When Whorists Go Mainstream

Giving to the needy.

I wrote regarding a 'gift' of 5,000 - 6,000 baht I gave to a girl I spotted sleeping under the Asoke-Montri fly-over at Rama 4. I gave the girl this money as she looked as though she was hiding rather than begging. Her infant son can't have been any more than 10 months old and I couldn't see any evidence of a male around. She was fortunate that I was taking a short cut to Queen Sirikit Park early one Sunday morning and I happened to have my ATM card with me. While many of your readers will probably think I need my head examining, I believe if you see someone in need (especially if they look like they are hiding rather than begging), it is well worth trying to help. I chose the sum of money based on what I could afford and let's face it, anyone trying to run or hide can probably get anywhere in the country comfortably, get clean and get fed on 5,000 to 6,000 baht. It certainly felt better giving her that money than it did when I gave Father Joe ten times that amount (although Father Joe probably spent it with more thought).

Sad sight in Washington Square.

A girl has been sleeping rough for the last month in Washington Square. I asked her if she needed help in any way but she wasn't interested. She spoke good English and was obviously in some state of mental breakdown. Her decent English leads me to believe she is from the 'trade'. I wonder if she is the same one you mentioned in your weekly some weeks back. I gave up after a minute or so as she looked scared enough to attack! She can be found sleeping on the northwest corner of the square building which takes up the centre area of the square. She is very vulnerable where she sleeps and I fear for her safety. If you walk out of The Sportsman, turn left towards Soi 22 staying in the square, she is on the first corner. I gave her 300 baht and tried to engage her in conversation but she was too terrified to hold a conversation with. All she kept saying was, "What do you want from me?" Don't get too close as I had the feeling she could pull a knife.

Terminal 21

The Thais love anything that is sparkly and new, hence many have been visiting the newly opened Terminal 21. The food halls on the ground floor are packed, but eating sugary high cholesterol filled western foods. Hmmm, not good. Whilst having a lot of lovely quality items, the shops could by price definition, be in any city in the world. Walking up the road I entered Robinsons where there are a lot of staff and a lot of items at very reasonable prices. I couldn't help but feel that this was more like the real Thailand with more of a heart and soul. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to be in Terminal 21 and the facilities are great, as are Paragon and Emporium, but I found all that I wanted to buy in Robinson's.

The licence plate issue.

What I have been told about the delay in getting plates is that at most dealers, new cars are still owned by the manufacturer. The car ownership has to be transferred to the dealer before they can transfer it to the buyer. This means that the dealer must pay the manufacturer for the car - and they would rather hold the cash for a while to pay other expenses. When the dealer finally gets the car in his name, getting the plates is a quick process. The same holds true for motorcycle dealers.

Could it be?

I was intrigued by red plates and struggled to understand the rationale for them. I was eventually told that they were the idea of a former Minister of Transport who deduced that if someone bought a new car they must be a new driver hence they needed time to get used to driving before they could be let loose at night! So I can have driven flawlessly for say 20 years, buy a new car and then not be allowed to drive at night, but can buy a tuned up second-hand BMW and drive it at night the day I pass my test! My wife insists that this is what she terms a non-operative law that even the police don't take note of by and large.

Postcard from Korat.

I've just returned from a short trip to Korat and it has changed a lot. There appeared to be a lot more foreigners there and the night scene was pretty good. If I was at retirement age I would set up home base in Korat. Not too far from Bangkok, plenty of golf courses nearby plus good bars and restaurants. I may even buy some property there next year. You can get a decent house for 50-100K pounds. I did see one odd sight - a foreigner wearing an Angelwitch shirt in The Mall! Personally I wouldn't like to advertise the fact that I frequented a gogo bar, but each to their own. Thankfully there is a bar in The Mall which is open in the daytime so I could catch the rugby with beer served by slightly flirtatious maidens. That's what I miss when I am outside Thailand. The only down side of the trip was driving the road from Bangkok to Korat. It's lethal! We narrowly missed a huge pile up and two other accidents. Thai driving is not getting any better.

Judged by your friends?

I notice you (correctly in my opinion) often mention the dregs of farang society who settle here. You often mention it is difficult to find 'good' friends as an expat. I agree. I wonder how we would be judged if "you can judge a man by his friends" was applied to one and all in Thailand?

