Hunting for a hamburger with a touch of adventure, Derek and I decide to explore one of the bar and grill style venues that have all the trappings needed to cater to elder expats. Or choice was made in a decisive fashion when I saw a TV inside one of them with a half-pipe and skateboarders from the Phuket X-games. I pulled Derek in past the hostess into the little den sporting a lone bar and 8 barstools. We quickly tried to establish our interest was purely in the TV to avoid the unpleasing stare of eyes 7 pairs of eyes, that seemed to looking at 'fresh meat'. Ordering a beer, we set upon the menu, which we realized was that of one belonging to a German restaurant. Derek worked on it's translation for about 5 minutes and then I had to give it a try. I really wanted a hamburger and we couldn't imagine German's not eating them, especially with a city called Hamburg. Where else could Hamburgers come from than the city of Hamburg? Or maybe only the Hamburguler came from Hamburg. Either way, the cabbage dishes and Suppas, just weren't going to do it--either was 95baht chicken fried rice. The chef suggest a chicken 'like' burger, but that it would look just like a hamburger. Having been in Thailand long enough to know not to trust Thai style creativity, we decided to finish our beers in the company of the now back- massage-giving older hostesses--and then split. The bar had obviously seen it's better days, days of which had also been seen by the hostesses. Of course even if they were 38 or 40, that would have still been half the age of the majority of German patrons. We set off to Jool's, this time a British expat joint with a long Bangkok history. The walls where hung with photos of big nights at the bar, band posters, team flags and other memorabilia. One notable photo enabled Derek to purge himself of the words, "Look at that fat guy!", at which point he realized 5 feet ahead of him was seated the live "in the flesh" version of the photo. Suddenly we felt we had walked into some version of King Arthur's court, as he was seated with his back to us at the head of the 'U' shaped bar. Several other less massive members of the court also seemed to be fixtures there. From his throne, which was in fact a custom-made bar stool with a double reinforced back, he seemed to be in command of some court of elite brew tasters. Derek expected to be banished then and there, as he was sure "Big Dave" had heard his comment. I assured him he didn't. We stepped up the spiral staircase to the upper level, where the previous moments incident was lost on a new puzzle--"Is that the shortest and tightest skirt you've ever seen?"