Incountry #14

I think it is six weeks but I don’t really know, since I moved to Pattaya. I liked Chiang Mai but the business prospects in Chiang Mai are considerably less than Pattaya. Princess never liked Chiang Mai. It is hard to put a handle
on exactly why but she never liked the place. She was excited by our move to Pattaya.

I thought I knew Pattaya but the reality of living here is a hard hot slap in the face. 5,000 bars and 50,000 bar employees. I knew all of the places on Walking street, Beach road and 2nd road but now I live on a quiet little street that
I thought was away from all of the action. Soon I discovered I was only one block away from 12 Thai nightlife venues, even one Isaan karaoke bar.

Walking down a soi early in the evening a small bar erupts in shouts and I get a little worried until I realize they are trying to attract our attention. I know a few people in Pattaya and I have avoided the areas where I know they hang out.
Princess is dragging me toward the shouting. I scan the faces of the ladies jumping up and down and relax because I don’t know any of them. I have since come to refer to them as the gypsum gypsies. In America they call it drywall, in Australia
I think it is called gypsum. As the story comes across with my limited understanding of Thai, apparently Princess was the leader of a high rise dry wall crew and these ladies were her apprentices about 10 years ago. I would imagine some unscrupulous
bar owner went to their work location and kidnapped these middle-aged, rough-handed sex pistols and forced them into working in a bar at five times the wages they were making as laborers.

In the bar these poor women with Gucci purses and 30,000 baht cell phones were being taken advantage of by palsied old men who could not walk without assistance and whose hands shook so much that they could not even light their own Cuban
cigars. Normally the bargirls chant hello handsome man as the Farang walk by but in this location the ladies yell, “Wait, wait I come get you and help you cross street.”

One of the gentlemen was 76 and had just had his live in girlfriend leave him with most of his belongings but he was back in that bar within a day to take advantage of another young thing the next day.

A young thing to a 76 old man is not what I would call a young thing. His young thing was about 44, her name is Pup. In fact she was exactly 44 and loose as a goose with wrinkles and stretch marks to boot, but he was in love. We paid Pup’s
200 baht barfine so the Princess and her could talk about old times and set out to paint the town.

I asked her where she wanted to go and she confided in me that she wanted to see some young dick. Of course we all know that Thai bar ladies do not really like sex but I took her anyway. The audience was mainly composed of middle-aged Farang
women who I am sure are the same Western women who post on Thai forums about the disgusting old men in Pattaya. After an hour I had seen enough white jockey shorts to last me a lifetime and I moved the party to Sharks on Walking street.

Princess had to go to the bathroom and Pup her lifelong friend was on her knees in a flash under our table trying to unzip my fly. I jerked in surprise and she, startled, jumped up and bumped her head on the table and knocked over our drinks.
This caused the poor exploited dancer who was dancing on the next table to convulse in laughter and she lost her footing and landed upon the face of fat guy sitting next to us (I realized with sorrow that this poor young exploited dancer could
not even afford panties to wear to work).

The guy she landed on thought she was holding on to his head and forcing it into her crotch on purpose instead of for balance and grabbed her butt to assist. She screamed, he tipped her a 100 baht and the other table dancers seeing her success
all screamed and jumped on the faces of the men they were dancing for.

Princess came back from the toilet. I asked her directions to the men‘s room (I always ask so she knows I have never been to the club before). On my way to the restroom one of the dancers slithered off of her table and wrapping her
legs around my waist rode me to the WC.

The club was getting out of control. We left.

I have a small home in a bad neighborhood. However, by poor exploited bargirls' standards I am sure my home seems like a mansion. We weren’t in the house five minutes and Pup our gypsum gypsy asked if she could move in with her
son who is a very nice boy, so she informed me and has never been in any kind of trouble and is very quiet. She offered to pay us 4,000 baht per month for our extra bedroom. She suggested the son sleep in our spare bedroom and she would share
a king-sized bed with myself and princess.

Since I have a real soft spot in my heart for exploited women I thought this was a good idea. Princess had a different take on the situation and was making gagging noises in the bathroom as her friend showed me her nice brown nipples that
had suckled four children.

Sensing my concern for exploited bargirls she suggested we travel to a club where the bargirls went to unwind after a hard night's work. Coincidentally her son also worked at this club. I pointed out to her that it was 3 AM and no clubs
were supposed to be open. She told me to accommodate the hours of the hard working bargirls the boys in brown allowed some clubs to stay open till 7 AM. This was news to me. The latest I had ever stayed at a club was 6 AM.

We arrived at the location to find an upscale karaoke bar with drinks starting at 100 baht for the customers and 150 baht for the bar boys. The customers? Mostly bargirls and dancers who were not barfined long time and a few young Farang
women. It was difficult for me to view these poor young women who were paying young Thai men for sex as exploited but I am sure someone who is more familiar with Thai women will be able to explain this for me.

From my conversations with the staff and customers I have come to the conclusion there are twenty of these clubs in Pattaya, all big, expensive and packed with bargirls every night in case you wondered what poor Ping and Pong do at night
after work.

The next day princess told me she wanted to go a bar that that her friend had told her about. Princess has been a lot of things and seen a lot of things and been a lot of places but she had never been to Soi Six in Pattaya.