Frustration, confusion and a general feeling of being in the dark are the story of the week for Bangkok expats as the mix of information and misinformation about the flooding threatening the city has made it impossible to know what is really going on and what, if anything, one should do. What is disappointing is that information coming out of the likes of the local embassies, particularly the US and Singaporean embassies, is clear and, if anything gives you a better idea of what is going on and what Soi Cowboy girl you should do than anything the government has said. And it's not an expat thing. Thais are pulling their hair out and are increasingly displaying their frustration.

As far as farang enclaves go, none have been hit so far, but the mainstream media is reporting that the threat remains. Some say Sukhumvit will be hit, others say it won't. Who knows?! Sukhumvit is not likely to get hit by much. Of all the bar areas, Soi Cowboy and soi 33 are the most prone to flooding. Any bar that has delayed renovations may find the incentive after the water recedes.

Thank goodness that so far no new swimming pools have arrived in central Bangkok. Yes, the flooding in parts of the country, including some of the far flung Bangkok suburbs is terrible, and there has been loss of life and dreadful damage to and loss of property, but as far as the central part of the capital goes, it remains untouched at the time of writing. For visitors to Bangkok, if you are like most and tend to visit or hang out around the areas popular with foreigners - the likes of Sukhumvit Road, Silom Road, Siam Square etc., don't worry about cancelling your holiday for fear of needing a snorkel to get around. As far as expats go, the main concern seems to be protecting one's valuables and across the capital, condoms and Viagra have been moved upstairs or placed on the top shelves of cupboards!

The biggest concern perhaps is the worry many Thais have about what might happen next, and the way essentials are selling out in record time. Try and buy a bottle of water in convenience stores in central Bangkok, for example - all I can say is good luck! If water becomes hard to come by then we have serious problems. The shelves of convenience stores and supermarkets are bare of many, many items.

A number of girls who work at Cowboy have gone home because of the flooding. Many have expressed concern that they may be away for a few weeks as their family needs their help. So if your favourite darling is missing, just remember her first duty is to her family.

With that said the bars have been doing ok. In Cowboy this past Friday night, Tilac was packed but short a few girls with one less dance group than you typically get on Friday nights. But it was still packed with punters and making your way to look through the window took time. Dollhouse was doing ok. Other venues were as you would expect for a Friday night at this time of year and doing ok. Pretty Lady Bar Nana Plaza

It's October 29th, it's a Halloween party! The Big Mango Bar on a sub soi off Sukhumvit soi 4 will celebrate Halloween with cheap booze from 8 PM, free food and even gogo girls will be in attendance!

Miss Tuk, formerly #95 at Tilac, has returned and retaken the Dirty Doctor's coveted top bottom in Soi Cowboy title. However she is no longer sporting the #95 badge. She has been given the more symmetrical #8. Her popularity remains and she was barfined and out the door before 9 PM on her first night back, as if proof was needed of her superstar status. A few other girls who had wandered off to other bars during the year have returned as well so if you have a favourite Tilac girl you haven't seen in a while, it might be worth sticking your head in Tilac to see if she is back.

Pretty Lady Bar in Nana Plaza will host a special party this coming Friday, October 28, featuring sexy and lesbian shows, a mask changing show, and free snacks. The DJ will take you back to the 70s and 80s. Leo beer is available all night long at just 49 baht a glass. Best of all, proceeds from the party will be donated to the flood victims. Great stuff!

Down in Pattaya, the appointment of Howard Miller, the Pattaya media mogul known to many as the menacing looking (but in fact very affable, likeable and friendly) head of the tourist police on the documentary series, Big Trouble In Tourist Thailand, as Honorary British Consul for Pattaya raised some people's eyebrows but I was always convinced that he was absolutely the right man for the job. It is therefore disappointing to hear that Howard resigned from the position this week. No, there's absolutely no scandal at all! Howard tendered his resignation due to the position going from part-time to full-time - no surprise in that with all the Brits getting themselves into bother in Sin City. As Howard still has his fingers in a number of pies, he didn't think he could commit to it full-time. Whoever replaces Howard has big shoes to fill.

