Pattaya Parties

Wallet-Loads of Personality: Following on from my comment in the last column explaining why I concentrate more on writing about the dens of the gogo instead of beer bars, a reader sent an email claiming the U Too bar, situated opposite the Alcazar was re-packing-a-cut-lunch show club on Second Road, has a stunning collection of mattress actresses masquerading as serving wenches in straitened circumstances.

He also noted the manager was an extremely personable character. I offer this to other readers who may not have ventured into this establishment as a potential new watering hole of the bar-stool variety. The email simply reinforces my earlier point: there are well over 750 beer bars scattered the length and breadth of Fun Town, compared with 10 percent that number in ogling dens.

It is simply beyond the scope of this columnist to scour the sois and main drags of this oversized village and note ( A ) all the best outside places with stunning or attractive young ladies of dubious virtue and ( B ) become acquainted with every owner/manager of these same places.

I offered up a small number of beer bars whose owners and managers I know reasonably well as examples only, not as set-in-concrete recommendations at the exclusion of all others. When it comes to outdoor recreation establishments, I suggest readers find places in which they feel comfortable and recommend them to their friends and others.

The grapevine in Fun Town is faster than a speeding bullet so any new ‘hot’ place is soon on many peoples’ lips and will attract new customers faster than ants to a picnic.

Music to My Ears: What do the following gogos have in common: Tim, Tahitian Queen, Tahitian Queen II, Club Oasis, and Champion?

I know some people will say that in the case of at least three of the aforementioned it is the bog-standard quality of dancing damsels. I wouldn’t disagree, and yet despite that major negative, they all do extremely well as far as attracting regular customers. Others might suggest a cheap happy hour, and yet almost all the dens of Fun Town offer discounted libations at some point of the day or night.

All of the dens, apart from Club Oasis, have been operating in the Pattaya nightlife mill for more years than many of us care to remember. And there’s no doubt Club Oasis has already become one of the most popular dens in the city in the relatively short time it’s been open. The answer to the question I posed at the start of the paragraph is: good music.

The claim usually put forward by those too lazy to be bothered with actually doing something to improve their place is the gogo huggers can’t dance to anything other than car alarm. When you then look around the stage and point out that at least eight of the 10 or so so-called ‘dancers’ are merely shuffling to the car alarm currently being played anyway, it begs the question as to whether they'd be any worse if the lobotomised DJ was compelled to play some real music.

Let me stress that I would hate to see every den in Fun Town suddenly start playing the same 60s and 70s rock and roll. It’s bad enough sitting near an outside beer bar when the band in the next place decides to do its version of ‘Smoke on the Water’ or ‘Gorky Park’. I know, for example, if I want to hear a raft of tunes from the Bat Out of Hell album by Meatloaf all I need do is make sure I’m sitting in Tim ogling den at around 10:30PM on most nights. I’ve said it before, the music is great in Tim’s but I do think it’s about time the management spent a couple of hundred baht and purchased a few more DVDs to add a little variety to the soundtrack.

One of the reasons I decided to write about the music in the dens, again, is at the request of a couple of regular readers who live in Pattaya and spend their nocturnal hours trawling places in the search for lithe-limbed talent. They tend to stick to a number of dens where they find the music to their taste. While they do move about and check out different venues, if the music is dreadful then they have one drink and go, and will return again maybe a month or two later.

If you think about it, most dancing damsels can spot a tight-fisted expat 2.7 seconds after he walks through the doors of the den, and unless he’s known as a ‘player’, he’ll probably be left alone by all but the most desperate or avaricious of wallet emptiers. So, while he and his mates want to be in the den for a little session of drinking and perving, he is more likely to notice the quality, or otherwise, of the music.

Empirical evidence suggests there is a reasonable number of expats and long-term visitors out there who decide to put a small clutch of dens on their ‘regular’ list because of the music. This means a pretty reasonable amount of regular money is spent in these dens over the course of a year. I’m not suggesting dens start playing Polka and Accordion classics or Dixieland Jazz, but putting a little more thought into the aural part of the sensory stimulation experience in an ogling den might just make a difference between a good night and a great night as far as the jangling of the till is concerned.

Number 19 Dream: One of the more pleasant characters operating a den of the gogo in Fun Town, Chuck Hinkel from Club Boesche (Soi 16, off Walking Street) became a father for the first time -at least as far as he is prepared to admit anyway- when his girlfriend Khun Boom gave birth to a healthy baby boy on 19 October. He has been given the name Jamie. Given the nocturnal nature of the ogling den caper I doubt Chuck is too concerned about sleepless nights.

Got a Whole Lotta Love: The ever-popular Windmill ogling den (Soi Diamond) played Led Zeppelin first hit single ‘Whole Lotta Love’ while the usual activities for which the play palace is well known took place on stage, in this case it looked like the graduating class from the Lickem-on-Toppe and Bottom School of Speaking in Tongues. I’d like to recommend ‘Over, Under, Sideways, Down’ by the Yardbirds as another suitable tune for these gynaecological activities. This den, and its larger cousin around the corner in Soi 15,

Baby Dolls, easily win the friendliest dancers in Fun Town stakes. While there may only be a few gogo shufflers who could be classified as star turns in terms of physical attractiveness, what I and many others like is the friendly banter evident in the dens. Very few customers I’m sure leave either place without having had some kind of inter-action with at least one or more of the den dwellers.

Back to ‘Normal’: Fun Town is clearly busy once again after one of the slowest and quietest low seasons on record. The annual Russian invasion is on and Walking Street is literally becoming Shuffle Street at certain times when the crowds are perambulating. Street-watching seats in the beer bars are always full, but many of the ogling dens are complaining that the greater numbers are not leading to packed houses inside their air-conditioned places. Nonetheless, takings in most of the dens are definitely on the up and I doubt we’ll see any of the joints closing their doors for at least the next five or six months, if at all.

Then there’s the nightly freak show on the pavements. For a long time there’s been a Thai man whose ability to do acrobatics with a soccer ball always attracts an interested crowd, and he probably makes more money in tips than half the beer bars of the city make in profits. The other night I stood and watched a brief but somewhat painful show with a man who had a young girl lying on the ground in a woven wrap attached to his long hair while another woman stood on his shoulders. The man then stood to his full height while balancing the girl on his shoulders and bringing the young girl up off the ground. Didn’t make a blind bit of sense or logic to me unless he is training for some mystical Eastern martial art and figured a bit of high season busking might score him a few extra baht from bemused passers-by.

It seems as if the annual plod morality play, which takes place during the low season months and always results in a few places being closed for contravening the letter of the law, has ended for the time being. Every ogling den is back to ‘normal’ in terms of many dancers caressing the gogo while wearing not much more than a smile and a pair of boots, while the shows involving soap and water are resulting in much cleaner crevices rather than flimsy apparel.

Piece of Pith: Never take life seriously. No one gets out alive anyway.