by Al Culler
The only way to deal with thoroughly mad women, or transvestites, is to run! If you hit them you will only get their friends piling in on you. Absolutely no point talking or trying to reason with them. Most such crazies are too far gone to match a rapid sprint, especially if they are perched on high-heels.
The Thai gal was complaining because she thought the soi wasn’t Thailand any more, some strange hole in the country that she couldn’t understand, decided her sister wasn’t that far gone!
Had to fight our way out, between the Africans and the hookers there wasn’t much room on the pavement and any one of them looked like they would happily knife either of us. All this, after the police had raided the soi and rounded up some of the miscreants a couple of weeks previously.
Back in Nana Entertainment Plaza, a whole different world but not one without its own brand of ugliness. The worst of it, the way the place absolutely destroys the young and beautiful gals who start out there. A couple of the bar owners take a perverse delight in first f..king the gals and then getting them to work in the shows. This kind of mean-minded nastiness all too prevalent amongst bar owners, some Thais in Patpong making the girls work in the upstairs bars first before allowing them on to the more lucrative ground floor circuit.
Although most of the girls are supposedly free to work where they chose, sometimes the mamasan goes berserk, threatens the gal with disfigurement or worse if she doesn’t come back to the fold. Too much loss of face!
The girlfriend had the good grace to explain yet another scam when we were in one of the big downstairs Nana bars. Loads of Buriram and Surin gals but they had always left me a little dazed and confused, as if they had been trained in the art of extracting the most money from farangs and guided in looking out for the biggest suckers - elderly and obese Westerners.
Another thing that confused me, their willingness to stay overnight, which sort of indicated they weren’t being run by the pimps. What was actually happening was that their mangda wasn’t the love of their life, just part of a business relationship. One pimp recruiting five or six gals from upcountry, running them with the collusion of the bar owners. The Thai asshole taking half of their money, passing some of it to the godfather back home and some of it to the bar.
Any poor farang falling into the clutches of these people wouldn’t just have to deal with the love of his life, also the pimps and other shit-heads in for the take, as well as the usual extended family. It’s only a couple of the bars that are doing this at the moment, and about half the girls in these bars are covered by such a deal (they will absolutely deny it if you ask them - but what’s new about that?).
Basically, the bar scene in Bangkok is totally f..ked. Take out all the gals who are being run by pimps, ignore anyone over 21 because of the AIDS problem, not to mention those gals with obvious signs of the disease, narrow things down further by refusing to have anything to do with women who have dropped kids and/or haven’t got the body/face to inspire... you’d be lucky to end up with a dozen babes! And that includes two virgins in one bar - one fifteen years old (you are about to be arrested or financially castrated, so don’t even think about it!), the other eighteen!
Much better, if you are still presentable that is, to hustle the gals in the shopping centres and department stores or even gals selling from the street stalls. Not the beggars, though, they are run by the mafia - some really attractive women there! The former girls are amazingly receptive to a bit of charm. The last time I smiled at a young girl in a shop in the West she scowled and looked like she wanted to phone the police - you have to remember where you are!
If you must hustle in Nana, then do the rounds of the smaller bars, some really nice women hidden away in them, though on first glance they can look incredibly boring.
Exiting Nana Plaza, around three in the morning, the soi was dense with the usual mad mixture of people, plus some loitering Africans. One tried to bump into me but I sidestepped, his momentum throwing him into the path of a tuk-tuk. I would’ve laughed except that his partner was loitering behind me, ready to pick my pocket! With hundreds of drunken Westerners exiting the Soi, had to be an easy touch for the Africans.
Worse yet, a few of the rougher-looking African pimps - Ugandans? - were collecting their Thai women after a hard night’s work in the Plaza. One immediately set about slapping his woman when she only produced a couple of twenty baht notes. The lack of dosh not surprising, she looked about fifty!
