One of the things that has surprised me over the past month is the amount of whining and surprised outrange from Bangkok purveyors of P4P over the price of barfines in Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy. More than a few times I’ve seen comments griping out how barfines have climbed to 600 baht in this place or that.
In Pattaya, I’d happy to take 600 baht any day of the week.
While drinking, shagging go-go girls, eating, sleeping and, well, doing just about anything in Pattaya is less expensive than in the capital, barfines are oddly more expensive.
Five years ago, it was unusual to see a 600-baht barfine. In 2003, fines for the main stage at Peppermint Palace were 450 and the girls on the small “showcase” stage went for 500. I remember moaning when it went to 550, but these days it’s now at 600 and behind the market average for “showgirls,” or at least girls that show.
Even for mere “dancers,” the day of the 500 baht barfine is over. There are 76 go-gos in Pattaya and I can’t be expected to know (or even survey) every one, so I’m sure someone will quickly pop out of the woodwork to point out where one can be had. But the point is that for the most-popular and common places, six red notes are what it takes.
My personal tastes run to the higher end (or possibly to the more self-punishing). My feeling is if I can’t barfine the best, nakedest, sexiest girl in the bar, it’s not worth doing at all. So I’m pretty familiar with the gouging prices set by owners for the services of their hottest assets.
Unpayable
There are some, however, that I refuse to pay. Sisterz, a 1-year-old chrome pole palace near Soi Diamond, in a move that takes some Thai girls egos to even loftier heights, has deemed some girls better than showgirls. They’re now “superstars.” Just to get them out of the bar you have to pay 1,500 baht. They have very few of these, though, because the girls were barfined so seldomly, most left. And the only thing the few that remain have to do with “stars” is that they might have a tattoo of one on their body somewhere.
What’s Up!, the pseudo-S&M, sponge-bath lesbian palace on Soi 15, also floated the 1,500-baht barfine balloon only to see all its top talent fly away with it. The bar has dropped the fines, but still are 1,200 baht before midnight and 1,000 baht after.
Carousel Club, which has no business charging any premium for any girl, also keeps its showgirls on the reservation with a 1,200 baht barfine before midnight.
Insulting
Aside from the piss-takers above, most bars are settling upon 1,000-baht as the norm for girls doing shows or lewd nude acts. It will take a gray note to prey the hotties loose from Air Port Club, Coyotee’s, Roxy, Casanovy, Angelwitch (after 1 a.m.) and (if they’ll deem you worthy of going with you at all) Living Dolls Showcase.
Roxy, Angelwitch and Showcase can almost be excused as these are pure showbars that need their talent to put people in the seats. The others have less excuse.
Worst, though, are bars that put premium prices on truly second-class talent. At Baby Dolls, where the girls are paid big salaries for doing nasty stuff and not for their looks, the soapy and lesbo girls go for 800 baht. And, at Airport, even the topless dancers command a 700-baht barfine. Compare that with Heaven Above, whose talent ranks far above Baby Dolls, but showgirls go for 800 baht until 1 a.m. and 600 baht after.
Biggest beef of the week, however, goes to Insomnia Gentlemen’s Club, which has affixed a flat 700-baht barfine to every girl in the bar, be it slutty nude showgirl or service wench.
Holiday Massacre
Think that’s bad? Just visit Pattaya during Christmas, Loy Krathong in November and Songkran in April. Each year Walking Street go-gos dig deeper into the pocket of the holiday tourist seeking a little yuletide charm.
Super Baby and Super Girl get the all-time award for screwing over customers, slapping every girl in the bar with a 4,000-baht for the two weeks including Christmas and New Year’s. Club Boesche comes in second with a bonus raspberry by only allowing girls to go short-time and charging a 2,000-baht barfine. Carousel also charged 2,000 baht for the same period last year.
Other bars, including even the thrifty New Living Dolls One, jacked up barfines to 1,000 or more for a few days in that same two weeks. The biggest demand days (New Years’s Eve, Christmas and Christmas Eve) were almost understandably the most-expensive days. Without the high charges, no bar would have any women left on New Year’s Eve.
