Insiders take on Thailand
DEAR SIR/MADAM.
editor: dear everyone. James I am aunable to help at this time so thought I would share it with everyone to speed things along.
MY NAME IS JAMES HUNT,I AM THE PERSONAL ACCOUNTANT TO LATE MR.
WELSH HOLMES WHO DIED IN AN EGYPTIAN AIR LINE IN A PLANE CRASH IN JUNE 1996.
editor: Hell. The Eqyptians can fly? I thought their innovations ended with the pyramids?
Well - I am sure everyone has either written or has read a Thailand Coup Blog post by now. Who gives a fuck since I write to hear myself think so I will post anyway. 
Just kidding…
As we mentioned in the Coup Weekly the only proper thing to do was drink and stare at tits but fortunately due to my divine hooks to the pre-cogs back at my apartment I knew the coup was coming and at 7:30 I was already at Tulip experiencing what could have been the last shag in Thailand. I prepaid for a 90 minute “rubdown” and afterwards I laid there with my chosen one to discuss our last moments on Sukhumvit. I was out of there by 9 and headed over to the Mango just in time to turn on CNN to see that my timing was damn near perfect.
"Like it or not, we live in interesting times". A quote that certainly fits if you’ve lived in Thailand the past few years. I was here for the Tsunami, the Karr mess, and now a military coup. Come to think of it, it’s been pretty interesting globally over the past decade. Being in San Francisco during 9/11 and for a few earthquakes was no walk in the park and I’m sure if you’ve live in the Middle East or Budapest you’re getting your share of interesting times.
Continue reading ‘Mango Weekly (Coup Edition) - 17 September 2006′
I’d heard the rumours, of course. But I only heard that tanks were actually rolling via the internet at around 10.30pm on Tuesday night. A flick through to the BBC and CNN websites confirmed that a coup d’état was indeed in progress.
Faced with such phrases as “military coup”, “tanks surround parliament” and “martial law”, I recoiled, and resorted to the only kind of dramatic action conceivable to a red-blooded Englishman. I went to the pub.
Thai TV was showing the patriotic stock footage of the King on all channels, set to traditional Thai music, with karaoke-style sing-a-long subtitles. But the Chang was flowing, the waitresses were flirting with us, and aside from the TV there was no hint that anything odd was happening.
Today I’ve been to the Thai parliament where I saw lots of soldiers (but no tanks), armed to the teeth but with yellow ribbons (signifying loyalty to the King) tied to the barrels of their guns. Then to Democracy Monument where civilians and military alike seemed to be gathering in advance of something…
Deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is apparently going to be seeking refuge in London, England. I think that he should be allowed to stay. But only for 30 days, after which he should be forced to go on a border run to Wales in a minibus full of English teachers, and after 90 days he should have to return to Thailand to apply for a full visa.
But in all seriousness, surely the real burning issue here; the sixty-four thousand dollar question, is this:
Will the Long Gun be showing tonight? And what time’s closing time?
I’ll let you know…
I have written about it before - the idea that Bangkok is like one big Twilight Zone. Events from last week only further solidify this thinking. Last week after closing up shop a group of us decided to hit Tequila Dragon on Soi 7/1. Currently one of the best after hours options in the central Sukhumvit area. We cruised in to find the place packed and the girl to guy ratio as good as ever to keep the supply and demand pricing at a favorable rate. I did my normal scan of the room to get a sense of what could be in store for me. Little prepared me though for how the night would really play out.
So we’ve covered every gogo in Soi Cowboy. We’ve covered every gogo in Nana Plaza. Where to next? Where indeed…
Patpong. Intimidating, infuriating, even irritating. To the newcomer, of course. Touts abound, determined to physically drag you into their seedy (and probably naff) bar. Stallholders are desperate to show you their counterfeit wares. All this to the aural backdrop - a cacophony of techno music emnating from the gogos themselves. I swore that my first visit would be my last, and I suspect many others feel the same.
But then, some months ago now, came an invitation from one Johnnie Tokyo - the monger’s mentor. “You don’t like Patpong?”, he asks me, incredulous in the Burger King on Silom road. “You don’t know what you’re missing”. And with that, the invitation was made, and accepted. He would show me what the touts would not.
The basics:
And so we began, in Camelot Castle - beer at a very reasonable ฿100, and some great looking girls. Then to King’s Castle I, around the corner to Electric Blue on Patpong 2, then back around again to King’s Castle II, finishing in the abjectly poor Queen’s Castle III. The first two bars had countless girls who would grace my top 5 at Cowboy or Nana, and all of the bars mentioned offered cheaper drinks.
Reviews for all four will follow shortly. If you know where to go (and you will - if you keep reading the site over the coming weeks), Patpong could well be back in front as the best nightlife area in Bangkok.
So it hits 2am (or 1am, or even 1.27am - closing time is consistent only in its inconsistence!), and as the lights go up in the gogo bars, there is but one question on the minds of those still standing. Where now?
See, in a bizarre application of Thai logic, most of the bars around Sukhumvit are all forced to close by 2am. But the ramshackle street bars which reliably appear after midnight on Sukhumvit Road itself, stretching in the main from soi 3 to around soi 15, will be open until dawn.
Apparently the powers that be are none too keen on the late-night crowd drinking in proper indoor bars, with clean bathrooms, trained staff, security and so on. Instead they must sit out on the street in the rough-and-ready pavement-bars, and attend to calls of nature in “soi toilet”. Amazing Thailand, indeed.
But these mobile booze carts, with their garden-furniture tables and chairs, are not just a haven for the “one last beer” farangs. There are a lot of bars in Sukhumvit, and many will contain hordes of “ladies of negotiable affection”, looking for a partner for the evening. Not all of these delightful creatues find success before 2am, and so the gogo gives way to the free-for-all which we fondly refer to as “The Miracle Mile”.
Sit down somewhere between sois 3/1 and 5, order a cheap bottle of beer from a stall, maybe some cheap Thai food, and wait for the gogo girls to come out of Nana Plaza. Some will be on their way home, thankful for a night away from making the beast with two backs that is their bread and butter. Others may be open to offers - hoping for a more comfortable place to sleep than the squalid room they share with their three “sisters”. And others again may just be happily watching the world go by, open to conversation and perhaps more.
There is no bar-fine on the street, and gogo girls can be (but are not always) of a few levels of beauty higher than your average freelancer. Find a weary gogo girl who’s just looking for a nice farang-size double bed for the night, and you may even get a freebie - the holy grail of the Sukhumvit prowler. Just watch out for the ladyboys…
Just some notes from a friend on a Pattaya outing:
Tequila Reef Cantina on Soi 7: Awesome "Jose Cuervo" Margaritas
for THB 160. I had two of them and I nearly required an ambulance to
schep me out of there.
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