Terms and definitions:
Bargirl: A generic term for Thai ladies who are employed at, or provide adult services from, beer bars, go-go bars, G Clubs, karaoke bars, freelancer outlets, hotel coffee shops, discotheques and night clubs. A bar girl can quiet often run through the whole gamut of the above listed work scenarios during her time in the profession. There are full timers and part timers. Some have normal day time jobs but supplement their incomes by hanging out at freelancer venues, and night clubs, in the evenings and on weekends. The less educated ones – those whose English language skills are basic – tend to stick to the beer bars and go-go bars while those with better language skills tend to move into the freelancer venues.
Bimbo: A hotter looking bargirl – normally from a go-go bar – who’s struck it rich by bagging a wealthy sponsor. A bimbo is a paid, or kept, piece of fluff that generally does nothing except spend the money she receives every month from her sponsor. Bimbo’s are bordering on being completely useless and are only on the payroll, of the rich sponsor, for their sexual skills and appearance. They, quite often, are seen hanging out at night clubs, buying drinks for their gaggle of useless mates, and eyeing up young farangs for a horizontal liaison. Bimbo’s are often bitches and bitches, more often than not, want to be bimbo’s. The common thing linking them is laziness.
Bitches: Can be found right across the full spectrum of adult services industry. Generally, a bitch is a hotter looking bargirl/freelancer/go-go dancer that develops an attitude because of her popularity. Bitches are normally recognizable by their slim figures, silicone boobs and inflated egos. A bitch can be anything from a go-go dancer to a high end freelancer. Bitches are often bimbos but they can also be an educated hi-so type with their own business or well paid employment.
If a Thai whore tells you that she’ll drive you to the airport, in the morning, politely say thanks but no thanks. That thought keeps pulsing through my grey matter as I’m strapped into the shotgun seat and flying down the toll way, at 150 km an hour, while the said whore weaves in and out of the traffic she’s passing, has one hand on the wheel and is happily engaged in conversation, with one of her whore mates, on her Iphone. Dear Buddha, if I actually make it to the departure hall, in one piece, I promise I’ll change my hedonistic ways. The whore is angry; I gave her a roasting because she took forever dragging her lazy butt out of my bed and then wasted another twenty five minutes driving up and down Sukhumvit Road before deciding to throw a u-turn, somewhere near the Ekamai BTS platform, and drive all the way back down to the toll way on-ramp just past Soi four. She’s lost face, for being told off, and was now out to show me that she knows what she’s about. That, of course, she doesn’t really need to prove; she’s got some serious income streams from a string of sponsors around the world. Hearing a whore boasting about the money she’s receiving from a bunch of mug punters overseas, who she doesn’t even like, becomes tiresome after a while. And the phone calls she receives, while lying in my bed, make the whole situation even more of a tragic farce; “Yes teerak, I at home now. I not work bar. Yes, I miss you so much as well.” One tires of this charade, quickly. The spark of lust soon gives way to boredom and, eventually, contempt; on both sides perhaps? The curt dismissal, on our arrival at the airport, certainly reinforces that observation. I juxtapose the frosty farewell, I’ve just been given, with the little scene I experienced with her the second time I bar fined her out of Rainbow Three; in the glow of the morning after she told me that she wanted to be my girlfriend. The tears started to flow when I laughed and said I didn’t do girlfriends from go-go bars any more. But, give them their due, they are great little actresses. I grab my bags, head towards the check in counter and laugh as the whore blasts off down the road; at least I won’t miss my flight to work. Maybe the roasting did the trick after all.
