The Further Adventures of Napster in Bangkok

I’m coming up towards the end of my second month in Bangkok, so time to write in with an update.

All’s going well, and living near Asoke is proving to be great. I like it much better here than Sukhumvit soi 11 where I was based before. This area is actually pretty quiet and residential, with lots of nice cafes and restaurants. Yet I only have to walk a few minutes and I’m in the centre of the action. This is perfect for me.

I’ve been following the debate of Thailand versus the West in the readers’ submissions and even contributed a bit myself. After some thought, I’ve concluded that it’s generally a silly argument. It’s a bit like debating whether the country is better than the city. There are benefits and disadvantages to each and it just depends on where your personal priorities lie. Peace and quiet means heaven for some, and crippling boredom for others.

Likewise, Thailand has a lot to offer to those who value a certain lifestyle, but comes with disadvantages that may be deal-breakers for others. If I was most interested in advancing my career, raising a family or participating in sport, this wouldn’t be the place for me. But if, like me, you have a bit of cash in your pocket and want to enjoy big-city style sanook while you still have your health, then I think Bangkok is hard to beat.

Okay, enough with the lifestyle debate and on with the women!

So last time I did my update I was juggling T, the medical engineer, and N, the cute secretary. As predicted, N has pretty much moved on. She still calls me daily, but seems more interested in me being her fee-free therapist than coming over to stay the night. C’est la vie. She has so many suitors that it was always going to be hard to keep her around.

There was one time, before it all fizzled out, that was interesting. She wanted to drive over to visit me, but had never driven to Sukhumvit before. I’d previously taken a taxi from her room and knew it took around half an hour at night. When she was an hour and a half late, I called to see what was going on. She was lost and had called up a Thai guy to come and help her. It was some poor sap who’d been asking her out for weeks, with not so much a kiss on the cheek in return. So the guy got in his car, drove out to where she was, drove her car to my condo, caught a taxi back to his car, and drove home. Of course, she didn’t tell him she was coming to see another man, and said goodbye before I came down to get her.

This got me thinking that in many ways Thai girls are no different to their Western sisters. They’ll ruthlessly exploit the love-struck man they’re not interested in while delivering their vaginas on a silver platter to the one they are. The more time I spend here, the more I think it’s not that the women’s behaviour is different, more that my position in the pecking order has changed. When in Australia, I’m competing against men from a country that has produced many Hollywood heartthrobs. My local gym in Sydney likely has more attractive farang men than the whole of Bangkok. At home, I am lost in a sea of alpha males, with not too many attractive women between us. Here, the opposite is the case.

My girls have plenty of stories of guys taking them out to fancy restaurants, exclusive clubs, fancy hotels and buying them nice gifts. I usually buy them a cheap meal and ply them with a few drinks. From what I understand, they give up their goodies to me much faster than to their hard-working provider suitors.

Actually, my only real failure keep a girl interested after I got a date happened when I accidently took her to a fancier and more formal place than I’d planned. I’d walked past the place and wanted to check it out. Her attitude went from star-struck to cold within minutes of us sitting down.

T is still around and sharing my bed a few nights a week. Actually, she’d stay every night if I let her, but I want some time for myself and my other girls.

Time is my biggest problem at the moment. There are only seven nights in a week and I have more attractive girls in the queue than I can possibly deal with. I feel terrible letting a hot girl slip through my fingers because I don’t have enough time to meet her. This is probably just a consequence of only being in town for a couple of months. I’ve put in little effort to build my circle of girls, so losing a few is really no big deal. I have to learn to switch from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance.

T is still pushing for a more serious relationship. It’s great having her around and, apart from the messages to other guys, she’s as close to perfect a girlfriend as anyone could ever wish for. It seems amazing to me that she can do so many things to make me happy, except for the one that’s most critical – keeping it exclusive. It’s like a man who works hard all week to save for his dream home, then blows it all at the casino on the weekend. I know I’m being hypocritical here, but then again, I’m not the one who wants a relationship.

To be fair, the messages to other guys seem to have dried up somewhat and demands for her time are met with excuses about not being in town. I’ve adopted something of a don’t ask/don’t tell policy with her, but I can’t help but check her phone every now and again. Nothing fascinates me more than human nature, and a smartphone is as close to a glimpse into someone’s real thoughts as you’re ever likely to find.

