My Latest Angeles City Bar Hop

I was again over in Angeles for a few days to primarily attend a very good friend and long time Angeles resident's wedding and the stag night out in the bars of Fields Avenue (Walking Street).

Stayed at the usual very nice Lewis Grand hotel which has great rooms, a massive swimming pool, rain showers, a great restaurant, very friendly staff / manager and probably most important of all, a free limo service at customers' disposal 24 hours a day. Wherever you want to go or wherever you want picking up from within Angeles, the limo driver is just a phone call away. I paid roughly $US100 dollars per night, the price has stayed the same for the last 3 or 4 years so good value all around I feel, highly recommended!

The first thing that is noticeable on arrival at the airport is that the new 30-day visa is in full swing. Yes, out goes the old 21 day visa to be replaced by the new 30-day visa. That’s what I got at the airport with no fee needed!

The second thing I noticed is how absolutely dead the streets of Angeles are. Of the few people out, most were locals, the normal mix of trike drivers, fake Viagra sellers, cigarette sellers and the gangs of kid beggars / scammers. The thought that immediately goes through my mind is, 'shit I have not seen it this quiet for monger / tourist numbers in 20 odd years of regular visits to Angeles'. Could the countless bad reports all over the internet have put mongers / tourists off visiting? I'm not sure what the reason is but quiet as hell!

Shaved / showered and ready to meet friends by 9 PM for our stag night out. Again, as my last trip, we hit all the most popular bars on Fields Avenue (the Walking Street of Angeles City).

First off was Atlantis, probably the largest / nicest bar on Fields that always employs the best looking girls the town has to offer. It very nice surroundings, 3 floors of seating, a very large stage, European DJ, great air conditioning, nice dance routines and yes, very clean rest rooms (rare in Angeles). Popcorn is offered with each drink ordered which is a nice touch. There is an in-house Japanese style restaurant. It has for some years been the busiest place in Angeles by far.

As always a very warm welcome from the owners / managers of Atlantis bar and we were asked immediately if we wanted to take our party up to the VIP area but we kindly declined as there was barely a soul in the place downstairs. We sat, ordered beers all round (think 125 pesos for small bottle beer by memory).

What I noticed immediately was that while Atlantis bar would normally have 250+ girls working on any one night, in reality I counted only about 60 girls working. We stayed long enough to see all the dance routines, so all girls and we all tabled a few girls for drinks (lady drinks 300 pesos) but due to small numbers of girls working they would finish their drinks in record time and have to go back on stage for their dance routines. We stayed a couple of hours, and by the time we left I counted probably 10 other customers had been in the bar at some time while we were there. All were Asians, mostly Koreans, and I don’t think I saw any westerners all night in Atlantis bar. Very worrying customer numbers for the owners when you consider this bar is massive and probably could seat a few hundred customers in one sitting and up until recently would have been standing room only.

On to Dollhouse bar, probably the second most popular bar on Fields Avenue. Again, very few girls working the floor, small number of girls doing Vegas style shows on stage, probably 45 odd girls working in total as apposed to the normal amount of 150+ girls working, no Western customers, a handful of Korean customers, stayed for a couple of drinks with the girls, moved on to the next bars.

Now in total we hit probably 15 bars on Fields (Walking Street) and all had very low numbers of girls working, even lower numbers of customers. Some bars had no customers except our group.

3 AM and I have had enough beer to last me a life time, bought enough lady drinks to keep even the most hungry bar girl very happy in drinks commissions.

Time to call the Lewis Grand limo and get myself into bed. An ex-girlfriend (non bargirl) had travelled down to stay with me at the Lewis again and to be honest I was dying to get back to her. Without sounding big headed she is by far more pretty than any bargirls I saw out on our bar hop by a long, long way.

Sad to say that most girls on Fields were a generous 5 in looks / body with a very few 6s thrown in. The 6s were normally the bar's cultural dancers bought in from Manila and these girls paid little or no attention to the customers, preferring to admire themselves dancing in the mirrors and when not on stage huddled together on a corner sofa busy playing with their mobile phones until it was time to dance again.

All in all an ok night out, but a good send off into married life for our good pal.

Unfortunately, no girls in the Fields Avenue bars we visited were available for barfine regardless of the way one tries to get around the rules, not even by meeting the girls later at the hotel routine and paying her direct. Absolutely zero barfines available at the 15 odd bars we visited. Many girls were asked by our group, all girls declined barfines of any type.

Now although the scene is seen by some as changing for the worse in Bangkok and Pattaya, with higher prices, lower quality girls that are not so service orientated as a few years ago, believe me, Thailand is still a paradise compared to Angeles City IMHO.