by Al Culler
It took five tries but I eventually found a small hotel in one of the sois for 300 baht a night... I didn’t notice at the time that one of the walls was plywood! The room had an air-conditioner fixed on its lowest setting (the control knobs taken away!) but the cable TV kept the babe amused whilst I showered - the midday heat was incredible, soaking my tee-shirt in about five seconds! The bed was large enough for a whole family of Thais and I immediately tested out its endurance with the babe. Nice, very!
Hustled out on to the strip at night. A couple of farang families waddling along, looking a touch bemused, and loads of young Thais on holiday. If you like very dark brown, extremely slender gals with cheekbones that would cut ice you’d be in a wild kind of paradise in Cha Am... some working in restaurants and on the stalls, others on holiday.
The only person I know stupid enough to buy a burger from a Thai restaurant spent two years recovering from food poisoning. There aren’t any American franchises on the beach strip but the Thai food is of reasonable quality and cleanliness, unlike in Pattaya across the bay. Fried rice and chicken chased with some Chang beer kept me going without any bowel explosions...
I can actually recognize naff rice (made with poisoned water) on the first taste, have been known to spit it out in disgust - Thai restaurateurs don’t take too well to such foreign madness... being well behaved, for once, received big, seemingly, genuine smiles off the vendors. In fact, even the hotelier hadn’t demanded money up front and as it turned out I could have walked off without paying as reception was empty in the morning... an interesting combination of trust and lushness, these southern Thais!
A swift march up and down the strip had the babe muttering about crazy farang, and even with a strong breeze off the sea I was in desperate need of another tee-shirt change. It was a bit like trying to walk through water, the air so heavy that I felt it would support my weight if I fell over. I kept getting intense erections every time some young gal gave me the smile, which at least provided some much needed energy!
The main road connecting the city to the beach takes half an hour to saunter along, littered with beer bars, karaoke dives and even the odd go-go spot. Some moron had replaced the sewer covers with the wrong size of concrete slabs which were already half disintegrated by the heat... swerving around one rather large, enraged canine I almost fell half a yard into some dank water. I gave the dog a good kicking, left the mutt howling away with a most affronted look on his face. Bear in mind, Thais witnessing such acts are thrown into a deep quandary - should they intervene, are Thai dogs higher in the scheme of things than mere farang?
In the city there’s a largish market selling both food and clothes, all a bit cheaper than the cheapest place in Bangkok, serving the Thai rather than farang community. Cheered the babe up, anyway, but I didn’t object to her need to buy some shirts at 50-60 baht a throw. More than my life was worth after the enforced march!
We ended up in some karaoke cum beer bar joint about halfway down the main road to the beach. About a dozen gals who were youngish but heavily made up and gave the impression that they had spent their early years in Hat Yai brothels. The other customers were all young Thai men dribbling over the local whisky and trying to affirm their existence by making an incredible amount of noise. I was allowed a couple of beers but my usual order for a small bottle of very cold Chang turned out to be a large carafe of the same and a bucket of ice. Bastards!
The babe, who speaks sod all English, was left totally confused by my rant about the stupidity of diluting beer with ice but I managed to restrain myself from throwing the carafe over the waitress who had gone into death scowl mode. I waved her away and suffered the indignity of beer over ice. If you go whence few farang venture it’s just one piece of shit you have to learn to suffer.
Another, some drunken lout let loose at the microphone absolutely convinced he’s the new Elvis Presley... sounded more like Elvis Costello after someone kneed him in the balls. One of his mates came over and waved an empty bottle of whisky Lao under my nose but I ignored his existence by chatting to the babe who was beginning to look frightened out of her wits. I grabbed the half empty carafe just as the lout was going to steal it... he was so drunk the empty air where the carafe had been swept him around in a half circle, sent him wobbling off back to his mates. No point trying to fight one of the bastards, they fight in packs, going at farang like rabid dogs when given the mildest excuse.