Another three weeks of merriment and mayhem in the City of Angels. Another few notches on the belt and a further hardening of the cynics mind. A relationship is not on the agenda but something’s gotta give. Still, it’s seems such an easy thing to do; go to a freelancer venue, pick up a whore, shag them senseless and then pay them off in the morning. The money seems to be a bit of a waste sometimes but the saving grace is that it’s like a barrier, or a wall; it keeps them at arm’s length. As if to say “thanks for your time, there’s your fee for your services, don’t read anything else into this, goodbye.” The nonsense of all their trickery and deceit becomes monotonous though. They would like to be good, and decent, but they can’t. They’re in the grip of the big pay days now. The days of a less grasping mindset are a thing of the past. Perhaps I need to take a rain check on that as well. Paying for sex, too often, begins to eat into the hard earned cash reserves. There’s gotta be a better way to go. Thai Love Links appears to be a viable option; I’ll check it out when I get back.
I had good intentions of keeping some self discipline about me during the three weeks off but, in a constant stream of hard bodied Thai lovelies, that altruistic plan evaporated even before I’d touched down. Like some kind of all knowing, all Seeing, Eye the ex has a sixth sense when my time offshore is almost complete. I hadn’t seen, or heard, from her for ten weeks but, like some ESP guided radar, she appeared on a chat box I’d forgotten about. With only two days before I was due back in Bangkok her usual line of BS appeared before my eyes on Skype.
“Teerak, when are you come back?”
“Why?”
“Because I want see you and I never lost my feeling for you.”
“Hmmm, I’m not giving you any money.”
“It’s okay, I not want. My boy friend take care of me very good now.”
“What do you want?”
“Just sex, when you come back we go for holiday to Pattaya. I will take you in my new car.”
“New car?”
“Yes, my boy friend buy for me two months ago.”
“I see. Let me think about it. I’ll call you when I get to Bangkok.”
Two days later I was in Pattaya pounding the daylights out of her but, like some addict high on the latest designer drug, it was too good to last; very quickly the usual resentments and animosities began to set in. Never, ever believe a gold digging whore when says she doesn’t want any money. Six days later after an all night booze-athon, at one of Bangkok’s late night venues, she was legless on my doorstep at seven am again. After letting her in, and giving her a bucket to vomit into, I went out, turned off the phone (the one reserved for bitches) and stayed away all day. That seemed to do the trick as I haven’t seen, or heard, from her since. I returned to the apartment, as the sun was setting, to find the vomit still in the bucket. As I poured it down the toilet I considered my options for the coming evening. It was Saturday night but there was a bloody election on and that only meant one thing; no alcohol. Well election, or no election, I was going out and Spasso’s seemed to fit the bill.
I got there at about eleven pm and, as I expected, the crowd was well down. I ordered one of those non-alcoholic, look-alike beers and took up a position overlooking the dance floor. As I looked back towards the bar I met the eyes of a tallish bird staring my way and doing her best to entice a reaction out of me with that look they all have. The look, of course, is something I’ve talked about before. From Bangkok to Baku you see it in the eyes of all these working girls. It’s a look that, at first, seems innately inviting. It’s a look that says “I can be whatever you want me to be and I can tell you whatever you want to hear – including hansum man – for a price.” She, or it, was tall, had a face like a hatchet and a body that was too good to be true. That only meant one thing; a katoey. I glanced away quickly. Eventually, I needed to go for a piss and moved towards the choke point formed by that stupid bloody pillar and the bar. As I squeezed through the crowd the katoey grabbed me by the crutch.
“Why you not like me?” she said as we stood there eye ball to eye ball.
“Why do you think I don’t like you?” I said as I looked down at her hands and high heel shod feet.
“Because I smile at you and you not smile back. You are serious guy?”
“Well you’re a Katoey, aren’t you?” I said expecting an uppercut to the jaw.
“Mai chai, I’m a lady. Here, feel my nom,” she said as she guided my hand up to her well endowed cleavage.
It was soft with not a hint of plastic.
“Hmmm, okay. Sorry about that but you are tall,” I said feeling relieved about the situation.
“My name is Pan and I come from Chiang Mai. My mother is Chinese,” she said feeling proud of herself.
“Hmmm, okay,” I said as I continued admiring her fantastic figure.
“You want me tonight Mr. serious man?” she said giving that look.