The girlfriend was even more shocked at this stupidity than myself, glaring at a group of Thai transvestites who looked like they were about to attack us. The police appeared to have locked themselves in their airconditioned kiosk at the corner of the soi - sensible chaps!
We hurried across Sukhumvit into one of the waiting taxi’s, well relieved to get out of the area in one piece. The general feeling amongst the authorities in the city, that anyone out so late should look out for themselves; the more feral local and farang males taking on harsh canine expressions, gearing up for the kill; bear in mind, they lack any sense of humour!
Yet More on Bars...
In the Cowboy bars, as well as the expected young gals there are plenty of more mature women, a couple all over me, practising their tongue technique and all but ripping my shirt off! Bloody hell, tried to explain that I was a shy and retiring kind of chap, which just got them all the more wound up! When they went off to amuse some rich ancient, didn’t know if I should’ve been relieved or annoyed. Another beer, they faded from memory. Which is pretty much the fate of the farang bar owners in Cowboy.
Nana Plaza just a crazy place, these days. I don’t know if I’m coming or going, or if it’s heaven or hell. There are so many angles, so many places the girls are coming from, that to make any kind of sense of the area is impossible. The only thing you can do is go with the flow, turn up there and see what kind of creature comes out of the insane density of women.
It’s easy enough to say no, just declare a lack of monetary fibre... even then some of the girls are so convinced of farang money that they refuse to bite. Have to be careful not to insult the girls to their faces, they mostly have fierce blood and a liking for instant retribution.
This strength, although alarming, isn’t without its attraction, the steel within the velvet skin as enticing as the nuclear heat generated... but bear in mind, that the gals are quite willing to come on the back of their lust; lust, alas, for money rather than the farang. This confuses foreign men utterly and completely!
I really, really wish they would dump the shows in Nana. Apart from not wanting to take a high velocity dart in the eye (shot from you know where!), the penchant for lesbian shows is absolutely boring and I would much rather watch a stage packed out with naked, or near naked, gals dancing their hearts out.
Some bar owners try to educate their gals by showing hardcore pornography on the TV, which is marginally better than football (I mean what kind of idiot comes 5000 miles to watch soccer?), but the vast majority of the women are only interested in straight sex (most of the gals in the shows aren’t really lesbians), although if you hang out with a Thai woman for long enough she will do pretty much anything you want.
Nana is also pimp city, though most of the men hang out in the nearby snooker clubs rather than loitering with scowls in the car park (or what was the car park, on a lucky night you might just find the space to park a small motorcycle). Thai men like, indeed need, to take the piss out of foreigners and it’s no small joke that a large percentage of the gals working in the bars served a long apprenticeship in various brothels/massage parlous both in Bangkok and upcountry; the latter much more dangerous as condom use is laughed at by country lads.
If you know what you are doing, aren’t drunk out of your head, the brothel girls can mostly be spotted by the dead eyes - though those motoring along on some local concoction of drugs can have a glazed visage that can be mistaken for innocence! Nothing is ever simple in Thailand.
Patpong isn’t confusing at all. Money talks. There
are only two bars I actually like to hang out in, but both of them have an extreme density of pimps on the premises. Some serving behind the bar, others pretending to be waiters. Some mind bendingly beautiful women, mind. They largely ignore me, been there too many times without coughing up bucket loads of dosh.
Often I get so disgusted with the ambience of greed in the Pong, that I have one beer and head for the inconveniently located skytrain (you have to batter your way through a million or so shoppers on the narrow ribbon of pavement left by the stalls) on Silom - why the f..k they call the station Salang Dang when it’s the only one on Silom, I don’t know; totally confuses the tourists - there are lots more amusing places in the Big Mango. And there’s always Pattaya,
Hard Life...
I was in this downstairs Nana bar - not one of the really infamous ones, but I don’t see why I should name it and spoil the scene totally, right? - rather than the usual fifty or sixty gals there seemed to be a few bus-loads of extra frails from Surin and Buri-ram. Packed so tightly on the three stages that it was a hard job to get a clear view! Had to be at least two hundred girls packed into the place; the regular dancers looking totally pissed off. Not helped any by the high season being over.