Bargain Shopping
Amid all the greed, there are a few bars out there that remember to take care of their customers, rather than try to grab as much cash as possible through barfines.
Living Dolls One and Sweethearts both charge only 400 baht barfines until 2 a.m. and then only 250 baht afterward. Baby Dolls charges only 300 baht after 1 a.m.
And, off Walking Street, the best deal to be had is at Club Blu, a coyote bar stocked with some of the best-looking women in the city. Barfines for coyotes are only 600 baht and only 400 for Blu’s corps of lovely hostesses.
Of course, there’s always the 200-baht beer bar barfines and, for those who refuse to pay anything, freelancers in the discos or even Beach Road. But at 150-200 baht a drink in Lucifer’s and Marine, you’ll end up spending more on drinks for you and your teerak than most barfines.
Nightlife Briefs
- Pattaya’s set to get not one, but two, visits from U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in the next two months. The USS Reagan is confirmed to visit Pattaya in early October while the USS George Washington is said to be scheduled for a Pattaya port call in November. That second visit is now pretty uncertain, however, after a serious fire aboard the ship that cost the captain his command. The ship is now in Japan and, according to military sources, is unlikely to make it to Pattaya until after the new year.
- So, just how stuck up are the showgirls at Living Dolls Showcase? One of The Ghost’s readers reported that when hunky movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme paid a visit to the Walking Street go-go this week and requested the company of four of the prima donnas. They all refused to join him, preferring to play among themselves, preen in the mirror and wait for their “sure thing” sponsor payments to come through. Of course, if they’re mamas back home on the buffalo farm knew they had blown off a mulit-millionaire, they’d have been yanked back to Isaan by their hair extensions and had the som tam beat out of them. The same reader said Van Damme came back to the bar a second time, but accompanied by “two exceptionally tall Thai girls one of which had hands like shovels.”
- Police swooped down on Soi 6 this week, dragging all the girls and ladyboys out of the bars, drug testing them and generally mucking up a lot of guys evening fun. One dumb farang, however, thought it was a good idea to bitch loudly to the cops about how they were interrupting his plans for a short-time and instead did a long-time in the Pattaya lockup.
- Attention cheap Charlies, two Walking Street go-gos have or shortly will introduce Leo beer, the favorite of Isaan motorcycle taxi drivers everywhere, at low prices. Coyotee’s, which this week introduced a limited, all-night happy hour, has Leo for 60 baht a bottle, lower than some beer bars. Meanwhile, at Club Misty’s, you can now get a Chang “Tower of Power.” The draft-beer machine with an ice cartridge center offers two or three liters of Thai wifebeater for about 46 baht a glass.
- The opening of the Goodfellas sports bar / freelancer venue on Walking Street is getting close. The ground-level beer bar has been renamed and a new Goodfellas awning installed.
- “Bamboo Boo” - no typo there - is the name of the newly opened sister of the South Road Bamboo Bar. Located on the site of the relocated Malibu cabaret, Boo follows the format of its aging lounge-lizard music bar sister. The Filipino band is said to be quite good.
- Quicky Bar has opened on Soi 6, if anyone cares. I was driving by with a young English woman very familiar with Soi 6 and even she said “I think the bar will be gone Quite Quicky.”
- The Honey Girls go-go on Soi Honey has finally been put out of our misery.
- 77 Club, a new and sad little beer bar on Soi Yamoto, is already morphing. Into a go-go, of course. The bar already had its servers in bikini tops, its now going to add a stage and call the place “Las Vegas.”
Overall, business has been strong for the beginning part of September and, with the Navy coming back, October is looking promising. Bar owners are saying they believe the worst is over. More on that, plus a few more bar openings and closing and other less-substantive nightlife briefs here.
Will be checking out Living Dolls One, Sweethearts, and Club Blu for sure next visit. Gotta support gogo owners that don’t take the piss but you can surely understand the owners in the Unpayable and Insulting category. If they can get it from idiot sex tourists then they will charge it.
View all comments by pmmp
There is obviously a move in both Bangkok and Pattaya to keep the pretty girls (usually the ones who do the show) inside the bar. Be it expensive barfines, no barfine at all (the girl doesn’t go out), Coyote label (same), etc.
