Month: September 2006

So I decided to start my night out in Lai Kwai Fong (LKF). It is the ‘trendy’ part of town. It encompasses several narrow streets that run up and down steep hills. There are tons of bars/ pubs/ lounges here and the drinking spills out into the streets. Tonight is ladies night and some of the bars have free drinks for the ladies.

The first place that I went was Club 1997. This is in small lounge with a small dance floor and some cool lounge chairs, at street level. It was already about 1:00 am and I was not sure what time the bar would close. I decided I would go in and make my mark immediately. While I was ordering I saw a little Chinese cutie on the other side of the bar. She was with a friend and they did not look like working girls. I went over to them and starting talking to my girl. Her English was pretty good and she said she was a waitress at an Australian restaurant. Her friend was cute, but didn’t speak much English. I thought everyone in HK spoke English, but I guess not. They were drinking free Cosmos, which was good for me.

Continue reading “8 Days in Hong Kong – Part 2a of 3 by morefun”

Ok, so I have to go to Hong Kong for business. I also had to do a visa run, but they don’t coordinate quite right. The fall out is that I will be there for eight days so that I can accomplish both. Hong Kong is a great place, but also a bit expensive. It was one of the first places I went to in Asia a year ago and I am excited to go back.

As with any trip I should discuss my last night in Bangkok and my state of mind going into Hong Kong. I had a lot to do in Bangkok before I left. One of the things I wanted to do before I left was Thai Barbeque (Mu Ga Tao). This is great. It is all you can eat BBQ that you grill at your table. You can have seafood, beef, pork anything really for about 80 Bhat. This is usually a three hour meal and this night was no exception. I tend to like my meat a little medium rare. Sometimes this is tough with Mu Ga Tao as it is dark outside and sometimes you cannot tell if the food is rare, medium or medium rare, but I still went for it anyways. The meal was three hours long and delicious.

Continue reading “8 Days in Hong Kong – Part 1 of 3 by morefun”

It takes time living in Bangkok to experience all the different aspects of dealing with Thai Women. U can read all u want. U can listen to your buddies but at the end of the day sometimes u just have to go through it yourself to really get a grasp of things. Someday when I feel that I am not longer looking over my back I may just tell my own tale of love, co-habitation, and break up but I still won’t walk down a dark soi alone so clearly I am not ready. However I will tell a small tale of what it has been like to try a date a proper Thai girl. How dumb was I…

Continue reading “I played it wrong…”

I have written about it before – the idea that Bangkok is like one big Twilight Zone. Events from last week only further solidify this thinking. Last week after closing up shop a group of us decided to hit Tequila Dragon on Soi 7/1. Currently one of the best after hours options in the central Sukhumvit area. We cruised in to find the place packed and the girl to guy ratio as good as ever to keep the supply and demand pricing at a favorable rate. I did my normal scan of the room to get a sense of what could be in store for me. Little prepared me though for how the night would really play out.

Continue reading “Braces – the ties that bind…”

So it hits 2am (or 1am, or even 1.27am – closing time is consistent only in its inconsistence!), and as the lights go up in the gogo bars, there is but one question on the minds of those still standing. Where now?

See, in a bizarre application of Thai logic, most of the bars around Sukhumvit are all forced to close by 2am. But the ramshackle street bars which reliably appear after midnight on Sukhumvit Road itself, stretching in the main from soi 3 to around soi 15, will be open until dawn.

Apparently the powers that be are none too keen on the late-night crowd drinking in proper indoor bars, with clean bathrooms, trained staff, security and so on. Instead they must sit out on the street in the rough-and-ready pavement-bars, and attend to calls of nature in “soi toilet”. Amazing Thailand, indeed.

But these mobile booze carts, with their garden-furniture tables and chairs, are not just a haven for the “one last beer” farangs. There are a lot of bars in Sukhumvit, and many will contain hordes of “ladies of negotiable affection”, looking for a partner for the evening. Not all of these delightful creatues find success before 2am, and so the gogo gives way to the free-for-all which we fondly refer to as “The Miracle Mile”.

Sit down somewhere between sois 3/1 and 5, order a cheap bottle of beer from a stall, maybe some cheap Thai food, and wait for the gogo girls to come out of Nana Plaza. Some will be on their way home, thankful for a night away from making the beast with two backs that is their bread and butter. Others may be open to offers – hoping for a more comfortable place to sleep than the squalid room they share with their three “sisters”. And others again may just be happily watching the world go by, open to conversation and perhaps more.

There is no bar-fine on the street, and gogo girls can be (but are not always) of a few levels of beauty higher than your average freelancer. Find a weary gogo girl who’s just looking for a nice farang-size double bed for the night, and you may even get a freebie – the holy grail of the Sukhumvit prowler. Just watch out for the ladyboys…

The next day I was hurting, but I wanted to see Singapore. I went to Sentosa Island which is where they are going to put the second casino in Singapore. The first one will go on the east coast near the water. In Sentosa there is a beach called Siloso that is pretty good if you are in the mood for a beach. It is clean, but much more family oriented, nothing like Pattaya, Phuket or Koh Samui.

I took the mass transit back to the hotel. As a side note the mass transit system is very easy to use and affordable. The taxis drivers are also reasonable and honest.

Continue reading “Singapore Part 2 / Party Time by morefun”

There is a downside to every scene and the Thailand “pay for play” scene has one obvious issue that tends to really bug me from time to time. The other night was no exception. We have talked about it before many times on the blog – the tuk-tuk drivers, the massage touts and the people on the fringe(generally men) of the “service” industry and how they are such a pain in the ass and at times a complete nuisance. This was the first time I actually felt threatened by them.

Continue reading “Disgruntled men…”