This girl saw me before I saw her, what I saw first of all was the grin! Call it full-bodied or just stick to mind blowing or something much ruder. The smile even seemed to reach her eyes. And it was the first bar of the night, therefore the first Chang, so I wasn’t even drunk. Being a gentleman and a scholar I gave her the grin right back, a pretty easy thing to do as she had a perfect eighteen year-old’s body that seeped out lust and the face of an Oriental angel... naturally, my smile was as angelic.
She also had the wildest breasts I’d ever seen, not in any way large but they were splayed outwards and upwards with a set of hotly engorged nipples. It doesn’t pay to stare with your tongue hanging out so I surveyed the rest of the scene but often glancing back to her, always getting the grin.
If it was my first night in Bangkok I would’ve fallen in love with her on first sight. Even Kate Moss, circa sixteen, wouldn’t have got a look in. I had the minor problem of getting rid of one of the regulars who I occasionally bought a Cola, but no big deal - I’m used to death stares and beauty disfiguring scowls! She has already sussed what was going to go down and sat a yard away from me!
The dancers changed but I played it cool, not trying to grab her or catch her glance as she came off the stage. The gals hate guys who try to grab them, or, even worse, get the mamasan to send them over. Most uncouth! Didn’t surprise me in the least when she popped up out of nowhere, the intensity of the grin mutating my brain cells so there wasn’t even the remotest chance that past experience would have any say in the matter and the heat coming off her body raising the surrounding temperature by about ten degrees.
And she spoke sod all English, a good sign! She comprehended enough of my Thai to tell me it was her first night, she claimed nineteen but up close looked about fifteen, and she’d come all the way down from Surin, though I suspected Cambodia. You could spend years wandering around the bars until you got this lucky!
I should’ve know better and not been in the least bit surprised when she muttered something about sexy dancer, gave me an apologetic grin and loped off to the toilets. The Thai girl who I’d refused to buy a Cola gave me a vicious grin and went off to annoy some ancient German. I cursed myself for being slow to buy a Cola for the Surin gal...
The next thing I know the lights go off, the gals disappear from the stages, and then the spots highlight the Surin lass wearing nothing except for a skimpy negligee. I eyed the bottle of Chang on the edge of the stage with fear and loathing. The owner of this particular chain of bars has the bad habit of getting the most attractive girls who cross his path to do the shows - bastard! Probably because he knows that they won’t last long in the bars otherwise, too easy for the punters to fall in love with them and fund a more pleasant life.
The usual shit went down, the gal ending up pouring the beer over her body and then inserting the bottle between her legs. The whole bar agog at the spectacle, the bargirls as much as the punters, and the waitress looked shocked when I paid for my beer and walked out. Figure a girl willing to do that for a couple of extra thousand baht a month is either stupid or greedy, beyond sane help. I managed to stop myself head-butting the full length wall mirror, recalling the time some French guy had given it smack, the farang boss reared up out of his sewer and threatened to beat him to a pulp; the guy eventually taken away by the cops. You have to laugh, even if it takes a bit of an effort sometimes.
Weird times in Nana, though. I’m nearer fifty than forty, even if I’m almost mean and lean, these days, but I had a few teenagers (in different bars) grabbing hold of me like their life depended on it - and only a really surly bugger would begrudge them a Cola, and I’m not that far gone - declaring themselves willing to go all night for 500 baht! Trouble was, my mind was still grappling with the madness of the Surin babe.
It’s an interesting character test, though, refusing these young ladies’ kind offers. They either storm off, incredulous, accuse you of being gay and wanting a katoey, or - rarely - act all demure. They sometimes offer the use of a short time room on the premises, figuring some retributive wife or friends thereof lurking outside. When I get into that stuff, will some kind reader shoot me in the head!