“Probably but I gotta go to the hong-nam now,” I said as my bladder felt like it was going to bust.
Pan, even at thirty five, was a looker. One hundred and seventy two centimeters in height, no kids and a models figure, she definitely wasn’t the standard look of a working girl one finds in this town. She’d done some modeling, in her early twenties, and had then gone off to Europe seeking fame and fortune. Unfortunately the flesh pots of Amsterdam were where she ended up ‘working’. It showed, she was a total professional in her trade. The emotional strains though, of her profession, were catching up with her; she was beginning to come to terms with her journey down the path of darkness. I spent a few days with her and got used to her parading around my apartment, for hours on end, completely naked while talking about Buddha and the need for her to go to the temple each morning. It was a situation bordering on lunacy and was only to be surpassed by the next situation bordering on lunacy I was to find myself in.
Pan, overcome by her demons, decided to call it quits and headed back to Chiang Mai. Alone again – but not for long – it was Thursday night and that only meant one thing; Q-bar. Q-bar, the hang out for pretentious, wanna-be, high-so whores. I walked in to find Sabina (where the hell do these girls get their names from?) sitting at the bar on the ground floor. Sabina, the borderline nut job that had chased me down the road in her SUV at three thirty am somewhere over near Rachada, a few weeks ago, was looking her usual self; a stuck-up pretentious bitch. Always good for a challenge I sidled up to her and, in a typical kiwi don’t give a fuck attitude said “hi sexy, how’s the car?”
She turned and looked at me with her nose upturned.
“You jai dum,” she said feigning hurt feelings.
“Look, no hard feelings, let me buy you a drink and we can put it behind us,” I said with a smile about as genuine as a guy telling a bird he’s not going to ejaculate into her mouth.
“Vodka Red Bull,” she blurted out almost instantly to the bartender.
That did the trick; four hours later we were in a horizontal position back at my apartment. The next evening I was given an invitation, by Sabina, to attend a friend’s birthday celebration at the Bed Supper Club. I knew what that meant; I was being lined up for a serious drinks bill for Sabina and her entourage of bitch mates. Eleven pm was the allotted appointment time on her short sms. At precisely eleven I sms’d her and said that I wouldn’t be there until twelve and that she should begin without me. A bit after twelve I elbowed my way through the crowd, gathered around the entrance, to find Sabina, and her group of sycophants, taking center stage in the White Bar. They were gathered around a small table full of Grey Goose and Red Bull bottles. Sabina gave me that look that basically says “you’ve been living here too long and you know too much” and then introduced me to her semi plastered gaggle of mates. They were all white skinned, tall, attractive Bangkok ladies. The bitches interrupted their celebrations, just long enough, to give me a cursory glance and then went back to the serious task of pouring another round of drinks. I took a pull on my beer and stood back to watch the circus unfolding around me. Sabina and one of her tall, white skinned mates were putting on a pseudo lesbian routine for the pack of salivating young studs gathered nearby. The young bucks stood by drooling as Sabina, and her mate, entwined themselves around each other, rubbed up against each other and held hands. After a couple of minutes of this they would break away and move towards one of the young studs, allow a touch (from the salivating young guy) and then quickly move back together to resume their cuddling. It was hilarious; the studs were like dogs sniffing after bitches on heat. Thank fuck I’d moved beyond that stage in my life. A few drinks later, as Sabina was off on a toilet run, her best mate, the one that had been engaged in the pseudo lesbian routine with her, sidled up to me and offered herself for two hundred dollars for the night. Once again I reflected on the fact that, among bitches, there are only rivals for a customer’s cash; friendship is in a world of make believe. I looked at her, laughed and told her to piss off. As an aside it seems as though these up-market types, that frequent Q-Bar and the Bed Supper Club, have moved with the economics of our times; their pricing regimes, these days at least, are often quoted in USD. A few days later I was back at Q-bar again and was hit with the USD pricing regime once more; one of the hotter bitches, there that night, quoted me USD four hundred for the night. When I asked her if that was the “price for the week” I got a rather dirty look in return.
