fun to watch a man wake up in a ruined hotel room, along with a tiger and without most of his mental faculties.

But ask yourself, do you want to be the person running the hotel that he's woken up in, and have to try to get money to fix the room out of a man who's so mental he got a facial tattoo without realising, and has no money?

And forget about being the proprietor: do you really want to be the next person to stay in that room?

(I must point out that although I think the advertising isn't really doing what it should for the hotel's image (and perhaps any publicity is good publicity) it is a simply gorgeous hotel - we have an incredible view out over the city, and our suite (our suite! our suite!) is slightly bigger than our apartment, as is the tradition of all swanky hotels. Plus the bed's enormous, the food is top-notch, and you can drink as many complimentary cans of Coke from the fridge as you like.

We shouldn't have indulged in raspberry gin-and-tonics though. There's an impending hangover, I'm sure.)