Nana ain’t exactly paradise on earth, though there are thousands of girls packed into the three floors of bars. It’s all about maximizing the income for the farangs running the bars, not to mention the shadowy local figures in the background. Between these greedy bastards, the pimps living off the girls and the hordes of loutish tourists (though there are also plenty of young guys), the girls but rarely get way ahead of the game.
Wrist slashing, suicides and brain destroying speed sessions more often than not ruining the women, who are under pressure from all sides - bosses, mamasans, friends, boyfriends, husbands, families, sometimes even whole villages, and even their various farang men. Much easier to lose massive face than gain it. Not that it’s really any excuse for all the shit they bring down on people.
I don’t know... I love Bangkok even without the wild nightlife but the way things are going in that scene really pisses me off (you might’ve worked that out all on your own) and I’m close to saying forget it (especially when you throw in the incurable strains of VD and the AIDS epidemic); stay home or go somewhere else...
Sounds great, but once bitten by Bangkok it’s hard to find anywhere that compares! It’s a weird and wacky addiction, with sod all self-help groups - not that I would go if there were - and no way to get it out of your system. For sure, you can't deny the energy of the place, the beauty of the women and sheer sensuality in the air... just go on some kind of mad sexual rampage, treat the girls as if they are nothing more than cheap pleasure objects, but it’s just tired old bullshit and you will end up one of the many walking dead (I often see guys, some of them not particularly old, who look like they should be dragging their coffins around with them!). Bottom line, you’ve got to win out - there is nothing else!
Freak Show...
The plan was to hit the Southern bus station, ramble on down to Hua Hin and Cha Am but that meant a two hour trek on two buses and the BTS (just to get to the bus station)... Bangkok buses have gone completely mad, by the way, the buses with the same number doing radically different routes, so I would have probably ended up in Morchit or somewhere. That was my excuse, anyway, for doing a five minute run on the BTS to Ekamai and thence Pattaya.
You can tell when you’ve been in Thailand too long, your timing gets shot to hell. The last time I was in Pattaya coincided with Children’s Day and about two million urchins running around out of their mind - the only time I ever felt guilty about a beggar, some five year old Cambodian wretch looking broken hearted that he was so far from the good life. I know, I’m all heart! I knew something was wrong as they were running buses every ten minutes instead of ev
ery half hour. Not very many farang but loads of bar girls and their pimps.
Early April in Thailand is f..king hot. Pattaya more so than Bangkok, the humidity drains every ounce of water out of your body within seconds. Mad dogs and Englishmen, more of the former in evidence except for what seemed like half the American navy... according to the excellent Pattaya Mail, 17000 grunts were disgorged from a small armada of ships for four, five days R and R. Figure about a half a billion baht spent and a couple of hundred guys done in by the dreaded virus. All par for the course but ruins things for everyone else.
Some of navy guys had serious problems getting through Thai doorways even when they turned sideways; steroid warriors. Others seemed almost seven feet tall, likely to be decapitated by the overhead rotary fans. Judging by overheard conversations, the main requirement for military service, these days, is the ability to swear continuously; the tiny, by American standards, portions in Big M and Burger King caused quite a lot of ranting and raving.
Feared a total rampage once they were let loose on the beer, but call me a stubborn idiot if you must, I decided to hang tough and see what happened. Actually, it was a bit of a disappointment, the highlight one steroid warrior tearing off all his clothes and dancing naked; the girls pissing themselves as he had a set of tackle likely to cause even the most blasé local katoey to go running for the doctor; the huge bulk of his body making it look all the more ridiculous. Even the pimps were preening themselves!
Keeping up a strong navy tradition, there were huge groups of grunts in the gay section of town; god knows what they got up to, too distasteful to delve into. There’s some kind of gay festival planned for later in the year, causing a lot of straight local farangs to go off the deep end. It’s less repulsive, though, than Songran when you get buckets of water, hose-pipes and huge water guns in action (depending where you live, from the 12th to 19th April)... to add insult to injury, the well off Thais all go abroad!