Back in the 1990s I was in Bangkok s Patpong gogo zone. I was standing at the bar and heard a younger man order a beer.
"Are you from Maine?"
"Lewiston."
"Falmouth Foresides. We must be the largest gathering of Maine people in Asia."
We clinked beers and he shook his head, saying, "Those two ovah theah are coming Bangur."
We joined them and everything was Chowdah and Wicked Lobstah.
ps I speak all languages,; French, German, Thai, Malay, and English with a Maine Accent.
Written Apr 1, 2019 Most tourists to Thailand have wandered through Patpong, but the old sex entrepot has been tamed by time, but even twenty years ago other than the sex shows on the second floors there was never too much sleaze of the soi. Mostly straight-forward go-go bars and beer halls with the usual barfine and 'love you long time' lines.
Ho-hum.
Massage parlors. Girls with numbers washing you with their bodies. Very sensual, but how wicked could a place be when you're being washed clean for an hour.
But back in the 90s Bangkok had dives. Bars your mother prayed you would never enter. Booze halls your father never visited. Den of iniquity you don't write home and brag, "Gee, you should have seen where I spent Christmas."
My first dive in Bangkok was Kenny's Bar off Soi Duplei.
Kenny’s purported to be a bar/restaurant. Walking by you wouldn’t think it was anything evil judging from the daytime bunch of losers searching for the chance of sex or drugs or whatever comes there way. There was even a little gambling going on and Kenny was always trying to get you to go with his girlsor him or the three of them, but in the end he was a family man and sadly went off to the UK with a lover. Now his cousin Fat Pat maintains the same level of depravity.
The next three were godless haunts with no socially redeemable values.
If you even know of these places you have already sold your soul to the Devil.
Congratulations.
Eden Club off Sukhumvit.
You walked into the bar.
The manager, a weedy frog, said, "The Eden is not for drinking. It is for fucking."
The Frenchman clapped his hands like the Marquis de Sade. The girls separated into two groups. Michel, that’s his name, explained, “The girls on the right are 2 hole. The girls on the left 3. Do you need me to explain?"
If you hit the Eden right then you can choose two princesses, but if you show up with a friend, then you fight over the pickings.
And let's face it going to a place like the Eden is no fun unless you can brag about your exploits to your friend afterwards.
3-holers were understandably not as pretty as 2-holers.
But they were good to mix and match.
The girls will do anything to each other for an hour; dildo, 69, XXX movies, but bring your party hat because the Eden costs about 3500 for an hour and the clock started ticking from the time you leave the bar. So no lingering on the stairs.
If you were stuck for ideas, the girls will provide inspiration.
The owner, Michel, the garlic eater, promised 'satisfaction guaranteed or your money back'.
Which was almost impossible after you've been satisfied better than an Ismaeli Asāsiyyeen who are promised raisins and not seventy-virgins in heaven or Jannah.
The Eden was a fine place to walk out feeling like you need to confess your soul, but it was far from damnation. That honor was accorded two legendary Bangkok establishments.
It's 2am. everything is shut. You're still up for hell.
Damn Satan. I'll take his best shot.
For real sleaze you need some place when you mention its name, friends scrunched their eyes and say, "You're not seriously thinking about going there."
The Thermae Coffee House commotes die-hard devotion to a life of sin.
Entering the bar required courage. Farangs descended into a firetrap populated by the possibly wildest girls in Bangkok. Their fun began way after where yours ended.
Thermae was not for the casual tourist as the male clientele was better suited for a police line-up in any country in the world; dealers, thieves, scammers, drunks, losers, perverts as nauseum.
If pets resembled their owners, then these guys own rats, snakes, and weasels.
In short the Thermae was a Disneyworld funhouse for deviants.
The girls could be scary. Ugly enough to make a train take a dirt road or else scary in the sense that you never knew what you were getting into; fight with an ex-, STD, psycho burn-out at your hotel, possible jumpers.
But that was the price of admission to the most depraved place in town.
