Pattaya Gogo Bars 2005

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Four days, three nights. In Pattaya. Alone. No Mrs. Stick. A lot of randy Pattaya based friends to catch up with. Is this the sort of thing that makes marriages come undone? Have no fear, Mr. Stick is the faithful type.

What follows are my thoughts on the bars of Pattaya, vintage 2005 based on a few nights out in the seaside city of sin this week and don't worry, I won't bore you with hotel reviews or places to get good food.

On my last flying visit to Pattaya, I caught up with a friend and we dined in a small Thai streetside restaurant in Soi Buakhao. Walking there, I had passed many beer bars with pretty girls and I filed this away to check out on another trip. That other trip was now so I went through this neighbourhood again. Funnily enough I didn't notice any bars that were particularly inviting. Perhaps I was too early, but everywhere was quiet and full of a lot of well-rounded girls who had a little bit too much hunger in their eyes for my liking. Desperate girls are never fun for just a chat so I gave it a miss. I never did stop by one of the bars there for a drink although I can confirm that the bar industry is mushrooming out into that part of town.

Down Second Road to Soi 8 I strolled and made a quick pass down the bustling soi, from the Second Road down to the infamous Beach Road, infamous for it was after dark. Soi 8 was quiet, but again it may have been because it was a little early. Still, there were pickings there for the undiscerning, and if some guys I saw on this visit to Pattaya were anything to go by, a lot of guys just do not seem to care what a lady looks like. As a guy I ended hanging out with for a while said, "I can't believe some of these guys' taste in women". There really is some riff raff in the beer bars.

So down to the Beach Road and that walk that we have all made a hundred times, from the bottom of Soi 8 along to Walking Street. I mean, why do they even bother with songtaews (baht buses) on that stretch, it really is far too interesting to miss on a baht bus.

This stretch is home to the hungriest girls in Thailand. One guide book described the Beach Road in typical travel guide lingo with something corny like "a crescent shaped bay lined by coconut trees and palm trees, wavering in the breeze." What a load of horsesxxt. Whoever wrote that was blind, or they never even visited. A more succinct description would be "a crescent shaped bay lined by huge groups of hookers, punctuated by tropical vegetation." The bottom line is that there are far more ladies of the night than there are trees, and I dare say the average visitor takes a lot more interest in girls than trees.

So there I was, taking the kilometre or so stroll along Beach Road up to Walking Street, sucking in the fresh air of a typically balmy (read stinking hot) South East Asian evening. I wasn't impressed by the merchandise itself, but the current marketing plans deserve at least a sentence or two of praise. The first one that made me chuckle was the girl who offered herself for "just 499 baht". Not 500 baht, but 499. Clever! The next one who impressed me was the one who said, "I came clean loom you (your room, she meant) and then I clean you". What, do I look like the type of guy whose hotel room resembles a pig sty?

It has been said that many of the girls who work the Beach Road do so because of their questionable STD status, with some of them quite possibly carrying the one to which there is no cure. But a friend based in Pattaya, a friend who I trust, tells me that there are other reasons, very surprising reasons, why some of the girls chose to make the beach their office.

Money! Some girls claim they can make more money working on the beach! Don't believe me? Try this for numbers. The average beer bar girl gets 1,000 baht a night for her all night performance whereas the average gogo girl gets around 2,000 baht. Just how often they work varies from girl to girl. Sure, they may do a short time beforehand but that tends to be more what happens in Bangkok, and less common in Pattaya which still remains a long time sort of place. So, the girls on Beach Road generally go short-time, and generally get 500 baht a shot. So, how does that make them earn more than the beer bar girls or even the gogo bargirls? Well, some of these Beach Road girls go up to SIX TIMES A NIGHT! Yep, some of these girls are busy! Yep, there are girls who choose to work there because they simply make more money. Who would've believed it? This may not the norm, but some are really cashing in. Good on them, I say.

So along the Beach Road I went, cautiously maneuvering around the many moving obstacles who seemed dead set on preventing me from making it to my destination safely, at least without making a detour to the local short-time hotel room first.

Eventually I reached Walking Street where there were several gogo bars I wanted to check out. Peppermint, a favourite from previous visits, was first on the hit list. As I have said several times before, there is something perturbing about gogo bars where all of the service staff are male. I don't like it at all. As usual Peppermint was packed, but within seconds of entering I noticed what seems to be a new trend. About 20% of the customers were Asian, Japanese form the look of it but I couldn't be sure, and a good number of the dancing girls had dyed blonde hair, ruining their best feature, to appease the Asian customers no doubt. I reckon this could well end up becoming the next Asian bar on Walking Street, I really do – it seems to be heading in that direction fast. Like many gogo bars in Pattaya now, Peppermint offers 45 baht draft beer and at a guess, about half of all the customers were drinking draft. Can't be too profitable for the bar, can it? Still, the bar was packed. Peppermint was doing a good trade, but it just wasn't as good as it had been on previous visits, in my opinion. Two beers later and after a glance at the watch, I realised that I was behind schedule so it was time to move on.

