So the wife and I just watched it today. We both liked the first one, and we both liked this one. Being so familiar with Bangkok made it all the more fun. Some random thoughts:
Although it’s never identified specifically in the movie, the place where the wedding takes place is Krabi province, down South on the peninsula. It’s even more beautiful in real life than it looks in the film, and it looks pretty darned good in the film. However, it’s on the Andaman Sea or Indian Ocean side of the peninsula. So travel between there and Bangkok by boat would entail going all the way around Malaysia and Singapore. Even if it’s not supposed to be Krabi for purposes of the story, you only get those limestone-cliff formations on that side of the peninsula, not the Gulf of Thailand side. And even if you pretend it’s actually on the other side of the peninsula after all, there’s no way you could travel between there and Bangkok by boat and be there before, say, daylight. Certainly not in time to have had a night like that. However, we just accepted it and went with the flow, but a lot of local film critics seem to have taken great exception to this distance factor. (The Beach was also filmed in Krabi province, but not on the mainland; on one of the islands offshore.)
In the part where Alan insists that no seafood from the local fishing village could possibly be as good as Long John Silver’s, the Thai subtitles here had him saying it could not be as good as Jay Ngaw. Jay Ngaw is a local seafood chain. We can only assume they slipped that in because no one in Thailand has ever heard of Long John Silver’s, but why Alan of all people would be singing the praises of an obscure local seafood chain is a mystery.
There are several shots of our condo building in the film, when they’re doing aerial shots of Bangkok. We live in a 36-story tower that is rather distinctive. And it’s actually one of four 36-story towers grouped together. We got caught up in looking for our building!
The scene of bar destruction, where they find Stu’s tattoo artist, is in a small lane called Sukhumvit Soi 7/1, one of the quieter of our red-light districts. The White Lion Bar is actually a nice little place called Boosabar, and the Brit owner is very nice. There are no tattoo parlors in this soi (Thai for “lane” and commonly used in English conversation), but there are plenty in the area. They filmed there for about two hours one day and paid all the bar owners handsomely for their time, since they had to close. Those were a happy bunch of bar owners too, I’ll tell ya.
This is the scene where Bill Clinton was supposed to have done a cameo. Imdb.com verifies he did visit the movie set. (He was here in Bangkok speaking on alternative energy at Escap, a UN organization with a Bangkok office.) The local press reported at the time that he had made a cameo. A friend of mine reported at the time in the English-language press that he had made a cameo. I’ll have to ask him why everyone screwed that up, but I’m wondering if maybe they did do a cameo, and then someone decided that this maybe was not a good dea and got it canned.
The Siam Sam’s sign appeared outside of Cactus Club in Soi Cowboy, arguably our top red-light district at the moment. Cactus is owned by an affable fellow American named John, who hails from Missouri. However, the interior was actually Tilac Bar right across the way. Tilac is the largest bar in Soi Cowboy, three shophouses wide, and the only bar with two entrances. I’m not sure why they could not have put the Siam Sam’s sign on Tilac Bar, but John got paid pretty well for putting it up on his place. They filmed there about 6am one morning. I recognized some of the girls in that scene even though they were wearing more clothes than they normally do.
The LeBua Hotel is a real five-star place, and the outdoor Sirocco does sit atop it just like in the movie. (And you can see our condo not too far away, heh.) But there is no “Chiang Mai Monastery” right outside of Bangkok. Those are not Thai monks’ robes, monks don’t beat people up with sticks, and there are no vows of silence with any local sect. I figure they probably had to change the robes to the style worn in South Asia, say in Nepal and Bhutan, in order to have the script approved by the government. In some of the street scenes, you can see saffron-yellow-robed monks walking around, and that’s what they realy look like here.
The bride and her kid brother are not Thai in real life, but their parents are very well-known Thai actors. The actress playing the mother can’t speak English very well, and since the characters are supposed to be living in the US these days, I guess they had her speak only Thai to her husband so her lack of proficiency wouldn’t seem odd. I just learned that Teddy, the kid brother, is the real-life son of Taiwanese director Ang Lee.
Myself, I have had, heh, “a few” hangover-style nights and even weekends. I know very well the feeling of waking up someplace in Bangkok and wondering, “What happened and where the fuck am I?” Although they did not involve ladyboys. (Really. No, really, they didn’t.) Those were back in my salad days though, and I take it a lot slower in my old age, especially since getting married. But I think it was not once, but twice in the movie where someone said of young Teddy:“Bangkok has him now.” The wife and I looked at each other and laughed knowingly, heh.
We enjoyed the film and are looking forward to #3. 
