I Fucked My Way Through 30 Years In Thailand

I’ve been meaning to write for a while now, ever since Stick asked to hear from us long-term Thailand residents who returned to their country. I am one such person.

For 30 years, from 1985-2015, I called Bangkok home. I always felt somewhat like an outsider and knew I would eventually return to the US. What kept me in Thailand so long was simple: Sex. That and nothing else, I’ll be honest. I was one of the biggest whore-dogs ever to hit the country. “Good” Thai girls held no interest for me whatsoever. The thought of settling down and starting a family never entered my mind, not once.

Those who call the late 1980s the Golden Age of Patpong are correct. Then Nana Plaza in the mid-90s. I recall how cozy Soi Cowboy was before the Skytrain ever made it easy to get there. The original Thermae, mmmm.

My sexual exploits were the stuff of legends, or would have been if I had not kept them under wraps.

I had certain rules. One was no working girl in my home, ever, so as not to upset the neighbors. Another was see no girl more than three times, as without exception I found even the most impressive performers to be getting a bit stale by the third time. If I did see her more than three times, it would be after a years-long break, and I just ran in to her again, but I always found her to have become more hardened with the years. My mongering life and my other social life, I kept absolutely separate.

I was a young buck when I hit Thailand in 1985, but age takes its toll. The advent of Viagra and Cialis are probably what kept me in Thailand at least a full ten years more than I stayed, as those wonder drugs came along at about the time I started flagging in my own performance.

Do I miss Thailand and living in Thailand, you ask? No. Not even a little bit. Seriously. Those days were fantastic, and I would do it all over again, but not at my rapidly advancing age.

And it’s not the same there anyway. There is a clear dividing line between Thailand before Thaksin and Thailand after Thaksin’s assuming power. What was his interior minister’s name, Purachai? I mark that fellow’s social-order campaign as THE beginning of the decline of the Thai bar industry. While still good overall, there was a clear difference from that point on, and the difference just kept growing stronger.

By 2015, I was ready to leave. Liaisons more and more lacked the personal touch, the girlfriend experience, and became just a business transaction that was only marginally better than using my hand.

You could not pay me to live in Thailand now. Well, maybe you could, but it would have to be a pretty sweet deal.

Now, with this new virus going around, who knows how Thailand will emerge. I congratulate myself on leaving at just the right time. It is not nor will it ever be again the place of my memories. In 1985, even a farang like me was considered exotic in Bangkok, but in 2015 there was a palpable xenophobic atmosphere.

I would not trade my memories for all the gold in the world. But neither am I one of these mopes who cry themselves to sleep at night because they’re not in Thailand anymore. I doubt I’ll ever see the place again, and that is fine by me.

I don’t really have anything to add. I fucked my way through 30 years in Thailand and have no regrets. That’s about it.