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Ropey Old Slapper
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There are dozens of slang words and adjectives to describe them. The first of these colorful phrases that I ever heard was ropey old slapper.
I’m referring to bar girls. But not just any bar girl – we’re talking about the aging bar girl – the one who is (well) past her prime… in fact her daughter is probably working in the bar with her.
Who is she? Why is she still working in the pay-for-play scene? What do customers think of her?
To understand these women, I think you need to have some idea why a Thai woman becomes a bar girl in the first place. The answers may vary, but usually not much.
Bar girls in Ferang areas come from the Northeast of Thailand, which is a region known as Issaan. It is generally conceded to be the poorest section of Thailand. Farmers in Issaan generally have a Laoation ethnic heritage, and are likely to speak the Lao language, or a regional dialect that is a mix of Lao and Thai that the bar girls simply call “Issaan language”.
In general, this region is full of people who have darker skin, speak a regional dialect, and see themselves more as Laoations than as Thais. In Issaan, there are millions of them. If they venture to Bangkok or other parts of Thailand, the way they look and talk marks them out as clearly as an Appalachian hillbilly roaming the streets of New York City.
They are looked down on as second-class (or third class) citizens. Thailand is a very class-conscious society, and Issaan farmers are very much near the bottom of the social structure.
You’d think that people from Issaan would simply stay in Issaan where they can live comfortably among their own kind. I suspect that’s exactly what they’d like to do. But subsistence farming in Thailand is a hard life. I’m no expert, but we’re talking about living in a wooden house with a thatch roof, raised up on bamboo or wood ‘stilts’ to keep the house above the flood waters in the rainy season. Probably no indoor plumbing. Farmers plow the fields – not with a tractor – but by yoking a plow to the back of a buffalo.
Thai society teaches that young people, as they become adults, should take care of their aging parents. This is a deep-rooted cultural precept akin to freedom of speech in America, or the concept of ‘mateship’ in Australia. Everyone accepts it, and practices it.
Additionally, Thai culture places an extra burden on women to insure the comfort of her parents and family.
Imagine the scene… you have a 20 year old farm girl living with her parents, who are in their 50’s, on a poor farm. In the core of her soul, she knows it is her responsibility to take care of them. She has a 6th grade education, lives on a farm, and there are no real job opportunities for 200 miles.
But, there is Bangkok. Ten million people; factories, shops, and plenty of other opportunities to earn enough money to fulfill her duty to her parents and family. Lots of Issaan girls come to Bangkok and work at 7-11, or the local shirt factory. They’ll work 6 days per week to earn about 6,000 baht (US$200) per month. Some of them stay at those jobs, but some of them move on to the life of a bar girl.
Of course, many girls come straight to the bars on the advice of a friend or older sister. One of the great treats of living in Bangkok is to be introduced to a girl on her first day working in a bar.
But whether they come directly or indirectly, one day the girl arrives at the bar to work. We know she’s poor and poorly educated. She also doesn’t speak English. She may have never been close to a foreigner before. Her first-hand knowledge of the world she is entering will be limited to stories from friends. It’s got to be an intimidating experience. So why do they do it?
Well, the simple answer is money.
Not every girl who works in a bar goes with customers, but most of them do. They willingly go back to the hotel or apartment and have sex, knowing that before they leave, the customer will reward them with a handful of baht.
The least successful young bar girls who go with customers will earn double what she would have been paid in any other job available to her. Beautiful or talented girls can earn extraordinary sums. One of the most amusing pastimes in Thailand is the game of ‘how much does a bar girl earn’? The fact is, no one really knows except the girls themselves. Estimates vary widely but it seems clear that a talented bar girl can earn 50,000 to 100,000 baht per month.
In other words, in a good month, this girl is earning a year of factory wages, and probably as much as her entire family produces on the farm in a year. Understand that these girls don’t usually keep all this cash and spend it on cocaine, designer clothes and champagne. They typically live very simple lives in small single room apartments, keeping only as much money as they need to survive. The extra cash all goes home to the family in Issaan.
They are wildly successful in taking care of their family – one of the most basic requirements of their culture. Generally, in a couple of years, a talented bar girl has purchased a house in town for the family, gotten them a shiny new pickup truck and replaced the aging motorcycle. Mom and dad can relax a little bit.
Even the least successful bar girls manage to send home a few thousand baht per month, maintaining her parents in the lifestyle they have always had.
So far, so good.
But what becomes of this girl as she grows older? As she hits her 40th birthday her parents are likely to be dead or dying. Thais look very young, but Issaan farmers get old quickly. A life in the fields doing back-breaking work under the tropical sun doesn’t lead to a healthy and happy old age.
For the past twenty years she has spent every night of her life in the bars. (Girls normally get two days off per month. Typically, on their days off, they sleep later than usual, then go hang out in the bars with their only friends… the other bar girls). She enjoys the music and the drinking. All of her friends and younger sisters are here. Over the years she may have even developed a fondness for Western men and a disdain for Thai men.