I did find one quite disturbing message trail recently, from a guy based overseas. They are talking about a son they have together. She says the boy is staying with her mother, and he says it breaks his heart to be away from them. He has never met the boy.

I’ve spent a lot of time around T’s naked body, and find it hard to believe she has ever given birth. Her stomach is as close to perfect as I’ve ever seen. It’s firm and flat. There’s no flab, no stretch marks and no scars. Her breasts are still firm. She recently told me she gets free membership and personal training at her gym in return for them being able to use her as a model. I don’t know whether this is true, but it’s definitely credible as she has the body most women aspire to – tall, slim and athletic. I suppose it’s not impossible that she’s given birth, but if so she should be selling post-baby body advice to movie stars.

More likely is that she’s lying to the guy to extract money from him. This is obviously despicable, but not surprising. Deception and heartless cruelty towards men when it comes to children is simply part of the female character. It’s in their nature as much as being interested in beautiful hair. I’ve seen it so many times from so many women that I’ve pretty much come to expect it. You might as well get angry with a dog for eating a steak that was within reach.

Thai girls may be more ingenious than our Western sisters in their methods, but that’s because they can’t rely on the state to do their dirty work for them. The only solution to avoiding getting caught up in their web of deceit and exploitation is risk management, something I’m not always as disciplined in as I should be.

I’ve probably painted a bit of a bad picture of T. If you met her, and you weren’t the Stickman-reading skeptic you are, you’d think she was the nicest girl in the world. She’s always friendly, helpful and smiling. She loves making jokes and being generous. I’ve known her for months now, and she’s never let this persona slip for even a minute.

I reactivated my online dating account recently and have been out with a few new girls. I haven’t spent much time on the site and already have more prospects than I can possibly deal with. As usual, I search for attractive women in their twenties, living in Bangkok and with no children.

My first date was with R. She works in administration at a hotel. She was cute enough, and ended up in my bed after the date, but simply isn’t in the same class as the girls I’ve become accustomed to. So I dodged the many messages I received from her afterwards and they’ve now stopped.

Next was Y, a pharmacist who works at a public hospital. She lives out and the end of the BTS line and asked me to catch a taxi to some soi out in the sticks and wait for her on a corner. As the taxi drove around dark streets, I had visions of getting beaten and robbed as part of an online scam. But when she showed up she was friendly and hot.

She can read and write English much better than she can speak it, so we spoke in Thai. This forced me to try out my language skills and, while our conversation was inevitably basic, I still had a great time. I’ve been out to see her a couple of times. We kiss and cuddle in Thai bars, while whispering romantic nothings in rudimentary Thai. She messages me daily and I want to see her more, but I simply don’t have time. I really hope she doesn’t fade away, but it seems likely.

B is a salesgirl who spends most of her working day stuck in traffic jams. She also lives at the end of the BTS line. When I arranged a date, she asked if she could bring a chaperone, as she was a good girl and hadn’t been out with a farang before. They picked me up at the BTS station and we drove to a nice outdoor Thai restaurant.

The chaperone was a gregarious mid-thirties girl and I talked with her a lot more than B initially. It was like I was on a date with the chaperone rather than with B. We chatted away while B sat shyly by, laughing occasionally. Me and the friend drank beer while B stuck to coke. She loosened up a bit and had a couple of drinks when we went to a pub afterwards. The chaperone started hitting on me as she got more drunk, and I had to maneuver myself so I was dancing with B instead, who was much more cute.

Eventually we left, and B drove us to the chaperone’s Thai boyfriend’s place. The boyfriend was furious that his girl was so drunk and at one stage I thought he was going to start smacking her around in front of me. We were on a dark street in the middle of god-knows-where, so I was a bit concerned, but eventually they went inside. B said she couldn’t drive me back to Sukhumvit, as she’d had a couple of drinks, but would take me to the freeway where I could grab a taxi.

She pulled over beside the freeway and said goodbye in a shy voice. I was just about to climb out when she asked me for a kiss goodbye. The next thing I knew her tongue was in my mouth and her hand was on my crotch. Less than a minute later she yanked my trousers down and was kissing something other than my mouth.

She said she wanted to have sex, but lived with her family so we couldn’t go to her place. We drove around looking for a hotel and eventually found a place with a queue of couples and a bored-looking receptionist. I handed over 500 baht and we were set for the night.