One of the Hat Yai women finally grabbed the microphone off the drunken Thai, probably inspired by the way I was sitting with a finger in each ear! Ooops, nothing like taking the piss. She immediately put everyone into an exhilarated mood by going into an Isarn chant, no idea what the words meant but the tune was primeval! She kept going for thirty minutes which coincided with an empty second carafe of beer... the babe had lust in her eyes and I always get my priorities right in the end. I even splurged out on a motorcycle taxi back to the hotel...
Hua Hin Ambles...
One thing about gals more than 25 years your junior, they sure give the poor old body a workout. Thus I had no qualms about taking a pickup truck/taxi the 25 kilometres from Cha Am to Hua Hin. Normally, I would have been happy enough in a non-air-conditioned bus, much to the babe’s disgust something about their driver’s being totally mad. It was only 150 baht... or supposedly, when we hit the city after speeding, sans seatbelts and in all probability brains, flat out down a nearly deserted highway, the driver reckoned the studs on my jeans had lacerated the passenger seat, leaving a small tear in the fabric. The frail all wound up again as the driver ranted and raved, probably figured some kind of international incident was about to go down.
As always, I was armed with the correct change, threw it down on the ruined seat, grabbed the babe and sauntered off against the traffic flow, soon disappeared down a couple of back alleys. Hua Hin village built right up against the huge bay, a concoction of mostly narrow low-rise buildings and winding alleyways. The Hilton hotel towering over them.
The heat even more fierce than Cha Am, the first hotel within spitting distance of the Hilton offered a fan room for 200 baht and I took it sight unseen. After staggering up three flights of stairs the small room turned out to be newly painted, complete with its own toilet and shower. An overhead rotary fan and half a dozen open windows provided a modest breeze that dissipated most of the sweat. Hotels in Hua Hin supposedly expensive, the Finn back in Cha Am reckoned he was going to take a taxi in each day for the beach to save money. Just shows you shouldn’t believe all you read. Like Cha Am, the hotel was pretty laid back not bothering with any kind of registration. Tax men and reprobates on the run, please note!
Weird farang next door, some youth sat on the bed with his back to the open door, muttering to the empty room, probably far gone on the local concoction of speed and ecstasy. Stupid, with so many beautiful babes around who needs drugs - though, he had probably had his heart broken by one? Tested out the bed again, my excuse that the city needed to cool off from the midday heat. By the time we’d finished, the rotary fan was making desperate noises, threatening to detach itself from the ceiling, lacerate us into a new form of the little death. All part of the fun of cheap hotels.
Walked the bay as the sun fell down over the horizon. Had to dodge yelping dogs, meandering horses and drunken Germans. The horse hirers were quite impressive, running in front of the horses, the reigns in their hand, as some novice foreigner tried to master the beast. One poor chap was pumping his feet madly trying to keep pace! The babe thought it would be fun if I had a go but I threw her in the water, a sufficient distraction from such an unwarranted, not to mention dangerous, form of exercise.
Most of the shore was cut off by the houses of seriously rich bastards but we eventually found a narrow track back on to the highway about five kilometers from where we started - not fancying my chances with the dogs as the light faded and their wolf character came to the fore; like Thai men, they hunted in rabid packs!
Another forced march brought us ba
ck to the city proper where there were a couple of markets to entertain the gal, though she wasn’t exactly amused by the Culler Shopping Rule Number 1 - everything she buys she has to carry!
Another total lack of foreign food franchises, save for some pizza outlet. Ended up in a dubious looking Thai restaurant where some old gal took a shine to the Culler form, cackling law macma over and over. She wasn’t even rich so sod that! She had the common decency to place a fan next to my madly perspiring form. Away from the sea, where a minor gale rolled in off the waves, there wasn’t much of a cooling breeze.