Diamond A Gogo was next on the list, and it was here that the whole plan to visit 6 gogos that night went totally pear shaped. I had intended to go in for one beer, check out the latest crop of lovelies, have a quick chat with manager Ricky and then proceed on my way to four other bars, all before the 2 AM closing. I had a plan to cover as many gogos as possible to enable me to write a decent report but that never quite happened. I never left Diamond…

About 3 and a half years ago I write that Dollhouse was, in my opinion, the best gogo bar in Thailand. Dollhouse leapt on this and these words were used as part of their advertising for some time, the quote listed on various marketing materials, ranging from their website to ads in tourist magazines to a sandwich board outside the bar.

Ricky, feel free to use the following, because I truly believe it. Diamond A Gogo in Soi Diamond in Pattaya is the best gogo bar in Thailand at the moment, has the most attractive selection of girls, especially the show girls, and is quite frankly, the most fun bar I have been into in a VERY long time. Bold comments, I admit, but I stand by them.

In terms of physical beauty, there are some truly stunning ladies working in there, there really are. But it is more than that. There are consistently stunning girls in various bars in Patpong year in, year out, but their attitude is often questionable. The girls in Diamond, and the general atmosphere and friendliness of the girls in there is something rather special. There seemed to be none of that attitude that is so prevalent in Bangkok gogos, particularly Nana Plaza, and that bar is quite simply just a fun place to be. Even for a guy like me who is there just to chat with friends and have a few drinks, it was great. Just how nice are the girls? Well, I reckon I could do a photo shoot for a calendar of the girls in there, and every month would contain an absolute stunning woman. There at least a dozen gorgeous women there.

But the evening in Diamond was not without incidence. A really nasty fight broke out when a bunch of inebriated Danes ended up in a scrap with a bunch of blokes from elsewhere. An all-in brawl, there were more than 10 blokes trading punches, kicks and bottles and glasses were getting smashed left, right and centre. It was a little worrying because Diamond is not the biggest gogo on the block and the fight spread from one end of the bar to the other in no time. Within minutes, more than half of the customers had cleared out and a packed bar suddenly become somewhat quiet. That said, within 30 minutes, it had filled up again though which is a real tribute to its popularity.

But as good as Diamond A Gogo is, in fairness I had to go and check out a few other places. Carousel, Beach Club and Super Model were all mentioned by Pattaya based friends as some of the most popular places of the moment, so they were all on the hit list.

Just a few metres down the soi from Diamond A Gogo is Super Model A Gogo which has been in business a couple of months only. It is a two floor gogo bar, with standard gogo bar dancing on the ground floor and shows on the top floor. I felt it was sort of a nothing bar, a place which didn't seem to have anything particularly special going for it, but then neither did it have anything particularly bad about it either. The girls were pleasant without being stunning, the music inoffensive but not great, and the drinks prices acceptable. In Cowboy or Nana, this bar might do well, but in Pattaya, it is jut another mediocre gogo bar.

Carousel Bar may be popular but to me it is one of the most over-rated bars in Pattaya. It has been one of the more popular places recently but I just could not see why. The layout remains the same as it has always been, a large, circular shaped dance floor on a rotating carousel. The shows were dull, the girls nothing special and really, this bar doesn't offer anything sufficiently different from many of the other gogos, at least as far as I could see.

Beach Club is not a gogo bar per se, but rather a bar with a number of small stages where girls dance in remarkably short miniskirts, without knickers. Guys can peak up the dancing girls' skirts and are encouraged to slip them some baht which they proudly display under their garter, Western strip club style. If this bar is anything to go by, investing in the razor blade trade in Pattaya might not be a bad idea… In fact it seems to be something of a trend in Pattaya with many of the dancing girls preferring to be hairless. A locally based friend tells me that this trend actually started a year or so back. Beach Club was doing a very good trade although rumour has it that the management has an interesting problem there. Some of the girls are earning around 2,000 baht in tips a night just dancing at the tables and thus they are in no hurry to get barfined. And not getting barfined means that the bar misses out on barfine revenue, which is a significant part of their revenue.