Sabina’s mate must have taken offence to what I’d said in reply to her solicited price because, within two minutes of being back from her toilet run, Sabina was prattling on about knowing that I wanted to shag her mate.
“I know you want she tonight,” said Sabina with a childish sulk on her face.
“How do you know that?”
“My friend tell me you say you pay she song roi rian for go with she tonight.”
I looked at her and laughed.
“I’ve had enough of this bloody nonsense. I’m going” I said finishing my beer and turning to go.
“Where you go?” she said realizing the nights’ earnings was about to walk out the door.
“I don’t know, maybe Mix.”
“I take you”
“No thanks, I still remember what happened last time you gave me a ride. I’ll take a taxi,” I said as I left her standing there stunned that some guy could actually walk away from her.
She was one of the most pretentious bitches I’d ever met. She was so far up herself she even had the audacity to tell me that she was number one in her group. Good riddance I thought as I jumped into the taxi and gave him the address of my condo. I turned off the phone and laughed in the knowledge that Sabina and her useless bunch of mates would probably be heading to Bangkok’s newest late night hangout; MIX. I’d been there once and no intention of going again. With two large bars, in the basement of the Intercontinental Hotel, and only one entry/exit point, the place was a bloody fire trap.
The following morning I got a bizarre message from Sabina; “I not stay in BKK for my birthday, I going to temple for one week.”
I started to wonder what it was about these birds and their affection for temples. A few days later I met another freelancer at Spasso’s who proudly told me that she’d just done a week in a temple. I think I’ve got it worked out now and it’s got nothing to do with the idea of trying to make themselves into a better person; it’s simply a detox program. They go and stay in a temple for a few days and sober up through abstention from alcohol. Feeling refreshed, and renewed, they head straight back to the bar, or night club, as soon as they’re back in town.
Having resided in Thailand for the best part of eighteen years and sampled just about every pay for pleasure scenario one can experience, in this fair land, I’ve come to the overwhelming conclusion that not one, of the thousands of girls plying their trade in the industry, would be worth having as a girlfriend. There will be some out there who take exception to this and, no doubt, will probably bombard me with all kinds of reasons why some bargirls might be reasonable relationship material. I’m sorry, but I won’t be convinced; you’ll be wasting your time. Let me explain: the majority of ladies working in the pay for pleasure industry come from a certain well known area of the country. Trawl up and down Sukhumvit, Walking Street and Soi Bangla and you’ll see that ninety five percent of them are from Isarn. There seems to be a certain mindset about these ladies that predisposes them to selling sex for money. Okay, I know poverty and a lack of education have a lot to do with it but, having had so much first had experience with so many of them, I can honestly conclude that most of them, to put it bluntly, are simply bloody lazy. I suppose the thought of toiling in some shitty factory, or on a building site, is motivation enough for them to keep working in a bar but the general attitude, of pretty much all of them, is that doing as little as possible, for a maximum gain, is an ideal way to go through life. For every single one of them it’s the same M.O. – “I need someone take care of me and my family.” Which, loosely translated, means they want a sucker to provide for them, and their families, into perpetuity. For all of them it’s far simpler to find a provider to leach off than to actually try and use their own honest efforts to make their way in this world.
Even the so called good ones, the ones working in normal jobs, have the same brainwashed concept, of providing for their families, bred into them; a foreigner is seen as some kind of economic salvation. A good girl might offer you a level of honesty you would never expect to see with a bargirl but, having said that, you’re still dealing with the same baseline; “I need someone take care me and my family.” I’m beginning see the merit in something a mate of mine told me not too long ago when it comes to interacting with Thai ladies.
“Just use the north of Bangkok rule when you’re looking for a lady to spend a bit of time with.”
“What’s the north of Bangkok rule?”
“If it comes from north of Bangkok, it’s only for fun and not for anything serious.”
