The worst bowling alley in the world

If you ever wondered where The Worst Bowling Alley In The World  is, breath out, cos I’ve found your answer.

A little drunk and not sure where to take the evening, we were surprised to hear that Maha Sarakham, a one horse town in Thailand’s Northeast has now got a bowling alley. Arriving at The Worst Bowling Alley in the World (TWBAITW) we were happy to see that only two lanes were being use so we could get right into it, think again!

“Sorry, we’ve no lanes available” the young kid at reception said without even bothering to look at us, completely uninterested. “But there’s only two lanes in use” I questioned, thinking that he must be fobbing us off “I can see about ten lanes free.” “They’re out of order” came his reply.

Maha Sarakham bowling centre is around four years old and boasts twelve full size bowling lanes and looks like a normal bowling alley. Sure enough though, the kid was true to his word and ten of the lanes were not working and, in actual fact, none of the lanes worked properly.

Luckily enough, the people playing on the two lanes that were semi-working invted us to play on one of their lanes so we went to get shoes. (pretty much optional here but we wanted to do things properly so we asked for them).

It turns out that the bowling alley has two employees, the miserable kid is one but the other was quite the opposite. Khun Daen was the guy in charge and was responsible for everything. Not only did he run the show, he also fixed the machies that put the pins up, served drinks when the miserable guy was asleep and, which he enjoyed most of all, played with anyone who was willing to let him. Khun Daen has his own, very well used balls, and took great pride in kicking everyone’s asses on a daily basis.

Khun Daen, despite his enthusiasm and love for the job, isn’t the world’s most experienced manager. We asked for a couple of cold beers, which you might think a given in a late night bowling alley, but this was a pretty tall order (despite the fact that they had about 15 fridges). The choices were cold Asahi (which tastes like soda water) or warm Leo. I tried both and couldn’t get comfortable with either.

So finally, we settled down to play and to be honest, we had a very good time. The far left pin never stood up whilst the front pin would only last the first round whether you hit it or not, so at least we each got two pins for free, per bowl. The balls were definately designed for people with far thinner fingers than I have and the air conditioning didn’t exsist but the most was made of a comical situation and I won two out of three games. Hahahah Nolan and Lee!

If you’d like to visit TWBAITW, and I would half heartedly recommend it, you can find it by pasting these coordinates into google maps 16.181901, 103.298205. I doubt, however, that it will be there for too much longer – 🙂