The gogo bars of Soi Pattayaland 2 remain something of an enigma to me in that I really cannot understand how they do much trade. The attitude of the staff in those bars seems to be universally bad and many of the bars play music that doesn't seem to appeal to either the dancers or the customers. In fact I have to wonder if even the DJ likes some of the shite they play. Doing a run through the soi, Misty's stood out as a bar worth spending time, but some of the others were downright average – and that is being kind. One can see why there is so much beautiful neon in that street and so many attractive girls outside the bars – they do everything they can to entice you in because once inside the bars, there really isn't anything special there.

Comparisons between the gogos of Pattaya and Bangkok are inevitable. Even though just a casual drinker, I have found the gogos in Bangkok to be dull, and I know that I'm not the only one. t Many guys who used to be regulars in the Bangkok gogos feel the same and it is not jut me. Chatting with one of the main Nanapong guys who I caught up with in Pattaya this past week, he admitted that he has not been to Nana in almost a year and much preferred Patpong. Add to this one friend who goes down to Pattaya at least every other weekend because he simply has a much better time in Pattaya than he does in Bangkok. It doesn't matter what criteria you use, be it the attractiveness of the girls, the attitude of the girls and the bar staff, the number of bars and the choice of different bar formats, the cost of drinks, the cost for girls' services or whatever, Pattaya is a far superior option to Bangkok. In fact I would go as far to see that if you are coming to Thailand for the purpose of being a naughty boy, bypass Bangkok altogether and go straight to Pattaya. Bangkok just doesn't compare.

WHERE IS THIS PICTURE Competition?

Last week's pic was taken of the main door at Q Bar, the place where people seem to get piss tested all the time. Only three people got it right. Each week the first reader to correctly
state where the pic is by email to me wins a 500 baht credit from Tony's Bar in Soi Cowboy. Please note that the credit MUST be claimed within two weeks and you MUST state in the email that you are Bangkok based. So, to claim that prize,
you must be in Bangkok at some time in the next two weeks.

FROM STICKMAN'S EMAIL INBOX

The epitome of ignorance.

Had enough of Farangland.

Less Chinese? (Read my comments about China down below in the news section…)

Pattaya embarrassment.

Shenanigans at the Nana?

Surprised more punters do not go to Angeles, though the condom issue is a worry.

One of the readers' emails to the column last week commented on the overspending Japanese and mentioned how they spent a lot in the Rainbow bars and in Angelwitch. Matt, the owner of Angelwitch had this to say in response:

While I applaud all businesses which install free wi-fi on their premises, one has to chuckle at the idea of a gogo bar installing it. Misty's A Gogo in Pattaya have installed free wi-fi internet access within their establishment. A very nice gesture
to the customers, however I just get the feeling that the average guy might find it hard to concentrate on his web surfing while many gogo girls are dancing around him to pounding music.

In the old days, the shows within the gogo bars used to be not just something worth watching, but often worth going out of your way to see. Quite a few bars had the reputation for putting on very good shows, bars such as Long Gun, G Spot and Hollywood
all had good shows. With the enforcement of regulations preventing the girls from getting their gear off, most of the shows these days involve some sort of exotic dancing or weird costumes and really are not that exciting at all. Or is it just
me? What do you think?

While Cobra Gold may be on at present, I did not notice many from the American military in Pattaya. Yeah, there are some floating around, and they stand out like a sore thumb, but there really were not as many as expected. I had heard a rumour that they
may not be there in great numbers due to a change in the policy of the American military forces which prevented them from liaising with hookers. I put this to a friend with contacts within the American military. He responded that this was something
they were throwing around about a year ago. Speaking to a military lawyer friend, the answer is NO, it is not a court martial offence HOWEVER that means that it is not an official offence under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which
governs all US service members uniformly. That does not prevent local commanders from prohibiting such practices within their particular units. This would include the possibility that the Joint Task Force Commander for Cobra Gold, or a subordinate
commander underneath him, could possibly issue an independent order for the troops directly under his cognizance, that soliciting a prostitute is officially prohibited. Then if one of the sailors or marines on Cobra Gold is caught soliciting a
prostitute, he would be prosecuted for "disobedience of a lawful order", but not for solicitation of a prostitute. He was unable to advise whether such an order has gone into place for this Cobra Gold exercise, but tends to doubt it.

It used to be in Pattaya that there was a similar number of Brits to Germans, perhaps slightly more Brits. But these days the Germans seem to be hiding and there must be at least 5 times as many Brits as Germans in Pattaya. What happened to all of the
Germans?