Now I know that may be a bit of a harsh way to look at things and I’m sure that there’s probably an abundance of nice, educated ladies up in Chiang Mai who could prove the above assessment incorrect. However, I have yet to see any of them, from a poor rural background that don’t have the idea in their heads that a farang is a fast track to a financial leg up in life. Go onto any of the internet dating sites and what you’ll find is a never ending supply of ladies from the North east, of the country, who’re looking for “a nice man take care of me.” In their world, “take care” is all about someone providing them with financial support. I have joined a couple of sites recently and listed some strict provisos on my profile.
No single mothers.
No tattoos.
Financially self supporting.
No unemployed ladies or ladies who don’t have a real job.
Minimum educational level: bachelors’ degree.
Not interested if you live outside Bangkok.
Even so, those from the rural north still keep chipping away. One lady, a mother of two, got quite irate and asked me why I “don’t like lady with children.”
“Does the Thai father of the children provide financial support?”
“No, he gone away.”
“Then why do you think a farang must take care of them?”
Before taking up with one of these ladies that’s looking for “someone take care me and my family” you might want to stop and consider what it is, besides that moist spot between their legs, they bring to the table which will improve your position on this planet. Can they actually help you make money or are they just a one way financial drain on you?
One would think that, once they’ve hooked themselves a financial savior, they might show a bit of humility and be eternally grateful for the fact that you’re improving their poverty ridden, shitty little lives. The Isarn mindset doesn’t see it that way though. It’s almost as though they’ve got some pre-ordained right to relieve you of your cash. Within a short space of time they develop attitude. I guess that comes about through a combination of the face that they gain from being able to show everyone that they’ve dragged themselves out of the gutter and the child’s emotional maturity level that most of them have. The idea that they should be grateful, or show some humility, never enters their heads. A couple of nights later I was in a bar, on Soi Eleven, engaged in conversation with one of Isarns finest.
“My boyfriend buy farm for me. He good man. I going to Norway for three month to stay with him” said the boastful little Isarn strumpet that was standing next to me in Oskars.
“I see and does your boyfriend know you are out at the bars every night looking for man?”
“That not your business. It up to me. I need more money.”
As many old Asia hands have discovered through hard earned experience; sponsorship doesn’t work. And the reason it doesn’t work is because, no matter how much you give, it’s never enough. It turns them into greedy, idle little parasites. Not only that, the parasites back at the village become greedy and idle as well.
“And tell me, why does your boyfriend give you money every month?”
“If he want sexy lady he have to pay me money,” she said with a bitch attitude.
“I see, and you think you are sexy do you?” I said looking at her diminutive, dark skinned figure.
“Of course, a lot of farang want me?”
“And Thai motor bike taxi drivers as well,” I said with a bit of a smirk.
She stared back at me with ice in her eyes.
“I not like Thai man,” she said turning her head away.
“Yeah, well there’s a lot of Thai man that don’t like you as well,” I said.
‘How you know?” she said giving me another nasty look.
I laughed.
“A good Thai man with education and money would never be interested in you. Your level, for a Thai man, is a motor bike taxi driver. But that’s okay, I mean, there’s plenty of farang around willing to pay you for your worn out pussy.”
“Fuck you,” she said giving me the bird.
“No thanks, you aint my type,” I said as I waved the staff over to settle the bill.
As I walked out into the light drizzle I thought about the great secret that they desperately don’t want us to know about. The secret which they do their best to hide and obfuscate by telling us that “they don’t like Thai man” or “Thai man no good.” It’s not that they don’t actually want to be with a Thai man; most of them do. It’s just that they know that no decent, self respecting, educated Thai bloke would touch them. That they know they’re second hand goods and they’re never going to receive some ridiculous, over inflated sin sod, for their stretch marked, child bearing torso, from a Thai bloke. But a farang, well, that’s a different story. Bar girls, bimbos and bitches? Take it from me, they’re only for fun.
A well written piece. I really enjoyed reading it. Bitches are bitches the world over, but add poverty with money, and throw in sex, and the mixture is lethal. Great article.