Friendly enough people in Hua Hin, as far as I could tell, none of the nasty scowls found in Pattaya. My stomach survived another bout of local food; washing it down with a couple of beers undoubtedly helped. Chicken burger lust, though, was beginning to set in. By the way, the fried chicken in Hua Hin looked particularly scrawny and quite expensive.
Lots of foreign tourists but mostly family types rather than your desperate sex tourist. In the midst of what passes for the night market there’s something called the Hua Hin Night Plaza, a motley collection of beer bars and some reprobates trying to play romantic swill in what probably made for the height of live music in the resort. Thanks, no.
Collared by a couple of katoeys - old style, Bangkok rejects who you could suss a mile off - who insisted we visit the Doi Boy Entertainment Cabaret, not far from the Subhamitra hotel. Even straight Thai gals find such entertainment highly amusing but being mobbed by Thai men wearing lipstick the moment I put my foot across the threshold called for a remarkable feat of back-peddling; but I pulled it off without ending up in a heap. Turned out to be as weird and naughty as entertainment goes in Hua Hin.
Headed back to Hua Hin village in a fairly mellow mood, the frail complaining that her feet were hurting - a gentle hint that she wanted a new pair of shoes to go with the new handbag (shoe shopping is as boring as it gets, right?) - by the time we hit the beer bar zone. Loads of them littered around the alleys, all the idiots showing the same football match and hardly an air-conditioner in sight.
I was convinced that someone was going to hand me a lukewarm bottle of Chang and if they did I’d go right off my head on the back of the incredible f..king heat of the night. I walked into the only bar not showing football on the TV and the waitress immediately switched channels to the match - the scream of near incoherence was out before I had a chance to get myself under control. I walked right back out leaving the gal to utter a cry about the madness of farang!
The lure of a cold beer eventually overcame the sheer effrontery of being forced to watch football and I even persuaded the waitress to switch channels, some natural history crap only enlivened by lions mauling lesser prey... the only other entertainment, watching some farang play snooker. The bar girls were all complaining about the low season and lack of punters so it’s probably a cheap enough game (been told 500 baht for an all-nighter). A mixture of the usual old dears (anyone over 25 if you have been asleep at the back) and odd newish babe.
Some ten year old flitted in and out of the bar, kept giving me the eye! You’ve got to laugh, right? Her mother (working behind the bar) told her not to be stupid, I already had a girlfriend and she didn’t want to end up a minor wife, did she? God knows where she got her maternal instincts from. Worse yet, some six year old flower girl came in, kept grabbing hold of my hand and giving it a heated tug until I gave in, bought a rose (ten baht). So God knows what shit goes down in the real back alleys that only the locals get to penetrate!
Found somewhere, near Wat Hua Hin, called the Rockestra, playing live music with a bit of, er, life, in it. Rock rules. Feared they would try the carafe and ice trick but actually got an ice-cold beer for my pains; progress made. As we were the first customers ended up with another fan placed next to my madly perspiring form (just as well as the beer was relatively expensive at 90 baht a bottle). The rock band replaced by a couple of idiots trying to play folk music but I managed to pull the girl out of there before I threw up.
A little further along the street, a dive called the Paladium Cabaret, yet another old generation katoey show; one of the bitches so heated up by the Culler body that she barely restrained herself from tearing my clothes off in the street. The first beer’s 150 baht, 70 baht for the next, but by then the babe looked somewhere between worried and frightened so we promised to come back later but never did. Given the choice of entertainment between some sublime young Thai gal and a bunch of ancient katoeys, which would you chose?
Shopping and Sex ...
It’s always amusing to sit and watch the action coming and going into Nana, one gal went short time twice in an hour - must’ve been hot! A lot of the sex tourists looked like they weren’t far off meeting their maker and the pimps have been forced to loiter outside rather than inside.
