Patpong’s Scummy Sisters
Live in Da Lat, Vietnam
By KorskiThe acts are well-known, all the way from the most innocent thrill-seeking tourist to the hardcore monger. A naked Thai woman of ample proportions steps onto to a stage and places her legs over a small fish bowl and begins dropping from her vagina into the bowl one-by-one live goldfish after live goldfish—six, eight, ten of them. In another act, a naked Thai woman lies on her back on the stage and spreads her legs and shoots small darts from her vagina at balloons that are released in the direction of those nearest the stage. She hits and bursts the balloons with amazing accuracy. These and other acts are the draw to get customers off the street and into the second-storey show arenas in Bangkok’s infamous Patpong, an attraction that comes with very pricey drinks. And very often a scam, one where the customer when he gets the bill is faced with a charge for several drinks he and those with him did not have, or additional charges that seemingly come out of thin air. The customer protests, and he sometimes protests vehemently; but he usually isn’t allowed to leave the premises until he has paid the scam bill. And what gets him to pay are the Thai thugs who make sure he doesn’t leave until the money’s in their hands.
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I met George in the waiting lobby for a flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh on Air Asia. We struck up a lively conversation, got seats adjacent to one another on the plane, continued with our conversation, booked into the same hotel in Phnom Penh, and then over the next couple of days had dinner and drinks together on a couple of occasions.
George is a forty-four year old German who lives in Thailand and speaks nearly flawless English. He is tall, lean, handsome, and with a good head of black hair. He grooms himself smartly, and is in good shape. He is careful about what he eats, and he generally drinks in moderation. He has had no fixed address for a little over two years, moving around Bangkok and to the cities in Thailand as whim dictates. Prior to coming to Thailand, George worked in Japan for four years in information technology, earning enough money to not have to work in Thailand, as long as he is prudent with his expenses. If he has another source of income other than what he made in Japan, he did not want to reveal it to me.
He has a Thai girlfriend, but like so many men who live in Asia he finds it hard to resist the temptation to go with another woman when one catches his eye. He has no qualms about paying for sex. I suppose he can best be described as an opportunistic monger.
When we got our visas and passed through customs, we agreed to share the cost of a taxi to the city. I’ll rarely haggle with anyone if the price is reasonable based on past experience or what I’ve heard beforehand. I certainly won’t go out of my way to try to save a dollar or two here or there, figuring that the hassle and the lost time are not worth it. Based on what I knew of George up to the point of getting a taxi, I was not prepared for him aggressively pushing for a ridiculously low price for the two of us. When he didn’t get what he demanded, he got angry and walked away. George then insisted that we go out to the street to get a tuk-tuk. I politely told him it wasn’t worth the time or trouble, but then left it at that. After more haggling on the main highway to the city, we got a tuk-tuk. We might’ve saved all of two dollars between us, and this was after more haggling and rudeness by George. At one point, I insisted that I’d paid the entire fair.
Our conversations ranged widely, and though George does not have as much formal education as I do, I found him engaging, lively, and full of experiences that I’m always eager to hear about. During the course of these conversations, he said that when he needed to renew his Thai visa he would use the opportunity to spend a week or two trying to get the flavor of another country—Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Singapore, Vietnam. And out of these trips came, as they do for all travelers, small adventures. He had one on Da Lat, Vietnam, to relate, a place that up to that point I’d never been to but had designs on visiting soon.
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Da Lat is famous for its old French colonial architecture, its pleasant climate (it’s about 1,500 meters above sea level), its mountains and pine forests, and, as I would discover among other things a couple of weeks after hearing George’s story, its groves of coffee and flower nurseries and a small cottage silk industry. Da Lat is not a place, to my knowledge, that is on the map of men interested in the pleasures of young women. But as in all of Southeast Asia, this doesn’t mean that men cannot find hookers by asking around, or, as in George’s case, being taken to them by pimps eager to get a commission for their effort.
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George arrived late in Da Lat on a Saturday night and got a hotel without much difficulty. He was more than pleased with his choice. He got a large and clean room with two double beds and a view onto the street below, and all for ten dollars, less than half of what he thought he’d have to pay.
After he checked in and showered, he went to the street to look for a bar where he could have a drink to wind down from the long bus ride from Saigon. When he got to the street it was nearly deserted. He began walking, and after about two blocks was approached by a guy on a motorbike who asked where he was going. He then followed with a question about whether or not George had any interest in girls. George said he did, and then he agreed on a price of 20,000 dong to go to a bar that the driver knew.