Not sure what the actual reason is. Probably that the best way to make sure the girl will not marry a farang very soon is to keep her at work!!!
View all comments by SukPsycho
i’m not sure how you could write an article about bar fines at pattaya go gos W/OUT mentioning Happy but by god I think you’ve done it
View all comments by jack dawson
Jack, you must be a mind reader. Either that or hugely repetitious.
Happy’s barfines are the same as Peppermint’s and Beach CLub’s: Very reasonable. 600 I believe for all girls. Thus, in a rant about high BFs, it wasn’t worth a mention, but to make you feel better.
HAPPY A GO-GO ROCKS!
HAPPY A GO-GO ROCKS!
HAPPY A GO-GO ROCKS!
Feel better?
View all comments by The Ghost
shhhhhhhh
don’t tell anyone
View all comments by jack dawson
wicked column as ever ghost
View all comments by Jim
Are these prices insider information for this years prices as they don’t reflect my memories of last christmas/new year?
Without quoting a full list, Living Dolls 1 was 1000baht over the festive period and possibly 2k on the holiday days themselves if i recall, likewise club bosche, getting long time was not an issue… in fact I think that (1k/2k) was the practice just about across the board last Christmas. (I have mental photographs of the pieces of paper with these amounts on, placed over the barfine signs, scarred into my brain and I still wake up occasionally in a cold sweat thinking about about the impending Christmas season.)
I think the last high season the barfines got beyond ‘increased for the high season’ and into the realms of ’silly’, many of my friends who were on vacation agreed and voted with their feet/wallets (or obtained phone numbers for later rendezvous)
View all comments by Cookoo
Ghost: Great update on Sin City as always. On the subject of barfines, I am feeling like I have been taken up the wrong ‘un after agreeing to pay a barfine at the Golden Bar last night AFTER the bar had closed. I had vowed never again to pay a barfine after midnight but my faculties were impaired by eight hours of solid drinking.
At least the Golden Bar barfine is only 350. Is that the lowest barfine in Bangkok?
View all comments by On Nutter
On the subject of barfines I saw on my last visit to Patts that Club Boesche has a barfine wheel of fortune. They bring this little wheel over and you spin for the amount of the barfine. I believe it was 600, 500, 300, and Free with 600 being weighted heaviest of course but still, not a bad deal.
@OnNutts: I heard a while back that Melody Uk Bar on Soi 4 was 300 but that might have gone up. You can also barfine me on any given night at the Mango for a liter of milk and some Oreo Cookies. The milk must not come from China and the Oreo’s must be the Cookies and not the Sticks. Should come to around 70 baht.
View all comments by pmmp
Great info to provide value conscious punters on various BF rates.
Curious on how the bars compensate the showgirls, coyotes, and superstars who are burdened with high barfine rates.
Do they get higher salaries and / or part of the barfine kicked back to compensate them for getting fewer barfine offers?
View all comments by dj
@OnNutts: I forgot to mention that the bar was not trying to rip you off. If you meet the girl in the bar you must pay the barfine whenever you meet her. She gets paid a Salary from the bar and if she meets the guy in that bar she is obligated to pay a barfine when she meets the guy. Some guys think they are getting away with a barfine by asking to meet a girl after hours but if she gets caught she will most likely be fired.
View all comments by pmmp
@dj: Many different policies in the different GoGo’s. In general, Coyotes like in Spice Girls get 1000 baht/night Salary so they are not too worried about getting barfined. Superstars in GoGo’s will sometimes demand higher salaries, and get them too. Some bars give a girl a piece of the barfine after she hits a certain quota some don’t. In general, the showgirls/coyotes/superstars will still log the same if not more barfines than girls who have a 600 bath barfine because guys will pay more for the beauty.