Before we got down to business, she had something she wanted to discuss with me. She claimed to have only had sex with one man before and could only sleep with me if I thought one day I might be her husband.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the film Team America, but there’s a scene where the hero is about to have sex for the first time with his romantic interest. She tells him she can’t have sex because every man she ever loves is killed soon afterwards. She’ll only do the deed if he tells her he won’t die. He looks her straight in the eyes and says calmly and clearly: “Baby, I promise you I’ll never die”.

Well, I’m ashamed to say that what followed was something along those lines.

With that small negotiation complete, we made good use of the room. Entirely unprompted by me, she did things I’d be shy to ask a prostitute for. One of the things I love about this city is that it’s full of surprises. I haven’t had a chance to catch up with her again. Why can’t there be more days in the week?

O is a 23 year-old nurse who works in one of Thailand’s best hospitals. I chatted with her a lot on my phone and we had a good laugh together. She’s got a great sense of humour and looked amazing in her photos. She’s working all the time and I’m always busy so we’ve only had time to catch up for a lunch date.

When I met her in person, she was painfully shy. She kept hiding her face and letting the conversation die. She seemed to like me though, and eventually I managed to talk with her a little. She said the reason she’s so shy is that people keep staring at her. And it’s true. Almost every person I saw glance at her took a second, longer look. The reason they stare is that she’s really beautiful. Not cute or adorable, but downright beautiful. She’s tall and slim and could easily be a model if she wanted to, but I suspect she’s too shy. Another one I haven’t had a chance to catch up with again, but we still chat daily online.

X is a medical professional in her mid-twenties. She looked gorgeous from the couple of headshots I saw and I really wanted to meet her. I had a gap in my schedule and even though I was tired, I organised a dinner date after her work. When she arrived, she was even more of a knockout than I’d expected. I thanked my stars I hadn’t been lazy and put off the date for a later time.

She was showing me something on her phone and I saw what looked like a professional shot of her in a bikini. I asked about it and she told me she’d been moonlighting as a model. I dug a little further and she told me she gets paid 100,000 baht a day for being photographed in her underwear. She gets more offers for photoshoots than she has time to take up and has been asked to work in America. She likes modelling much better than her real job but her friends and family don’t approve. She tried to keep this life secret from them, but that became impossible after she appeared in the Thai edition of a famous international magazine. Word soon got back to her mother and her boss and she had to put her second career on hold.

Her regular job often involves going out with customers and convincing them to undertake expensive medical procedures. She dresses up immaculately for these dinners, then comes to visit me afterwards. It’s funny to see the security guards’ jaws drop when a girl straight from the pages of a fashion magazine comes to visit me. If only they could see the giggling little girl she transforms into once the door is closed.

She’s really sweet. I’m still getting to know her, but from what I’ve seen, she’s definitely girlfriend material. She’s bringing over some food tonight and we’re going to relax together.

I’ve also experienced the wrath of a jilted Thai girl. She saw me sitting with another girl and immediately called to let me know of her disapproval. The words “f*** off and die” were said more than once. This despite me not having done anything with her in months and her regularly sending me pics of herself with other guys. Oh well, I guess you can’t keep them all happy.

And that’s about where my life is up to at the moment. I’m still spending more than I’d like to, mostly because of the girls. I never give them any money, and they never ask for any. But when we go out it’s usually me who pays for the drinks and the meals. This adds up if you do it every night, which is what I’ve been doing lately.

Another stress is hiding them from each other. My maid is a godsend at cleaning up the stray hairs they shed. Why is it that girls can’t stay the night without leaving a whole lot of their stuff behind? I have various bags full of makeup, bras and clothes hidden around my condo. I have to do a careful sweep of the place before one of them arrives looking for hairpins or false eyelashes. I haven’t been caught yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Bangkok, I love you, but you steal all my time.

Napster

Stickman's thoughts:

You're living the life! With adventures like this (and Napster has shown me photos of these girls and they are WAY hotter than what you find in the naughty bars) I have to ask myself why guys – at least those guys living here – bother with the red light areas.

What you say about girls leaving things behind reminds me of when I spent time fooling around online. I literally had a drawer full of girls' toiletries and what not. In the beginning I could remember what belonged to who but then it all became too confusing and I had to throw it all out, lest the wring person see the something belonging to someone else. Ah, those were the days.