Sapphan Kwai

Prior to his ‘retirement’ the Bangkok Bad Boy wrote a great blog about the go go bars of Sapphan Kwai. It was one of the first blogs of his that I ever read, and I was always intrigued and wanted to go to see them.

I’ve asked friends several times, but no one has ever been game to go with me.

See, Sapphan Kwai has a reputation as a being one of the seedier parts of town (Maybe that’s why it has go go bars!?) and most of my friends just aren’t that adventurous.

The go go bars in Sapphan Kwai aren’t built with farang customers in mind; they service Thai men. I’d been told that to go in there you probably need to speak a fair bit of Thai.

Well, last night I went out with a friend. He arrived in Bangkok from America this week, and I was seeing him for the first time in several months. On the phone I’d been suggesting that we try to get out and see someplace a bit different. He and I had each made some suggestions, but none of them seemed to work. Finally we decided to just meet at Gulliver’s on Soi 5 then decide what to do. Once we were there, he asked me if I’d ever been to Sapphan Kwai, and I explained that I never had, but that I wanted to go.

Turns out he’d been there once before and was eager to go again, so it was into the taxi and off to Buffalo Bridge.

The taxi driver got us in the neighborhood, but my friend couldn’t spot the street where we needed to turn. After one or two u-turns, we asked him to drop us at the Ari BTS station. We asked one of the taxi drivers parked there; he knew where we wanted to go and delivered us about three minutes later.

The impression I’d gotten from Bangkok Bad Boy’s post was that there were two or three smallish places that were probably difficult to identify… perhaps almost hidden on the street. I’m not saying that’s what he wrote, only that I had that impression in my mind.

In fact, on arrival, we found about a dozen bars with a little neon and some flashing lights — not outrageous — but noticeable and identifiable. The one place I can think of that looks very similar is the short stretch of clubs on Lang Suan where Brown Sugar is located.

Outside of these clubs were a couple dozen Thai guys whose job was to pull you into their club.

My buddy had been here before, and he was of the opinion that one club was better than the rest, and he was keen to go there. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure which one it was. We solved the dilemma by walking up to the entrance of each bar and looking in. My friend shook off each bar in turn as we worked our way down the street.

The attention of the Thai guys out front was akin to the jabbering of a group of monkeys as they were each excited then disappointed by our progress down the street. One of them put his hand on me and tried to pull me in his club once, but aside from that it was all just jabbering. The surprising part was that the jabbering was mostly in pidgin English, not Thai.

Following Murphy’s Law, the bar we were looking for was the last on at the end of the row. I can tell you about it, but not about any other bar on the strip because we arrived around 11:15 and I stayed in this one go go bar until closing time. I didn’t see another white face the entire night.

I asked my waitress the name of the bar. When she told me, I thought I misunderstood her so I asked again. I wasn’t sure if she was giving me an English name or a Thai name, so later I asked a dancer and she gave me the same answer and clarified that it was English. The club is called “For You“.

I asked the dancer what street we were on and she answered that it is Sutisan Road. I didn’t verify that because she repeated it and sounded very confident about it.

The go go was a decent size, a large square room around a medium sized square stage that could hold 5 dancers comfortably or 10 dancers if they packed in a bit.

The music was 100% Thai dance music; no English on offer.

The girls themselves would compare favorably to most go go bars I’ve ever been in before. With almost no exceptions I’d say the girls were under 25 years old, and some of them looked like you’d want to see their ID before going out with them. My buddy and I both noticed the same thing… no cottage cheese stomach to be seen. Judging from appearances, none of these girls had carried a baby.

I’d say 20 to 30% of the girls would have been at home among the tall and beautiful girls hugging the chrome poles at Rainbow 4.

There were no mamasans… like the Thai massage places, the place employs male staff to arrange things with the customers. Papasans if you will.

There were two guys that dealt with us. They both spoke English. The first one was helpful and likable. He offered to get girls for us, and we asked for some time to look at what was on offer. He sat near us but out of the way. My buddy finally saw a girl that took his fancy. He asked the papasan about her and was told that she doesn’t go with customers.

This was a bit discomfiting but the guy quickly explained that she was the ONLY girl in the place who wouldn’t go with customers. As it turned out, there were no additional glitches, so it seems like this was true. I don’t know what her story was… maybe she was on her period, or doesn’t like farangs, or maybe she really doesn’t go with customers.

At one point the papasan went off and came back with three girls and offered us out choice. To be fair, they were all approximately the same body build as the girl my friend had asked about, but they weren’t very hot girls. It was immediately obvious to the six of us (me, my buddy, the papasan and three girls) that this was a dud, and they melted away quickly.

We took another couple of minutes to look, and then I saw a girl walk by on her way to the stage. She looked pretty hot to me, so I pointed her out to my friend. He asked if I wanted to take her, and I suggested that she might suit him. He took a long look and agreed, then asked the papasan about her. He arranged things. She finished her 3-song dance set then came to sit beside my friend.