Saw one notorious babe, married to a farang who let her come over for Songkran, wandering around with her katoey pimp who was covered in purple welts; skin cancer coming out when HIV turns to AIDS. Left to his own devices, with fifty thousand baht a month sent over from abroad, he’d obviously gone overboard on the available sex with neither thought nor concern for the consequences. Of course, the babe was stupid enough not to believe he was afflicted with the virus and was still doing the short time blues with anyone able to come up with a 1000 baht. I know because she made me the offer. Told her I’d rather slash my wrists, which went down well!
The Nana contrast: the younger and more beautiful the gal, the older and uglier the customer (simply because that’s the best way she has to make the most dosh). Not that there were many really stunning girls walking around. Not like you’d find in Mabookong, for one, though the real constant erection-zone, these days, is the Weekend Market at Morchit. Go early, the bar-girls are still asleep and won’t confuse things!
Take the skytrain to Morchit (the end of the Sukhumvit line) and it’s on the left, about five minutes walk back from whence the train came. An absolutely huge market with the massive downside of being covered in such a way that it intensifies the heat of the day. Sells everything from expensive antiques to cheap secondhand clothes - you still have to bargain on the price but they never try to get more than twice what something’s worth (Patpong vendors try for five to ten times the going rate!). The worst culprits, the drinks’ vendors who overcharge by about fifty percent and do a roaring business on the back of the intensity of the heat.
The more popular sections of the market, have to literally fight your way through the packs of punters - which is okay if you take a path through the babes. Large signs warning of pick-pockets but no-one - sob! - ever bothers with me, having perfected the hippy disguise. I was tempted to line my pockets with fish-hooks but knowing my luck I’d forget and end up tearing my own skin off!
Of course, going to Morchit to actually buy something is only an excuse. You really won’t believe the sheer number of babes and the total mind blowing diversity of their beauty. There’s something so wacky in the Thai gene pool that the gals come out every which way beautiful whether they be almost as dark skinned and flat-nosed as Ethiopians or ebony white out of Chiang Mai. Or just about anywhere in between such delightful extremes. Could fall in love a hundred times over in a mere hour, which is about as long as I can take of the extreme temperatures - and that’s in the morning!
One cause of such a diversity of babes (and, hurray, as the girls get more and more beautiful the guys seem to be eaten up by angst and fear, so intense that it eats into and overcomes the profound and deep-rooted arrogance they’ve sported over the past decades, causing a fast and deep reaching physical as well as psychic decay), Morchit’s nicely situated for a flow of fresh, newly arrived country lasses as well as Bangkok residents determined to make their money go as far as possible.
Many of the stalls have cottoned on to the fact that selling hundreds of items with extremely slim margins makes sense, sending the natives into a wild shopping frenzy - tee-shirts for 39 baht, hats for 20 baht, pants for 69 baht, shoes for 59
baht... stalls doing special-special offers that’ll have you run down in the rush if you’re not fast on your feet. Vendors competing with each other to make the maximum noise. Quieter waters found in the antiques and art sections, some original paintings at bargain prices and minor bits of furniture at prices that make you wonder what lorry they fell off.
Whole squads of police patrol the area, no idea why - some of them also working their own stalls, fronted by family or friends. Can’t miss out on the action. Also some military types, though they might just be security guards compensating for their lack of status. You can spend a whole day exploring the hundreds of stalls but you will need a decent supply of iced water, not to mention an oxygen tank - saw one fat tourist collapse as she was climbing up the skytrain steps, overcome by the heat and unwarranted shopping - her purchases flew back down the steps, giving the Cambodian beggars an early Christmas - the blighters practically tossed me out of the way and I wasn’t even trying to grab any freebies.
It was a wonder I hadn’t done myself an injury, anyway, walking around continuously distracted by the babes, a good half of whom insisted on giving me wild smiles - about ten percent gave me a scowl, the rest ignored me. Most of these girls would rather hang themselves than work in places like Nana, and even in a mind bending recession/depression run a mile from the aged sex tourists, quite a few of whom were loitering around the market - ever hopeful. A few of them gave me nasty glares! They probably had to wait for the afternoon influx.