The FARANG Speaks 2 Much

So I’d had some good news recently, and was in a mood to celebrate by spending far too much money on booze and female company. I wandered down to Nana Plaza early, with the idea of procuring some short-time action with some “stunner”. I usually avoid the snooty “supermodel” types - I prefer to add to my “cellphone harem” of girls with whom I can actually make a connection, and have a decent laugh with - as well as frequent freebies. But sometimes one just gets the urge for someone awesomely beautiful - at least on the outside.

Turning Japanese

For whatever reason, the hottest girls in Nana Plaza are, in my opinion, to be found in the heavily pro-Japanese Rainbow bars. We started in Rainbow 1, where a cute little faux J-pop chick winked at me from beneath her bleached-blonde fringe, but she seemed more like someone who’d dressed up as a cute girl, rather than actually a cute girl in herself. Unimpressed, we moved on up to Rainbow 4.

The Asia Bugle recently named Rainbow 4 the best Bangkok gogo of 2006. And it’s hardly difficult to see why - some 200-250 girls work here, and not a single chubby chick in sight. Unless you count those disapproving, rubbernecking farang tourists, that is. But the less said about them, the better.

Feeling Invisible

Over the course of the next hour, I spotted a number of well-put-together girls who I’d have gladly paid over the odds to educate in the ways of the force. Except not a single one of them was even slightly interested.

Yes, I could have hoiked a passing mamasan and demanded to be introduced to “poo-ying ber 117“, for example, but even for this simple short-time mission I felt a need for at least a pale shadow of a connection. Eye contact, for example, would be a start. The less perfect girls thronged, vying for my attention, whilst I tried to get just one of those willowy perfect tens to hold my gaze.

And after a while it just became annoying. One girl passed me a number of times, making a point of avoiding eye contact. Eventually I called her over, told her I wasn’t going to buy her a drink or give her any of the several thousand baht I had about my person, and dismissed her.

Childish, and probably pathetic, but whilst I’m no Brad Pitt, I’m certainly no Bernard Manning either. This rejection was an uneasy experience - perhaps it reminded me of the end of my time in England. Perhaps I just felt it unjust that I was being ignored in favour of older or more Japanese gentlemen. Either way, we left.

Which way to look?

I knew Mandarin bar had a new batch of girls in place for “high season”, as we’re calling the current dearth of tourists, but I hadn’t checked them out in all their glory yet. There are some cuties amongst them, but it seems not all have been house-trained yet. Some were appallingly naïve, others were just plain rude.

More alarmingly to the point though, two girls from whom I’ve received countless freebie nights of fun are now working there too, neither of whom knew that I knew the other. Ouch. Time for a sharp exit.

Round And Round

Still, serendipity prevailed. We ended up in Hollywood Carousel bar, which was happily (well, happily for us) quite devoid of customers. I pounced on a petite, pretty poo-ying, whisked her off to Nana Plaza’s least-known short-time hotel (on top of Erotica bar), and finally got my Christmas bonus.

Season’s greetings to one and all.

I wrote recently that Soi 22’s Tina bar and Soi 7/1’s Magic Table bar were the only gogo bars outside the Big Three of Patpong, Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza. BZZZZT! WRONG!

There is a strip of gogo bars close to Saphan Kwai BTS station, but with a difference - they cater not to we farangs, but to Thai men.

Lost in Saphan Kwai

Getting to the Saphan Kwai BTS station was easy enough - it’s the second-last stop heading north on the Skytrain’s Sukhumvit line. Finding the bars themselves was a little trickier. We wandered from the station back to a footbridge by the intersection (had we gone ten yards further, we’d have spotted the bars), crossed the street, and wandered back, still not entirely sure what we were looking for.

Looking lost outside Saphan Kwai’s Big C, my drinking buddy suggested we ask a taxi driver. I predicted that the driver would rather take us somewhere he’d get a kickback. We asked a taxi driver. He wanted to take us somewhere else, and pretended he didn’t know where the Saphan Kwai bars were. Sigh.

Deus ex machina

And then came our unlikely saviour - a scruffy-looking Thai chap who asked if we were lost. He led us to the bars, a fairly long walk, chatted amicably all the way, even stopping to tell a lost farang woman which bus to take to Khao San road.

We tipped him ฿200, which we practically had to force him to accept. He didn’t want our money. He wasn’t getting a kickback. He just wanted to help. We invited him to join us in the first bar; he laughed and declined. And so our adventure began.

Back to the Golden Age

The first bar was called “something” 99 - I can’t read Thai script. My buddy thought it may have said “Tilac 99″, but who knows. We ventured inside - it wasn’t too different from an old-style Patpong bar. Stage with dancing girls in bikinis, check. Except these girls actually danced. A bottle of Heineken cost ฿120, but it was a large bottle. They don’t sell small bottles. Bargain.

A waiter came over with a big grin and asked us whether we’d like to meet the ladies. We told him we’d rather wait and settle in first. Yes, the girls will not approach unless invited. Having listened to a diatribe on exactly what’s wrong with the modern gogo bar recently, it seemed we had found an oasis of old-style gogos - no pushy girls, no pushy mamasans, no overweight trolls in bikinis claiming to be dancers, and half-price drinks. Not bad.

Over the following hours we explored more and more of the bars around here - Inter, RCA and RCA 2, Spicy, and countless more whose names escape me. I’ll have to go back with a notebook. Bikinis were the order of the day in most bars, but at least one bar had topless girls, while another had a Patpong-style “razor blade” show.

Cheap at half the price

As far as female companionship goes, the deal was a fairly uniform ฿1,500 for short-time, paid to the bar rather than the girl. This includes the bar-fine. Long-time is ฿2,000. I would not be surprised if many of the girls would baulk at the idea of going with a farang though.

We were made welcome by the staff of all of these bars. Some of the girls eyed us with suspicion, some with amusement, and some just took it in their stride, flirting and chatting away (in Thai, of course) as they would with anyone else.

Trouble brewing

The male Thai customers, on the other hand, did not seem impressed with our presence. I would even go so far as to suggest that there could have been trouble if one of us had barfined, or even flirted too much with a Thai gent’s “favourite”. In the last bar, we were receiving positively evil glares. If looks could kill…

Sensing an end to the evening, we ducked out into a taxi and headed for the more familiar, reassuring surroundings of Soi Cowboy. It was an adventure, and we’ll definitely return.

The Lowdown

As mentioned, speaking Thai is a must. You will not get very far without it. Keep an eye out for hostile Thai customers, and watch your back. That said, it was fascinating to see the other side of Bangkok’s “naughty nightlife”, and was incredibly cheap, all things considered.

To find the bars, get off at Saphan Kwai BTS station, and double back on yourself following the skytrain line to the next main road junction. Turn left at that junction until you get to the corner, and you’re there.