He was taken about two kilometers away from his hotel. They stopped in front of what looked like a rundown unmarked building. Outside were four or five young and rough looking Vietnamese sitting on their motorbikes. In the entrance to what George took to be a hotel, there were two women slouching on a ratty couch. He didn’t think they were at all attractive and had no idea what they were doing there. Also just inside the hotel were a couple of young Vietnamese males standing around. George said he didn’t know what to make of all of this, but he instinctively knew that this was not what he had in mind. He briefly considered leaving and returning to his hotel. But curiosity got the better of him, and when his driver said to follow him he did so.
They went up two flights of narrow wooden stairs, passed two young girls in the stairwell that George thought were fairly attractive, and then went into a dark room with three long couches around a wooden coffee table. The room overlooked the street. There were curtains that allowed for a small amount of light to filter into the room.
Upon entering the room, George’s driver sat down to his right and said that in a couple of minutes some girls would arrive. George could take his choice after looking them over, and then he could take one of them to an adjoining room or back to his hotel.
But even before anyone else came into the room, George said that he began to feel uneasy. He just didn’t like the “feel” of where he was. He told himself, however, that he need not worry because he instinctively trusted the guy who brought him. Much as he’d often done in the past, he had made a quick assessment of the driver to decide whether or not he could be trusted enough to keep him out of harm’s way.
A girl in blue jeans and a colorless top came into the room and sat down beside George and smiled at him and reached for his hand. Presently, one of the young guys that he’d seen in the hotel entrance entered with four beers and a small tray of tiny packages of nuts and other things to nibble on. There were, in fact, George clearly remembered, four fist-sized packages worth about 15,000 to 20,000 dong.
Before George had a chance to react, the girl sitting beside him opened a bottle and passed it to George’s driver. Then she opened a bottle for herself. She left it to George to open his own bottle of Heineken. A bit suspicious that this could be a scam, George asked the guy who had brought him to the room how much the beers would cost. He was told 30,000 dong, less than two dollars a bottle.
The girl sitting beside George didn’t speak much English. After several minutes and a long silence, George put his hand on her leg. She reciprocated, and then removed her hand and went to one of the tiny packages of treats. She fed herself some nuts, then immediately opened another package and took a couple of nuts from that one. Within two or three minutes, she had opened all four packages. She had barely touched her beer.
George was getting uneasy, but that he was distracted by the girl and what he might want to do. He was trying to decide whether she was appealing enough to find out how much she wanted for her services. Unsure based on what he could see in the poor light, he turned to the driver and said he wanted to see some other girls. The driver said okay, and he got up and left the room and shortly returned. He said it would only be a couple of minutes until other girls arrived. At about this point, the girl beside George reached over and grabbed hold of the fourth bottle of beer. She opened it and put in front of George, even though he had only taken a couple of sips from the bottle he opened himself.
A plump and round-faced girl came to the room and sat on the other side of George. She spoke no English whatsoever. George found her unappealing, and he turned his attentions back to the first girl.
At this point, the driver stood up and said that he needed to put some petrol in his motorbike. He needed money. He didn’t say how much. George said he thought he’d play it safe and give him 50,000 dong. He gave him the money and said, You will come back soon? The guy nodded and headed for the door. That was the last George would ever see of him.
He didn’t like what he was seeing, but it was all happening so fast that he didn’t know what to do. And then his mind was further distracted when suddenly the girl that had his interest raised her right arm and tightened her bicep muscle and put it in front of his face, and said, Good, good? He said he wanted to laugh. He’d never seen anything like this in Thailand or any other place else he had traveled to in Asia. He was put off by what she had done. He briefly wondered if she was the Vietnamese equivalent of a Thai ladyboy.
Through gestures and words, George managed to ask the girl how she got what in fact was a fairly large bicep. She smiled and stood and then got down on the floor and did several push ups. George thought: This is a first! He could not help but laugh.
When the girl returned to the couch, she sat beside him and put her hand on his leg and said, Overnight? Overnight?
How much? he said.
She reached in a pocket and pulled out two notes, one of 50,000 dong and one of 20,000 dong. She put them on the table and pushed them in front of George.
Overnight? he said to her.
She nodded and pointed to the 70,000 dong on the table.
He laughed to himself and now thought: She must be the cheapest decent looking whore in all of Asia. Less than five dollars and she is going to stay the whole night with me. Something’s wrong. This is way too good to be true. The present going rate for an overnight hooker in Saigon is eighty dollars.
George now wanted to leave, and alone. He’d pay the bill and get another motorcycle driver and maybe get a drink elsewhere. He guessed that the bill would be about 150,000 dong, perhaps less. It would be about ten dollars.