Her name was Tu, and she was lovely, with clear skin, straight white teeth and shiny eyes. We’d seen her dancing, and she had long legs, a nice waist and was very graceful. No piercings and no tattoos.  She told us she was 20 years old, and she looked it.

She ordered a SPY and fell into conversation with my buddy. It turned out that she spoke quite good English, and said she had been a dancer in Pattaya for a year. It didn’t take my pal long to decide that he was taking her home.

The arrangement is that you pay the house 1,500 baht. This is an all-inclusive price, and the girl gets half the money. You aren’t expected to tip her anything extra. We confirmed this with the papasan.

My buddy wanted to take the girl back to his hotel, which was quite far from Sapphan Kwai, and she agreed to go if he would give her taxi money back. It was all arranged, so at midnight my friend walked out with the prettiest girl in the bar.

When we got the bill, something didn’t quite add up. We had 2 large bottles of Heineken priced at 140 baht each, plus her spy, which was 70 baht. Total is 350, but we’d been charged 490. When we questioned the papasan, he said that the extra 140 was for the girl to sit with us. My friend had no objection and paid the bill. I don’t know how that pricing works… if the 140 is for an hour, for the night, or if they were simply trying to pad the bill, but it wasn’t an issue.

After they left I was sitting alone. I’d seen a girl that took my fancy, but she was engaged with a young Thai guy. I thought I’d wait a bit and see what happened. He was sitting with three friends and I got the feeling he’d be leaving with them instead of her.  This was why I’d suggested that my friend hook up with Tu instead of me taking her.  In retrospect that was probably a poor decision… after seeing Tu close up and talking to her at the table, she was definitely a 10 out of 10 girl.

But what’s done is done.  I had another two bottles of beer, and by this time it was about 1 a.m. and I was seeing the same girls onstage that had been dancing when we came in. I had a good look at the entire lineup, and while there were some intriguing girls, my eye was still on the little spinner talking with the Thai guy.

Throughout the course of the hour, periodically an overweight Thai guy would walk up, stand between me and the stage to block my view, hold his arm out and sweep it majestically at the dancers onstage and ask, “You want lady?”

Now where have I seen that before?

The first two times I told him no, I was okay. The third time I simply looked off in a different direction as though I hadn’t seen him. Undaunted he stepped into my field of view, so I swiveled my head to look the other way. He was really starting to irritate me.

The first papasan, the one that had brought the three girls, had been truly helpful, and had answered questions about the girls, the bill and so on. This second chubby guy was just a pain in the ass.

He finally stopped bothering me, and I was enjoying a fairly relaxing evening watching the girls. They dance in a bikini top and a pair of very short shorts. They wear boots with 5 inch heels, except for some of the smaller girls who wear boots with 4 inch stacks in the front and 9 inch heels. They looked pretty good.

At exactly 12:30 the girls dancing on stage cleared off, and two new girls jumped up. They started dancing to the music, and within a minute they had both removed their bikini tops and were dancing topless. At 12:35 the song changed, and the girls removed their bottoms. They were now dancing naked except for the boots.

They were both pretty sexy dancers. One of the reasons I enjoy going to Rawhide is because I really enjoy watching pretty girls dance naked. One thing I liked about this particular show last night was that while the girls were in their birthday suits about every 45 seconds the blue and red lights changed to bright white spot lights and the girls were exposed in all their glory.

When the music stopped the two girls grabbed their clothes and scurried off the stage. The prettier of the two, who’d been dancing so erotically just moments before, held her hands over her breasts and her pussy as she climbed down, and nearly ran to the changing room. I never understand how a girl can brazenly dance naked one minute, then be modest the moment the music ends.

Oddly, this 5 minute routine was the only nudity of the night.  When the next song came on five dancers returned to the stage in the usual bikini top, shorts and boots.

A few minutes later I felt someone sit down beside me. It was one of the dancers. I turned to tell her that I wasn’t looking for company, and I looked into her eyes. She had those languid, liquid ‘bedroom’ eyes that I rarely see in an Asian girl, and they stopped me dead. She smiled. Her teeth weren’t quite right — not the even row of pearly whites that so many Thai girls have, but she was friendly and she had those eyes!

I let her sit.

We chatted a bit. She told me her name (Tan) and her hometown.  She said that she was 25, which surprised me, because she looked younger.   We established that my Thai was better than her English, and stayed with Thai language. I am not a conversationalist, and smalltalk mostly drives me crazy. It’s the reason I sit alone so much; most girls can’t just sit comfortably with you.

As I expected, the girl that I’d had my eye on earlier shook free when the three Thai guys left together, but by this time I was fairly engaged with Tan, so I didn’t make any effort to change girls.

