Value for Money by the Bangkok Bad Boy

Bangkok’s gogo bars have been getting a bit of a slating recently in terms of service and value. According to the majority of commenters that I’ve read on the subject, the girls seem more and more to be completely disinterested in having fun – rather just looking to maximise their profits by delivering perfunctory service in as swift a time as possible, whilst still demanding top dollar.

There are, of course, exceptions, as I’ve found myself saying rather often recently. And as I mentioned on that page, perhaps it’s more satisfying, in a way, to find the One Awesome Gogo Girl in a bar, who performs with delightful enthusiasm and a fervour for fornication. But when you come across (f’naar f’naar) her mercenary counterparts, it’s no fun at all.

Some would say the girls are quite entitled to provide shoddy service. After all, how enthusiastic would you be about the prospect of being crushed under a lardy, drunk, sweaty and aging farang?

The old-timers often hark back to the days of old, when there was no such thing as “short-time”, because you knew she’d be staying all night, shagging you seventy-three times, and then cooking you a full English breakfast in the morning, with extra black pudding. In a maid’s outfit. In which she would then slip under the dining table, in order to fellate you as you crammed dead pig and scrambled eggs down your maw. All for just 20 baht, or free on Sundays.

Fame (sort of), and Other Tales by the Bangkok Bad Boy

It’s strange. Only a little over two years ago, I moved from the UK to Bangkok. I’d been here before, on vacation, but didn’t really know what I was doing.

I’d searched the web for information on the bars, and found little of relevance or use. So I figured that I’d start my own site, effectively writing a guidebook that I would have appreciated reading myself.

I initially just planned a site full of bar reviews, massage reviews, and that sort of thing. This idea went stale pretty quickly – the information was useful, but hardly a compelling read.

Instead, I soon discovered that writing about my adventures in the bar scene and beyond was much more enjoyable, and seemed to be more appreciated by the three of my mates who were actually reading the website. I kept writing the bar reviews, but only as background information for the tales themselves.

I never really thought anyone other than those three mates would read it though. I didn’t really think anyone else would be very interested.

I was wrong.

A Celebration of Mediocrity by the Bangkok Bad Boy

What, really, does the Bangkok “naughty nightlife” scene all come down to? Well, sex. Sure, there’s sex. And lots of it.

But after a while, it all gets a little “same same”, as the locals would put it.

Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe I’m perverted. Actually, scratch the “maybe”. But while fantastically great sex can be had with the “entertainment providers” of Bangkok, it all too often isn’t.

Everyone’s had a “starfish” experience. Sometimes the girls just can’t be bothered. But that’s only a small part of the issue – there’s rather more to it for me.

“My mother said it was simple to keep a man; you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom.” –Jerry Hall

That’s not a hard combination to find here, there are tens of thousands of whores in this great city, and most of them are far better at cooking and cleaning than I am.

But there are levels of whoredom…

CLF by the Bangkok Bad Boy

Suddenly, it dawned upon me that perhaps my gallant, chivalrous course of action was perhaps not the most sensible approach to the situation.

A gaggle of mean-looking Thai “security” staff loomed ahead. A few more to either side. CLF was cursing them in at least three different languages from behind me, at the top of her tiny lungs. “I saat” means something along the lines of “fucking animal”, except it’s rather more serious than it sounds. There were a few good old Anglo-Saxon “fuck you”s in there too, and a stream of Thai, Issan or Khmer (maybe all three) curses on top for good measure.

I kept backing up, holding her behind me, with a rictus grin a mile wide apologising and smiling foolishly at the mean-looking Thai guys who seemed to have murder in their eyes.

I’ve had better nights out.

The Regulars by the Bangkok Bad Boy

Once you’ve stayed in Thailand for a while, your phone begins to fill up with the numbers of gogo girls, beer bar girls, freelancers, g-club girls, 7-11 girls, coyote dancers and the girl who runs the coffee stand across the street. The cellphone harem, if you will.

Occasionally a girl will move on, settle down, or simply change her phone number – through accident or by design.

Still, a well-maintained stable of harlots will inevitably contain a few girls who, over time, grow to enjoy your company. Some will want to get too close, and need to be pruned away. Others will become that most joyous of companions, the girl who genuinely likes you, enjoys spending time with you, and is making enough money from other customers that she’s more than happy to come over once or twice a week for a discount rate, often even for free.

You’ll usually need to keep her fed and watered, but the cost of doing so is minimal.

Sometimes I call them. Sometimes they call me. Sometimes we bump into each other – literally. But they’re the girls I call when I want something reassuringly familiar, rather than the pot-luck of barfining or otherwise procuring a new girl.

In order of preference…

Laotian Layover by the Bangkok Bad Boy

Nobody likes visa runs. Quite why new visas can’t be purchased within Thailand is beyond me. But sooner or later, we all come to the end of our permitted stay in Thailand, and have to leave the country in order to reset the clock.

Occasionally I’ve been able to combine tedium with pleasure, or at least business, with a trip to somewhere vaguely interesting, but most of my experiences have been the all-too familiar experience of being cooped up in a minibus to the Cambodian border with a bunch of unsavoury characters.

There’s always at least one alcoholic, knocking back cans of Chang from 8am, a guy with scary tattoos, a German who blinks too much, a depressingly earnest English teacher from Surrey who works at a school so prestigious that they won’t give him a work permit, a Japanese dude who never speaks, not even once, and more recently more and more young Filipina English teachers, none of whom are ever attractive.

The Cambodian border run is fine if you’re on a multiple-entry visa, or are eligible for a 30-day visa exemption stamp, but if you need to purchase a new visa you need to visit a consulate/embassy outside Thailand. Vientiane seems to be one of the more popular destinations at the moment, and this is the setting of our tale.

Low Fidelity by the Bangkok Bad Boy

During a conversation with a friend recently, he referred to a Thai girl whom he sees on a regular basis during his trips here as his “girlfriend”.

Said friend spends a lot of time travelling for work, and is lucky if he manages to get one week a month here in Bangkok, but he keeps in touch with his girl while he’s away and she often stays with him while he’s here.

So she’s a girlfriend in that they see each other frequently, go out for dinners, sleep together and generally enjoy each other’s company.

Sometimes.

One Night In Pattaya by the Bangkok Bad Boy

Yeah, Pattaya is a total fucking shit-hole. A napalm attack would do the whole world a lot of favours. 100% of male Pattaya visitors are total scumbags. And everyone who dies there deserves it. And everyone who doesn’t die there should. A friend of mine, in a UK prison (for eight more years, poor guy) tells me that Pattaya is pretty much the only thing the prisoners talk about. Bring on the napalm.

So sayeth Morally Diminished.

So quoteth me, on a number of occasions. I had visited Pattaya a couple of years ago, hated it, and intended never to return.

The Thais in Pattaya aren’t all that bad, but way too many of the farangs you meet there seemed to be the kind of scary characters whom it’s all too easy to imagine aren’t happy unless they’re putting the “sensual” back into “non-consensual”…

But I had a couple of friends in town recently, who wanted to make their own minds up. Reluntantly, I agreed to accompany them. I shall refer to them as Terry and Bob, as in The Likely Lads, from off of the telly. Because they’re Northern and funny, just like me.

What? Eh? Oh. Okay then, just Northern.