He told the girl to his left that he wanted to leave and to get the bill. She got up and left and returned a couple of minutes later with the guy who had brought the beers and the tiny packages of nuts. He bent over the table and stuck a long narrow white bill in front of George. The light was poor, but he was able to see that there were some fourteen or fifteen items listed on it. Everything was written in Vietnamese. His eyes went to the bottom of the bill, and there he saw the figure of 948,000 dong. Below this was the following: $60 US. The number had two thick lines beneath it.
George looked up at the guy who had brought the bill and shook his head and held up four fingers to indicate the beers that had been brought to the table and opened. It was at this point that he noticed for the first time that behind the guy who had brought the bill, and near the door, the only door to the room, were three other young Vietnamese. They were staring at him, their arms folded. Their faces, he thought, were expressionless.
To his own surprise, George did not panic. Yet he wasn’t sure what he would do. His mind was momentarily focused on the wallet in his right front pocket because he had, uncharacteristically, brought an unusually large amount of money with him. He had more than 2,000,000 dong in his wallet.
The guy who had brought the bill was now pointing to the floor and shaking his hand. The only thing George could make of this was that he was trying to draw his attention to the four packages of nuts that had been opened, the wrappers now lying on the floor. George ignored him, and he kept waving four fingers, trying to put all the emphasis on the beers. He then held up three fingers and pointed them at each of the beers. His aim was to indicate that each one was to have cost 30,000 dong.
George decided he just was not going to pay anything like sixty dollars for the beers and the nuts. He’d take his chances with the guy who had brought the bill and the other three standing near the only exit. He wasn’t sure if he was willing to use his fists and feet. He stood, took out his wallet, and put two 100,000 dong notes on top of the bill. He started around the table and the guy who had brought the bill, about six inches shorter than George, stood in front of him and said, Money for the girls. Money for the girls! He pointed at each of them.
George took out two 20,000 dong notes and put one in front of each of the girls. They said nothing. They did not move. The guy who had brought the bill shook his head, and said, Not enough! More!
All George had left in his wallet were 100,000 dong notes. He said that with barely a thought he grabbed the two 20,000 dong notes, put a 100,000 dong in front of each of the girls, quickly stuffed the 40,000 dong in his wallet, and without looking back or braking pace quickly walked toward the three guys at the door. His fists were clenched, ready to swing if they blocked his path. Unless, he thought, they had a knife or gun. Then they could have whatever they wanted.
He didn’t look at them, and they made no effort to stop him. He hurried down the stairs and before he knew it he was standing in front of four Vietnamese guys sitting on their motorbikes. He had no idea what they might do or if they were part of the scam. But with nary a moment’s reflection, he handed a kid nearest him sitting on his bike the hotel card and said, Twenty thousand. The kid nodded and George got on the bike.
Less than ten minutes later, George was inside his hotel room and had a beer in his hand from the small refrigerator beneath the TV. About the only words that came to mind as he sipped the Saigon beer were: I was lucky. I was damn lucky.
In the morning, the idea that he had been lucky was behind him, and all he could think about was the scam, and it costing him about 250,000 dong. By nine o’clock he’d had some breakfast, found himself a guy on a motorbike to get him to where the scam had gone down--he remembered how to get there, and then for more than three hours sat across the street and waited for one of the two girls involved in the scam to come out of the hotel. He didn’t know what he was going to do if one or both of them showed up. What he had in mind was to get back the money he’d given them.
It was after noon, he confessed, when he realized that even if he did see one or both of the girls they probably didn’t have more than a small fraction of the money he had given them. The guys probably took virtually all of it. Pimps are nothing if not voracious.
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That was pretty much where George ended the story, adding only that he couldn’t quite believe that he’d allowed himself to get into the predicament that could have cost him some bad bruises or worse, and a lot more money than it did.
And then he said, I’m one of those Cheap Charlie’s you hear about. I sometimes do dumb things to save a little.
I didn’t react, and he added, I began going around Asia when I was in my early twenties. All the time I was trying to make my money last as long as I could. That’s the problem. You understand?
I nodded.
His final words on the story were: I did get lucky. That’s what I have to remember.
Stickman's thoughts:
Going back to try and get some money back was STUPID! I don't know what he was thinking.
Fortunately, for the adventurous in Thailand this sort of thing is quite unlikely to happen. You might get charged more than the locals, but you will not get totally fleeced.
The author can be reached at korski1@cox.net.
The author of this website, NOT this article, can be contacted at: stickmanbangkok@gmail.com.