Going home to Issaan means giving up everything that has become her life; living in the house she built with her open legs isn’t very appealing. Quiet days spent chatting idly with the neighbors, trying to stay cool by sitting in the shade, and waiting for the sun to go down so you can go to sleep early doesn’t appeal to a bar girl who has spent her adult life partying until dawn.
So we have a forty year old bar girl, who doesn’t want to go back to her family home. She still has a 6th grade education and no skills. She’s never been married, and probably never will be, unless she can get some aging Westerner to take her on. What does she do?
Effectively, she does nothing. She just continues on, doing the only thing she knows. She shows up at the bar 28 days a month to dance in a bikini or shoot pool with customers.
This is our ‘ropey old slapper’; the aging bar girl with no real skills and nowhere to go.
I read somewhere recently that Bangkok is full of bloggers who are mostly writing about each others’ websites. I think there’s a bit of truth in the comment.
As a general thing, on this website I try to just write about my own thoughts and experiences with only the occasional reference to something interesting in another website. Today, however, I feel the need to quote extensively – not from a blogger – but from many readers leaving their comments on another Bangkok website.
There was a recent blog that talked briefly about the experience of being approached by an older bar girl. This is how the author of the blog described it:
“Ugly go-go dancers home in on me like a cruise missile locked on to an aircraft carrying Osama bin Laden. It has always been this way. Each time I walk through those magic curtains, the sloppy seconds of Thai womanhood descend on me before I can say “Tiger beer”. When I walk into a bar alone and see other solo drinkers happily enjoying the show without being harassed by desperate slappers, I am encouraged that, perhaps just once, I might be allowed the same privilege. Yet within seconds two flabby Isaan hands appear from behind me and begin a neck massage. I turn around to see a middle-aged porker with bad breath and a lascivious sneer who would be better employed selling fish in Udon Thani. This unwanted interloper then shakes my hand, which seems a ludicrously formal gesture in a gogo bar, before giving me the Isaan Inquisition (where you flom?…you have Thai wife?), demanding a lady-drink and then asking me to pay a 600-baht barfine for the dubious privilege of being seen with her in public.”
This, then, is the picture of the slapper that the typical Western customer sees, “A middle-aged porker with bad breath and a lascivious sneer….” I read this particular blog with a smile on my face.
It was a humourous piece, and I took the characterization for what it was – a caricature of the aging bar girl.
What astounded me was the, frankly, vicious comments from readers that followed the blog. To give you an idea of the colourful characterizations that exist to describe these aging ladies of the night, I quickly copied several of the references from the comments that followed the blog. They included:
- fat bird
- minger
- fat, ugly hopers
- droop-assed, Neanderthal, douches
- far more repellent than toilet ladies in the bus stations
- aggressively rude, fat-assed scrag
- ditch-pig
- hosebag bar-turds
Wow! Pretty harsh stuff. But to really appreciate the level of animosity long term Bangkok residents have towards these aging women, you have to read the details. I’d like to say that I spent hours combing the internet to find these references, but unfortunately its not true. These types of comments, describing slappers and giving advice on how to treat them, are easy to find:
“The idea that somehow a slapper in a gogo can lose face is utter bollocks. The best way to get ride on an unwanted sales person is to totally ignore them. Imagine a tele sales person rang u up and you said absolutly nothing on the phone. They would soon hang up. Same in a bar. I just totally ignore anyone I want to. Don’t make eye contact and never shake anyones hand! However standing with your back to the stage is a good one. It shows you have been there/done that etc. It also helps if, like me, you are somewhat aloof and like to look down on people.”
“Just tell them u have no money. Or better yet - just tell them u only have enough money for this beer and then the bus home. they will be off in a shot. elementry…. U lose by even being concerned about a hookers “face”. she isnt concerned about yours. What the hell are you doing?!”
“Ignoring the minger totally is the way to go. You don’t need to be rude, in fact you don’t need to do anything, when the hands come on the neck just scrunch your shoulders up, when she wants to shake hands take off to the toilet or or just smile a little and don’t. basically jsut “blank” her and turn to the cuties and offer a drink.”
“For a moment, just imagine yourself to be a cool Thai punter/monger who’s just been approached by one of these droop-assed, Neanderthal, douches with bad breath and no manners…. Remember, this aggressively rude, fat-assed scrag who has OPTED to stumble around half naked, trolling for drunks, and “leverage” in dimly lit go-go bars, is there to troll dummies and “wai-guys” who are actually fukcing stoopid enough to consider that this ditch-pig even HAS “face” issues. (That’s your “inner Thai monger” talking to you - Listen to him! Tell her you’re paying for service and if she star-fishes you, (nawn-lak = “sleep fuck” . . . there’s even a Thai term for this !) you’ll “purple” her. Entertain her with the story of how you or your friend once grabbed the shoes and purse of a non-performer and tossed them down the hall towards the lift! She knows about all this shit anyway. She’ll respect you. If she doesn’t, you’re just cutting your losses.”