I had to laugh at the telephone bill that the mother in law gets every month. All of the long distance calls are listed in English. The mother in law can't speak English, let alone read it – and this is not a club to which she is an exclusive member
– most in Isaan aged 40+ would be the same. One has to wonder why the TOT sends out invoices like this, and not in Thai?

The main road from Bangkok up to Isaan used to be a nightmare in parts, but I notice on my most recent journey up there that it is being widened to three lanes in some of the sections where one is slowed down and this should really help reduce delays.

For the doubters who refuse to believe that the working girls of Thailand do not often have a Thai boy in the shadows, here are a couple of places to check out just what is going on. In Bangkok, park yourself in Big Dogs and watch the number of girls
who get dropped off by their boyfriend or husband on a motorbike right outside the main entrance. In fact this very week, a friend was in Big Dogs and observed one girl being dropped off by her Thai fella in a brand new Honda resplendent with
its red plates (which in Thailand denotes a new vehicle registration). Needless to say, a foolish farang paid for that! In Pattaya, on the second road directly up from Walking Street and on Pattaya Tai Road near Second road, observe the large
number of working girls who meet their Thai guy for a bowl of gooey dieow (noodle soup) late at night, before hitting the sack.

Very strong rumours have it that some popular dance contests will return…

If you haven't been reading the local press, you may be oblivious to the fact that water supplies in Chonburi, and thus Pattaya, are awfully low. I noticed the water coming out of the tap at the hotel where I stayed in Pattaya this week had a definite
yellow / brown tinge to it. Be careful down there. This was one of the few times in my life where I didn't brush my teeth using tap water. Whether this is a Pattaya wide issue or specific to the hotel I was staying at, I do not know, but
in the past the water there has been fine.

Some farangs see the Japanese as the bane of Bangkok's naughty nightlife industry. Paying ridiculously high amounts of money, the girls are attracted to them in much the same way as flies are attracted to shit. But there may be yet another threat
on the horizon. The Chinese have been visiting Thailand for quite a while now, usually as part of tour groups, but what is going to happen when some of these Chinese men start travelling to Thailand alone? When China wakes up and seriously large
numbers of Chinese men start coming to Thailand, will the farang men be squeezed out of the bars all together?

Quote of the week comes from the Mrs. "Thai TV is such a joke. How can they expect Thai people to have any brains when they serve up this sxxt."

If you hadn't figured it out, one of the main newsreaders on Metropolis FM is a New Zealander. Whenever it comes to the sports news, he almost always includes New Zealand in some way or other, be it rugby, cricket, or even Tiger Woods' caddy
(who is a Kiwi – and reportedly NZ's highest paid sportsman too). Good for us Kiwis, but less so for almost everyone else.

Tony's, in Pattaya, was apparently closed down for a month for breaking one or other regulation. I'm guessing that this came about when Bangkok police were down checking up on things in Pattaya a bit over a week ago. Tony's is a funny place
and while many people seem to like it, I have never been a fan. High pressure to buy this, that and everything else combined with highly misleading advertising make it a place I never ever go to. But what is unusual is that they are now open again.
Deep pockets?

Steve, of Steve's Bar and Restaurant, in Udon Thani, sold the restaurant and started a bar called the Horseshoe Bar which they also sold, thinking they were going into the guesthouse business but they were let down on the property. They then decided
to start another restaurant and beer garden, not far from Big C just outside the ring road of Udon. The new venue is called Stevesudon Restaurant and Beer Garden and they are also doing car rental, taxis and meal delivery. From what I gather,
Udon has more farang bars than any other place in Isaan.

Ask the Sticks

Mrs. Stick is here to answer questions surrounding anything that confuses you in Thailand, particularly issues of the heart. Please note that for general bargirl related questions, Mr. Stick might answer them. It has to be said that Mrs. Stick is not your stereotypical Thai woman. She is not Buddhist and she is not shy to criticise things about her own country and culture, although having said that, she remains proud to be Thai. Mr. Stick will try and answer the questions which Mrs. Stick is not so sure about. Just one thing to consider. Mrs. Stick is a middle class woman from a middle class background and with all due respect to her, Thai people in one class do not always know what is going on in another class. She'll do her best to answer all questions but remember, she'll be looking at it from a middle class point of view! This week's questions are both tough and the Mrs. and I talked at length to get answers she was satisfied with. We discussed the issues in Thai, I translated the answers to English and then she read them and made a lot of changes until she was somewhat happy with how they read.