The Thermae was sin and you know you’re a bad person sitting there.
Plus it was almost impossible to get its smell off you.
At the reception of your hotel the staff would take a sniff.
'Eau de thermae'.
Their esteem dropped to the level of a street dog, especially when your date from the bar entered after you. Cheap slutty and drunk. Miss Dok Thong 2006. The next morning the staff checked your room for possible theft of towels. A post Thermae ritual.
GRACE BAR was a dark star of depravity, which even scared the infamous Stickman.
Despite numerous edicts on early closure of bars in Bangkok, the Grace strove to uphold its myth. The girls were beasts and the men were lovers of beasts. No one seemed to bathe or change their clothing. Some smelled like they might have died in the past 2-3 days.
Everyone at the bar had inhaled enough second-hand smoke to get cancer and their life expectancy was under constant threat from alcoholism and drugs. The males were drop-outs from the Osman Bin Laden suicide camp, Nigerian scam artists, Sikh tailors who haven't washed in a year, and American expats too fucked up to realize they were not in a go-go bar.
The women were beautiful, if you had lost four of your senses. Most of them were old, which was good because the people frequenting the Grace should be banned from procreation. Customers and girls ODed in their chairs. No one tried to revive them, because one deserved a second chance in the Grace. They had wasted those long ago.
The Grace was a hellhole.
Still you had to love these places, because without them Bangkok became one big shopping mall. And we don’t buy anything in those emporiums.
Well, maybe Ginger Crisps at Marks and Spencers.
Thailand was once famous for the sex shows of Pattaya and Patpong. Naked girls were trained to propel banana through the air by the strength of their vagina. Ping-pong balls rocketed across the car via the magic of this female pneumatic gun and razor blades were withdrawn from private parts without any harm to the performers or customers. These 'sex' shows were a true wonder, especially if you weren't trapped in the bar by bouncers looking to hit you up for a 1000 baht bar bill for one beer, which was an old Patpong trick.
The shows died out during the first years of the 21st century thanks to the natural prudishness of Thai authorities. Any attempts to revitalize this genre was stamped out by a police raid and I thought I had seen the last of them, until wandering into a bar off Pattaya's Walking Street with Sam Royalle.
The place catered to overweight Russian couples with deviant sex tastes and even more perverted Hindu bachelors. The show was a step back into the illustrious past of the Last Babylon.
Cigarette smoking and the old razor blades.
The performer sat next to me and asked if I wanted to take her to a hotel for a brief encounter. She was fat, but said she would do anything. I was scared of 'anything' and paid for my beer and gave her a 100 baht tip. After all I am a patron of the arts.
I won't tell you where this bar is, because do-gooders would shut it down and I'd hate to put my 100-baht protege out of work.
After all I'm a patron of Pattaya's art scene.
Back in the early 90s I was drinking Singhas in a Bangkok bar. A go go bar in Patpong. I overheard an accent of a young man ordering a beer and approached the speaker, a 40ish man in a flannel shirt.
"Are you from Bangor?"
"Yeah, what about you?"
"Falmouth Foresides." I had lived the first eight years of my life across from Portland, Maine on Falmouth Foresides back in the 1950s. A long time ago, but Maine was in my blood. "We must be the only two Maine people in Thailand."
"No, those two fellas over there are from Bridgton."
"Garrison, Maine?"
"A-yup."
We linked forces. No one could decipher our accents, which thickened with each beer, until we sounded like lobstermen from the 19th Century. The lights came on. My three Maine friend bar fined their choices and I said, "We mush be the greatest aggregate of Maine natives in Asia."
"Heck, we're probably the greatest number of Mainiacs outside of the State."
I bid them good night and returned to the Malaysia Hotel. I lay on my bed in room 302 and dreamed about the ferry from Portland to Diamond Bar. It was a wicked good ride.
Patpong at sunrise.
Years ago I went to sleep at dawn. Now I wake up at that hour like a new-born baby. Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink. - W. C. Fields