“When a gogo girl I don’t like approaches me or sits next to me I just stare her in the face looking as serious as a heart attack and shake my head “no”, ignoring any question or handshake attempt. I just stare her down without saying a word until she leaves which is usually at most a few seconds.”
“The farang scene is a complete disgrace. these girls are not attractive at all. they are shocking! a thai man wouldnt touch any of them. we embarras oursleves…. People have to stop pandering to ugly women - buying them drinks etc. worring about their “face” etc. It is a complete humiliation they are even presented to us and how they ever think this could fly”
“it is just a disgrace how old, ugly, fat etc. some of the nana birds are. and farang dont just bang them and regret it - they wine and dine them. some even marry them. disgrace.”
Like most men who visit a bar in Bangkok, I prefer to be entertained by young and beautiful women. Like everyone else, I have tactics for getting rid of the fat, ugly and old women, as well as young girls who don’t appeal to me.
What amazed me was the venom apparent in so many of these comments – the feeling that these women were doing something wrong or offensive simply by being old or unattractive.
Perhaps I am sensitive because I am old, fat and unattractive myself. Bangkok appeals to me largely because here, I can spend time with a beautiful 24 year old girl who treats me as if I’m charming and attractive. I realize it’s her job, but it’s also part of the culture. Of course she’d rather be chatting up some 21 year old Adonis, but she never betrays that feeling. She treats me in a way that makes me happy to be with her.
If a stunning university student can treat me like a handsome and entertaining lover, then I imagine I can muster a little compassion for the aging slapper who approaches me in a bar. This is Thailand, where sanuk (fun) should be part of everything — where two of the most commonly uttered phrases are “Don’t be too serious” and “Don’t think too much”.
I wrote in a blog last year that I had stopped enjoying the innocent fun that I used to have in the bars, and had started viewing everything as a business transaction. I realized that it was leaving me jaded and ignoring the very reason why I had come to live here. I want to have fun and enjoy life, and instead I was becoming a crusty old bastard.
That’s the attitude that I see reflected in the comments that I have copied and pasted above; a cynicism that tells me that the authors of these comments probably aren’t having much fun.
That’s okay, as far as it goes – I mean it’s their life… live and let live. But their attitude then causes them to treat the older bar girls like dirt. These girls in return become more surly and aggressive, and teach their younger sisters to be more mercenary; get what you can now, because they aren’t gonna marry you, and when you’re old like me, they aren’t gonna talk to you. In a very real way, then, the actions of these commenters lead to a less enjoyable experience for the rest of us. Their bad attitudes and bad manners are affecting me, however indirectly, by teaching the girls to treat me with contempt.
My advice to them is to loosen up and have some fun. If you can’t enjoy the scene here, then I’d rather you pack up and head back to wherever you came from. Your actions make Thailand a less enjoyable place to be.
It begs a question, however. How do I deal with the ugly, the fat, the old, the infirm and the repulsive bar girls who approach me? Let me answer that by way of example.
Since my self-revelation last year that I was becoming a Cheap Charlie, I have been trying to restore my sense of sanuk. On a recent trip into Suzie Wong’s at Soi Cowboy, I spotted an aging bargirl wearing a jacket over her bikini in my peripheral vision. I knew she had homed in on me as I approached my bar stool. Before I had quite managed to get seated, I had her hands on my neck and her voice in my ear.
I knew this girl was a slapper, but I’m now committed to sanuk, so I reached up, grabbed her wrists, leaned forward and lifted her onto my back. I spun her around, and put her down again. Being Thai, she laughed so I did too. She snuggled up to me and so I put my arm around her. She gave me the Issaan inquisition (where are you from? What’s your name? How long you stay in Thailand? Etc). I kept my answers brief, but not rude. She asked me about buying her a drink or taking her home. I told her that neither of those things would be happening, but that she was a fun girl and I didn’t mind talking to her until it was time for her to ‘go dancing’.
I asked her why she was wearing the jacket, and she said it was because she was cold. I told her I was happy hug her and keep her warm until I found the girl I wanted to really spend time with.
She asked me what kind of girl I liked, so I told her (petite, 38 to 44 kilos, small breasts, nice smile and clear skin). The slapper was now on my side. She asked me to wait a minute, then came back and pointed out two girls who were likely candidates for my description. I shook my head ‘no’ to one, but ‘yes’ to the other.
My slapper brought the girl over, introduced her, then said goodbye. At this point I bought her a drink. Why not?
I was rid of the girl who I wasn’t interested in, and I had the one beside me that I was interested in. It had all been playful and friendly, and it hadn’t involved any angst. I didn’t feel like I had to stare her down, ignore her, insult her or abuse her. Instead I had fun with her.
She may seem out of place in a bar where men come looking for the young, beautiful and sexy girl of their dreams, but – after all – where else can she go?
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One response so far
July 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I agree. I’m afraid I have little patience with the average Bangkok blogger. They just reinforce the stereotype that most western men in Bangkok are sad old gits that don’t have much of a life.
Some of those “slappers” out there that have been friends of mine for over 20 years and they have hearts of gold.