Question 1: A recent article in the Bangkok Post talks about how a Thai family sits around and casually talks about lying in a business situation brings up an interesting question. Do Thai people EVER talk about how they lie, how often that they lie,
how lying saves face, or how sometimes people really get hurt when others lie all of the time, or how it shows that someone has no personal integrity when someone does that all of the time? And do they talk about how when Thai people lie, that
it makes Westerners think that the Thai culture and people are despicable (I do not mean to be harsh like that, Mrs. Stick, but I want you to know that MOST Westerners DO think of that word when it comes to Thai dishonesty)? Because we view that
as a serious character flaw in their personality. And do Thai people ever feel bad when they directly lie to someone. I know that Westerners usually do and they feel guilt and remorse quite often. Basically, I want to know if Thai people ever
feel bad about lying and deceiving each other all of the time?

Mrs. Stick says: I guess it depends on the situation and the people so I will first try and answer this for myself. If personally, yes I do feel guilty, even about small lies. However, I believe that almost everyone has a mask that they wear in certain situations. Take Mr. Stick for example, he told his boss he would be in NZ for much longer than he was, so she would not call him and ask him to go to work during his holidays. He feels no guilt about that lie. I think this is a difficult question to answer without a specific situation. I know in the situation of farangs meeting unsuitable women and the lies that ensue, it is what I call a 'false situation' – she says she loves him but she doesn't and is only doing it for money so a situation like this will be full of lies. She would not feel any guilt at all. For what it's worth, I know from my husband that many farangs in Thailand get fed up with this in Thailand and get fed up with Thai people because of it. Well, sometimes it goes the other way. I work with a farang guy who is hopeless, lazy and gets paid much more than me. So while some things may piss you off about us, there are things about you that piss us off too! I do not want you to just accept the bad things about Thailand. Yes, I know the lies exist. All I say is to try and understand the whole big picture as there are things that contribute to it. And in life you have to remember that some people are doing what they do for money, and that might influence them to lie. From my experience, there is bullshit everywhere. You just have to learn to live with it and if you cannot, you have to make a decision… If you live "wisely", you can largely overcome it. So many of these problems, in my opinion, come from people of hugely different classes mixing. I married my husband and I never thought of him as farang – just as someone similar to me, from a similar class (sorry, I hate to use that word, but it is relevant here) and with similar education . If you hang out, work with and spend time with decent people from a similar background, you will all understand each other so much better and lies and dishonesty will be much less of an issue. This is a really hard question so I am sorry if this does not answer your question well.

Question 2: Having lived in Thailand for some years and now Africa for some also I am well versed with Thai peoples racism and xenophobia particularly against the so called "con dum". What I never did understand is where do these feelings originate
from? Do they apply to all Africans or is it convenient to use the term "Africans" because Thais have such limited knowledge of geography and genealogy outside of their own country? Africa is, after all, a big place so its a broad brush
with which to discriminate against a very wide range of peoples and cultures. Aren’t Thais able to sympathise with this type of discrimination, no doubt a good number of Thais must have either experienced similar discrimination at home
(coming from Isaan) or perhaps overseas. Would it surprise you to know that in Africa, Asian people are generally considered not a good choice for partner due to their frail physiques and reserved attitudes. Not wanting to sound a pun but doesn’t
this sort of discrimination really show Thailand to be the one in the dark ages.

Mrs. Stick says: Thailand is less developed than farang countries and attitudes are less developed too. Some Thai people are shallow, I'll admit, but they are generally not that serious when they make negative comments. When they do say something negative, they may not mean what they say 100% and they may simply not be sophisticated enough to hide or conceal their feelings inside. Farangs are better at suppressing things, in my eyes. Farangs tend to have stronger feelings about many issues whereas most Thais don't. We tend not to have really strong feelings on many issues, even some controversial ones. Deep down, many Thai people do not really understand the situation and while they may say something, they may not really mean it. Thai people just do not have the same strong feelings as farangs – on a range of issues. For what its worth, many Thai people look at farangs as hating, or at least looking down on Asians and black people and from some of the farangs I have met, I know this is true for some. Like you say, Thai people do not have the same knowledge of the world as farangs, this is true, and some things that are said may not always be comments of the well-informed. I do find it hugely hypocritical though that you (presuming you are white) ask such a question because if we look at history, it is the white people who have used black people as slaves and treated them horribly, in a way Thailand never has.

On any of the major Thailand discussion forums the various problems that one experiences in an apartment / condo are discussed and they inevitably concern problems with deposits being kept in the cases of rented places or construction noise nearby in
the case of places which have been bought and where the owner felt that they could not move as easily as if they rented. On a Thai discussion forum, the major problem was almost universal. Ghosts! I tell you, farangs and Thais are so different!

Your Bangkok commentator,

Stick