Tan was relaxed. She wasn’t stiff or fidgeting. She sat comfortably and from time to time one of us asked a question or made a comment, but the rest of the time we both just watched the girls dance. I didn’t offer to buy her a drink, though I offered to share my beer, which she accepted. I started to like her better all the time.

At one point — before or after Tan sat with me I’m not sure — I was in the toilet taking a piss and an 60 year old guy started talking to me in English. His English was pretty good and he was clearly thrilled to have a farang to practice on. He was also clearly drunk. There were only two urinals and I was standing at one of them having a difficult time getting my stream flowing while carrying on a conversation. Other customers were having to squeeze in next to Charlie to use the urinal, and he seemed oblivious to all of it.

I finally managed to piss, however slowly, then we both washed our hands and he chatted me out the door of the toilet.

Amazingly, 20 minutes later when I left Tan sitting at the table and went to the toilet again, he came in right behind me and started chatting me up again. He was telling me that I was welcome in his country, and that if I needed anything or I was ever in trouble I should call him. It was almost surreal at one point when he shook my hand as I was standing an pissing in the urinal. It was a first for me, though Charlie looked quite comfortable with it all.

When I managed to extricate myself and get back to the table, I figure Charlie’d had me occupied in the toilet for 5 or 10 minutes. I fully expected that Tan would have left by now. I mean, I hadn’t bought her a drink, I’d had little conversation with her and I hadn’t expressed any particular interest.

But when I went back to the table she was sitting there patiently waiting.

At one point the chubby papasan really got on my bad side. I was sitting next to Tan, and he came along, grabbed my arm and tried to drape it around her. I tensed up pretty quickly at him touching me. Tan had a lot more sense than the papasan, and she shook him off and scolded him. He went away with his tail between his legs and didn’t come back.

She must see a lot of customers and have a good ability to read moods, because she handled me perfectly.

As closing time approached, Charlie invited me to join him at a late night venue on Ratchada Soi 7. He gave me the ‘don’t worry, Charlie will take care of everything’ line a dozen times. He had a group of about 8 people and It sounded like he was paying the bill for everyone. I said I’d come along. His group was all paired up boy-girl-boy-girl so I invited Tan along.

I paid the 1,500 baht and saw the cashier give her a pre-packaged 750, then she went to change clothes. We all piled into two taxis and it was off to Ratchada.

The bar turned out to be fairly small, but they had laser lights and a DJ. There were probably a dozen people sitting in booths when we came in, and our group occupied the middle area around a stand up oval shaped table. Soon we were all dancing and drinking. We were there for 45 minutes or an hour, then Charlie approached me and said, “We pay 50-50 okay?!”

So much for ‘don’t worry, Charlie take care of everything’! In fact it wasn’t okay. I had only about 200 baht in my pocket, but I said that I’d go to the ATM and come back.

I pulled 3,000 baht from the ATM so that I’d be ready for whatever damage might await me.

Actually the bill wasn’t too bad – 1,400 baht – so ‘my half’ was only gonna cost me 700 baht. They weren’t my friends, but Tan and I had had enough beer and whiskey in the hour that 700 baht wasn’t like robbing me. I reached in my wallet, handed Charlie a thousand baht note, and waited for my change.

No change. Three minutes later Charlie was ushering everyone out the door. So much for 50-50.

There are a few lessons to be learned from my interactions with Charlie, and I think I’ve learned them already. But truly, I’ve met guys like him many times in Thailand (and other countries) and every other time it has turned out well. Honestly, a thousand baht was a reasonable price to pay for the extra good time at the end of the night, it just would have felt better to had more control over it instead of feeling like I got played by a drunk old man.

Mai bpen rai.

Now it was me and Tan in the taxi as the clock spun towards 4 am. We went to my apartment, but we were both tired and mostly just going through the motions. The session was brief and uninspired, then she was off to get a taxi home. Bright girl that she is, she didn’t ask me for taxi money.

In spite of the anticlimactic ending to the night, I had a very good time. It was certainly a lot better than sitting in my room watching 20-year-old movies on cable TV.

I’m confident that I’ll go back to Sapphan Kwai again. I’d gladly go to “For You” again, and there are still a dozen other go go bars to check out.

From my experience, at least at For You, it seems that as foreigners we were welcome. People spoke English, and the touts on the street were almost fighting to get us into their bar. I never felt uncomfortable or threatened, and I didn’t feel out-of-place after my buddy left and I was alone.

His girl, in particular, was very pretty and farang-friendly. And at 1,500 baht all-inclusive, the price is friendly too. As I say, there were several stunners on offer, and the overall quality of the girls was good.

If you are even the least bit adventurous, and you’d like to find an alternative to Nana-Cowboy-Patpong, I’d say that Sapphan Kwai might be a reasonable alternative for you to explore.