When I first visited Pattaya I tried wearing disguises. But the wig and phony mustache were very hot and two gentleman described me as, “look, there goes Groucho Marx in drag again.” I tried different hats but that did not confuse
them enough. Finally I settled on a name change for different areas. On Soi 6 and Beach road I tell people my name is Day Na. On Soi 7, 8 I am Mi Kun.

As the Princess and I strolled down Soi 6 I kept hearing calls of hello Day Na. This confused the Princess but it was a lot better than hello Kelly. I can’t be the only one doing this because I have walked in a few places where the
manager bought me my first drink after I introduced myself.

I am a very polite person. I try and say and do the right thing at the right time. I noticed that in most bars upon entering wah de cup works fine. On Soi 6 most of the men say Ow Sah Moke, trying to fit in, this is the
greeting I used. The rest of the excursion is probably better left unwritten. Suffice it to say that after four hours princess was very angry with me.

We ended up in a restaurant without bar ladies. A relatively sedate place with a couple of tables of Japanese guys. Princess, of course, is sharing the details of our night with a total stranger, the female bartender who is tut tutting at
appropriate intervals.

The bartender is an attractive woman in her late twenties, she informs me she has a husband in Europe who she is completely faithful to and that she is a good Thai girl. She gives me the lecture about Thai women. I think I have heard this
particular lecture about seven times. You know, the Thai lady not butterfly lecture.

I was being quiet. Not responding to the digs and the moralizing. Actually I was quite proud of myself for keeping my mouth shut. They were both pressing me to respond to her comments. I furrowed my brows and did my best impression of thinking.
I looked at Princess and her new friend the faithful bartender and at last said, “OK, 1,500 baht, short time.” The bartender said, “OK, but I have to be back in two hours.” Princess frowned and the three of hopped on
a baht bus.

I still think I would have been OK if the bartender lady had not been a screamer also slapping her butt and yelling one more time cowboy did not go over real well. I realized she had probably dated a guy from Texas and was trying to make
me feel at home but my lovely lady did not see it that way.

Princess slept on the couch and did not speak to me for a day.

I don’t know how you all resolve conflicts with Thai women but I don’t speak about the problem and try to change the subject.

My subject of the day turned out to be how our house in Pattaya cost twice as much as our home in Chiang Mai. I stomped around for an hour or so muttering how I did not really like the place and it cost too much money. I don’t need
two bedrooms or two living rooms and the kitchen has no ventilation and her cousin won’t give me back the washing machine I gave him a year ago so why do we need a laundry room and so on.

Princess was sitting on the couch absorbing all of this for an hour until she said in her tender, shy, submissive way, “YOU SHUT UP, I TAKE CARE OF TOMORROW, NOW SHUT UP.”

I was feeling proud of myself. I had heard nothing of the previous night's events and was interested to see how she was going to reduce my rent by one half on the next day.

The doorbell rang the next evening and standing outside my door were three women. One 30 something and two 20 something ladies with suitcases. These ladies had just got off the bus from a small town up North. Princess had rented out our spare
bedroom. The 30 something one I vaguely recognized as a dancer from Nana but I had never seen the two younger ones. I enquired if they had jobs in Pattaya and Princess said she would take care of that tomorrow.

One of the ladies (her name is Little Bit) is very small, I could pick her up with one hand. She is 23 and has two children. The father of her children is a young Farang man who works in Thailand but refuses to support the children so she
left the kids at her parents and set out to make her fortune in Pattaya.

In talking to her I become a little frightened for her welfare when she told me she has never worked in a bar and has only had two men in her entire life. The next day my lovely lady secured employment for two of them at a beer bar on a soi
off of Beach road. One as a cashier and the other as a bargirl.

That night I decided to go to the bar to see how the girls were doing. The slender small one was barfined “long time”, 15 minutes after she arrived. I was concerned but the bar owner assured me he knew the man who barfined her
and all is OK.

The next afternoon she arrived home looking a little disheveled. She spent the night in one of the more expensive hotels in Pattaya and been taken to a gogo bar where the ladies don’t wear panties. This amazed her and she talked about
it at length. I summoned up my courage and asked her how much money she made for the night. With a small puckish grin she said, “about 32,000 baht.” I was taking a sip of some green tea when she said that and I choked on the tea.
She laughed, “I no have cell phone so he buy me cell phone so he can call me, I no have passport so he give me money to buy passport so I can go on holiday with him, I no have visa so he give me money for visa and he want me to go to school
for speaking English.”

The heat of the day and the soi dogs and the smell of perfume and hot peppers, I look around my house and see pink panties hanging in my shower and bras hanging on my kitchen chairs and I mutter under my breath, “Be careful what you
wish for.” I will write more later but now I have to take the girls to work as they are afraid to go by themselves. Somehow, I wonder why.

PS stay tuned for the next exciting episode. Little Bit meets her first Japanese guy, a night at Lolita’s and what to do if the gogo dancer gets 27 flowers stuck up there.

Stickman's thoughts:

Oh Kelly, your submissions are never ever dull – in fact they never get anywhere near being anything less than eye-opening.

I can just imagine some of the adventures you're going to have in Pattaya – and I am sure a lot of us are looking forward to reading about them!