View all comments by pmmp
well ive never been to pattaya ,so i dont know how great the girls are there but ive taken a few here on samui that were very very sexy and were not stuck up at all-no mobile phones ringing and hot as hell in the sack -this will make some people cringe but the bar fine was only 300 bht and 1000 bht long time but i gave here a 500 bht tip because she wasted me 5 times in 8 hours of fun,-just spoke very little english been on samui for 4 days-fresh from the farm .
ive heard of people repoting about phuket and i was there 2 weekls ago and picked up another two lovelies and only paid 1000 bht there each no problem as well-long time not st.so i hear 2000-3500 bht long time in bbk and other places but why…-and no im not picking up ugly dogs here.ive been here long enough to know a beauty from an ordinary one.ill post a samui update soon -i promise rt
View all comments by zepplin
pmmp: In this case I did not even enter the bar. After inspecting the Nana car park line-up, I was on my way home and passing the Golden Bar when a girl I knew shouted at me from the railings of the obviously closed bar. She asked me to barfine her and I laughed at the absurdity of barfining a girl from a closed bar that I had not even entered. Because I was drunk and the manager was staring at us to check that we weren’t arranging a rendezvous, I relented.
I always thought a barfine was to compensate the bar for the loss of its employee and any drinks that might have been bought for them. If the bar has closed, I cannot see why any compensation is necessary.
But I take your point about how seriously bars can enforce barfine policy on their employees and customers. I was in Koh Samui in 2005 during horrendous floods when a bargirl asked if she could stay at my place because her room was flooded out. She stayed for three nights. I thought I was being the Good Samaritan but on my next visit to her bar I was presented with an invoice for three barfines. Only in Thailand!
View all comments by On Nutter
I was in Baby Dolls on saturday night. Didn’t bar fine but drinks seemed cheep.
Very amusing version of musical chairs they play…
and watch out if you ask for ice in your beer….
View all comments by MSB
Just to correct the vernacular, what u paid at the Golden was an “after bar fine.”
View all comments by jack dawson
Had a mixed night in Pattaya last night Club Blu a great bar nice good looking girls (most of them) good music,everything good could not fault it. went to a few others in that area the Ice bar was awful old ,old ,ugly ,ugly, girls with a group of old men pissed out of there heads but did provide a laugh when one of them the oldest and looked like he had checked himself out of the hospital minutes before entering the bar was trying to step up on to the dance circle groping away at a fat arse he slipped cut his shin ,claret all over the place on the white floor,with the white lighting, look like a murder scene,girls screaming and running about.
Champagne go go ,buy 1 get 1 free, had 1 mouth full of a Tiger and fucked off quickly ,OAP s older than the things in Ice. Mistys was rubbish , ended up in Airport and was good the service girls seem the best looking or is it just the uniform that does it ? well worth a visit.
skipped heavens above liked this bar on my trip last year ,had myself a show girl and was a great time, but found this trip the girls very up there own arses spend the whole time looking in the mirrors, only 2 girls Same ones both visits wanting to sit on your lap after dancing but wearing some outfit that would fit in to the Lord of the rings set, like a cave woman was the thought i had so declined..gave her the look like she would smell a bit to…to much attitude for me there..shame nice bar.
View all comments by Fish
ON: Yes 350 Bht at Golden Bar is the best but you can easily get caught up with a trio, mia noi, gik in this place it can get a bit a unfriendly if you come back with another girl (carting) from NEP, Cowboy or Custer’s last Stand (Car park capers). If you stay there mingle, have fun and make contacts but don’t play there is our motto! There are eyes everywhere. Thank Buddah for the back entrance into Nana Hotel.
View all comments by 3amigos
600THB barfine is expensive for Pattaya, but the girls are willing to take less for ST/LT so the overall price is still lower than Bangers.
700THB is the price for full service including the room on Soi6. Yes 98% or more are undoable, but there can be some real gems there. Last time my mate and I found two university students. They were secretly earning some extra money over the weekend for school. Sure it sounds like typical bargirl b.s. but but after 10 years here I feel somewhat confident I can weed out most lies. Tight, rocking bodies and enthusiastic to boot. Even if they were lying, who cares. It beats 99% of what I’ve experienced with go-go employees. To each their own.
View all comments by Testing
very interesting post, thanks for the details.
just wanted to say that while whats up is quiet expensive, its worth it. absolutely awesome crazy club… best ive evr been in.
View all comments by jackherer