The FARANG Speaks 2 Much

Some Asian tart, yesterday

It’s been a weird week or so. After the departure of the farangettes, I returned to my thankless task of bed-testing the entire attractive female population of Bangkok (example pictured, right).

But where best to begin? I thought I’d take a cue from my readers and visit Soi Cowboy - the current leader in the “Favourite Bangkok Nightlife Area” poll in the sidebar over there. A relaxing beer or two watching the early shows in Rawhide soon lowered the blood pressure. A few more in Baccara helped even further, so by the time I got to Shark I had almost forgotten my chubby chums and their donut diet.

A word on Baccara - eagled-eyed visitors to Soi Cowboy will have noticed that the site formerly known as Pam’s Cocktail Lounge, ie. the bar with no customers, is no more. Seems Baccara have bought it, and are in the process of knocking through. Hooray for extra Baccara.

Back to Shark bar, and what a ridiculously good bar this is. Do the simple things well, and you will succeed, goes the mantra. Probably. Shark is surely an example of this. No nudity, no shows, no gimmicks, just a stage full of gorgeous girls. And then another stage full. The barfine’s still a bargain ฿500, and they seem to be doing incredibly well.

I was not doing so well, as I’d come in search of girl number X, who has been on my “to-do” list for longer than I care to admit. Every time I’d seen her, I’d either already got company, or wasn’t in a position to take any. This time though, the tables were turned - I was looking specifically for her, and she was nowhere to be seen.

Of course, there are worse situations to be in. Sipping from my beer, I decided that I would have to make do with one of the other hundred or so barely-clad girls. Girl Y looked a good bet, and a cheeky wink was enough to ensure she made her way over to me after her dance shift ended.

I was in a hurry to plough the furrow, so we didn’t do much talking. After one more swift and fruitless scan of the bar for girl X, the barfine was paid, and girl Y and I marched off to the short-time hotel.

I paid up-front for the room, bought a selection of exotic condoms, and took to the stairs. Where I quite literally bumped into girl X, as she descended from upstairs - accompanied by a fat bloke and girl Z. It’s a small world…

Western women, yesterday

For reasons too depressing to reveal, I was playing host to some visitors to Bangkok recently. A coach party of Issan nymphomaniacs, lost en route to a Bangkok support centre? Sadly not. A gang of Japanese businessmen, so eager to find a bar guide that they’d happily supply me with more beer and women than even I could possibly consume? Again, no.

It seems my karma must have taken a hit recently. They were western girls - friends of a friend, who were in Bangkok for a few days, and in need of a guide. The horror.

Culture Shock

“We want to see a ping-pong show”, one of them told me. I groaned. Mindful of my recent Patpong show-bar experience, I thought I’d play it safe and take them to the Long Gun on Soi Cowboy. Oddly enough, ping-pong balls are actually one of the few imaginable projectiles that are not part of the Long Gun’s inventive and imaginative gynaecological demonstrations.

The fat farangettes seemed comfortable enough with the shows, but had their first major hissy fit at the sight of a middle-aged guy (I’d guess late forties or early fifties) smooching with a twenty-something Thai girl. “That’s disgusting”, they frothed.

“Why is it disgusting? I hope I’m still sleeping with twenty-something Thai girls when I’m fifty. Better than sleeping with fifty-something Western women, any day. Now that would be disgusting”.

They couldn’t tell me exactly why I was wrong, but were sure that I definitely was.

Two Fat Ladies, Eighty-eight

Another bar, another bombshell. “Why have the girls all got number badges on?”, she asked.

I laughed. “Um, so that customers can make an order”, I grinned.

“Oh, so you can call them over for a lap-dance then?”

“Er, no. We don’t really have lap-dancing in Bangkok. Not that I know of, anyway. There’s no point”.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, why would you pay for a lap-dance when you can have full sex for less than the cost of a single dance in the UK?”

“OH MY GOD, ARE THESE WOMEN ALL PROSTITUTES?! IS THIS A BROTHEL?!”

Natural Selection

“This is disgusting. I wouldn’t sleep with any of these disgusting guys for any money”, she said.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure none of them will ask you to sleep with them”, I just about managed to stop myself from replying.

Never again…

At the top of an unmarked staircase outside Sukhimvit Soi 4’s Swan 1 Pool Bar lies the Shakerz Coyote Club - the newest of Bangkok’s bars, which had its grand opening party last night. Head up Soi 4, past Nana Plaza, and look for the Swan Bar on your left at the junction with the back-road leading to Soi 6 - it’s on the corner.

It’s been heavily plugged on Dave The Rave’s site over the past week, and is apparently the first of what will be a new development of coyote/go-go bars. Bangkok has only a limited number of gogo licenses, all of which have already been issued. So Shakerz is a “coyote bar” - the subtle difference being that the girls dance on the bar instead of at poles, and wear slightly (but not much) more than their gogo counterparts.

Firstly, Shakerz is tiny. I was expecting it to be the same size as the downstairs Swan 1 bar, but it’s miniscule. A central bar dominates the proceedings - from here, the bar counter extends around the walls, and is dotted with variously attractive and unattractive dancing girls. Beers go for a reasonable ฿100, and the barfine is set at ฿500. However, there is a twist.

You see, you can’t actually barfine the girls. Yes, in a typically baffling example of Thai “logic”, the powers that be seem to have come to the conclusion that if they were to allow the girls to leave, they wouldn’t have any customers. So the girls can only be barfined after the bar closes, or if there are no customers.

So in summary, it’s like a typical gogo bar, except the girls are wearing more clothes, and you can’t barfine them. The only reason I can think of to visit Shakerz would be for the fried chicken, but apparently that was for one night only.