Friends tell me lots of younger women are entering the industry - and they should know as they spend way more time in the bars than me. But to be honest, I have noticed something completely different - many new entrants to the industry in Bangkok are older women who have fallen on tough Kelly times and who have fallen into the farang sector of the industry. And I guess with all of the flooding and apparently many lost jobs, there is a chance that we could see an influx of girls of all backgrounds.

My old friend Baron Bonk called it a day on his excellent nightlife column a year or so back but that is not to say that he stopped writing entirely. The Baron has been beavering away on a new project and recently published a novel, "Kelly, The Bargirl Who Would Be President". Available as an EBook and I believe there are copies available in print too, it should appeal to both fans of the nightlife as well as the Baron's legion of fans. You can find out more here.

Buying a ticket at the Asoke skytrain station is a nightmare from 5:00 until 7:30 PM or later on week days. That's when the masses are passing through the station which connects the underground with the skytrain, and 99% enter from the eastern end. Even before the new airport-themed Terminal 21 mall opened there were long queues to buy tickets at the Asoke station and they can go all the way back to the walk bridge over the Asoke intersection. If ever there was an argument to have a pre-paid card for the skytrain to save you from the queues, then this is it! And it is just getting worse with Terminal 21 now open.

Be honest, would Soi Cowboy be as popular if it weren't for all of the pretty neon? If you took the neon away, and it looked from the outside as it did, say 10 years ago, would it have quite the same draw? Sure, the bars are nicer on the inside than they were a decade ago, but I can't help but feel that it's the outside which is the big draw...

Dean Barrett reports 300 people showed for Fight Night up at 2,500 baht per person (most bought tables at the discounted rate) plus the organisers of the charity made lots on raffle tickets etc., and most of the prizes were donated. It was a big financial success for Operation Smile. As for his fight with Colin, he continued his Vietnam War era streak of managing to Dean Barrett snatch second place! Dean was overheard saying that the sexy ring girls distracted him! The organisers kept coming back stage saying how over the moon they were with the success of the evening and that many in the audience expressed amazement that it was real boxing; apparently, they thought it was just going to be some half-hearted showy stuff in the ring.

Bangkok's reputation for scams and scammers is, I hate to say, often justified and this week I heard of another long-running scammer operating on the city's streets. The perpetrator is a curiosity, not a Thai at all, but an elderly Singaporean national, said to be around 70 years old, who approaches Singaporeans (exclusively Singaporeans, it is believed) who he tells a sob story of how he has run out of money and how he needs money to get back home. In what sounds like a finely tuned story, he makes it sound entirely plausible and only asks for $SING 100 - about 2,500 baht - which would be enough to get him back to Singapore overland. He doesn't try and hit a home run and ask for enough to cover the airfare. He promises to repay the money if his fellow countryman would be kind enough to lend it to him. You don't need to be a brain surgeon to figure out that he never does. He even goes as far as showing potential victims his Singapore passport and ID card. One reader gave him money and made a point of recording the details of his passport and ID card. After returning to Singapore the money wasn't forthcoming so he visited the address he had been given by the old man, only to be informed by the old man's previous neighbours that he has not been seen in a very long time! So for the Singaporeans in the readership, beware! He is known to hang out in Pratunam and is said to actively look for Singaporean visitors. There is no reason to think he may not be operating in other areas also.

Quote of the week comes from a reader who was banned on a local forum, "Getting banned from SlyGeezer is no different from getting turfed out of a bar - there is always another way back in!"

Reader's story of the week comes from Caveman, "Putting Ladyboys into Perspective".

A man from Northcote in Australia stole a $1 million ring and sold it for $300,000 in Thailand.

Phuket bar staff take to an Italian customer's head with a golf club!

CNNGo took a look inside Terminal 21, Bangkok's newest shopping mall, at the Asoke intersection.

From the UK's Daily Mail, proof that wire transfers are much safer than carrying a bag of Thai baht around with you.

The Bangkok Post looks at flooding in Bangkok the past and flooding today, in an article featuring great photos.

An Irish pervert is arrested after flying in from Thailand with a hard drive of nasty porn.

Bangkok's flooding has knocked out manufacturing capacity for 25% of the world's hard drive production.

More Thailand flooding photos appeared in the Washington Post.

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