My first trip to Pattaya

[snotface]

I made my first trip to Thailand, Spartacus Guide at the ready, in 1989, November I think. Five days in Bangkok followed by ten in Pattaya. In Pattaya I stayed at the splendid Royal Cliff hotel, for no other reason than that it was the only accommodation on offer in the colour brochure at the travel agent's back in England. On arrival I was informed that my standard room had been overbooked but my mood quickly improved when I was further informed that I was to be placed instead, at no extra charge, in what was referred to as a honeymoon suite. It was actually one spacious well-appointed room with a four-poster bed, attached all-marble bathroom, large balcony overlooking the sea and little perks like a bowl of fruit topped up daily. I did my best to honour the spirit of the place, though with a slight break with tradition in that my 'bride' changed almost nightly.

I took lots of photos on that first trip and have one of a very handsome young man leaning back on a couch in my room, legs outstretched, giving me a wistful look. He probably assumed that he'd landed himself a millionaire. In fact I'd had to skimp and save in order to be able to afford the trip.

The bars I recall visiting in the then-much-less-glitzy Boystown area were Boys, Boys, Boys ('Boys' not yet the snazzier 'Boyz' I think), Cockpit, Why Not and Gentlemen's Club. The first of these was the main attraction of course and was packed every night. Lots of boys, none of them superannuated and quite a few of them twinks, circulated on a central stage. I offed a very sexy guy (and others on subsequent trips until the bar gradually transformed itself into my idea of a rip-off joint). The tendency of boys back then to approach a customer uninvited, often several at a time, is nostalgically remembered by some farangs, though I always found it rather intimidating.

Jomtien was a sparsely populated area with much greenery. I recall walking back to the hotel from a restaurant there one evening, stopping every now and then to stare in awe at a sky ablaze with stars – something I've not been able to do for many years now. Jomtien Complex wasn't even a glimmer in a developer's eye and when it did emerge in the mid-'90s it remained an untenanted ghost town for years. Even someone with the skills of Nostradamus would have struggled to predict its current pre-eminence as a centre for gay life.

Jomtien beach, as many will recall, was an unregimented, more primitive, more relaxed place. You weren't packed into rows of seats like sardines. With space to breathe in your deckchair complete with its own separate parasol, you actually felt as if you were at the seaside. Boys everywhere in those pre-mobile, pre-apps days, nearly all of them on the lean side and hardly a chubby one in sight. Their daily impromptu 'cabaret' was where most of the fun was to be had. I should add in the interests of accuracy that there were always a few farangs unconcernedly accompanied by obviously underaged boys. Late afternoon an elephant would plod along the seashore pausing at intervals to accept offerings of bananas.

On my first day there I smeared cheap sun-tan lotion (repackaged cooking oil for all I know) over myself and lay on a towel in full, glorious, ultraviolet radiation-enriched tropical sunlight. After an hour or so, when I began to feel feverish and unwell, it dawned on me that I might have made a bad mistake. Fortunately I was spared the full force of my folly and felt better after a day or two.

I made several trips to North Pattaya to explore the smaller gay scene there. I liked eating at the restaurant run by Dolf Riks, a Dutch-Indonesian artist who was one of the founders of the gay scene in Pattaya. The food was good and his paintings of tropical landscapes lined the walls. I was too shy to start a proper conversation with him. Adjoining his restaurant was Nautilus, the first bar (I think) to have a water tank in which boys swam during the show. As they dived, arched and intertwined, it seemed to my newcomer's eyes like the last word in eroticism.

Adam and Eve (not sure where Eve came into it) was the best-known gay bar in the area and on my first visit I had to try its foam massage as recommended in my now-well-thumbed Spartacus Guide. It was very sensual and arousing but at the same time tickled me both literally and figuratively. As the naked boy slid up and down my body, my arms wrapped round him, I kept thinking of a tube of toothpaste and imagined him shooting over my head if I squeezed too hard.

Off the road to Naklua (another undeveloped area back then) was Homex Inn, in connection with which the Spartacus Guide had some mild warnings of predatory boys. I saw one of my favourite sex shows of all time there. Two boys fucking, the passive one just my type, on the small side, cute, big-eyed face; they were clearly turned on by each other. It ended with the active partner withdrawing and cumming. How many sex shows have I seen since, their ritual acrobatics and girlie shrieks usually turning me right off sex for the duration.

On my second-to-last night I went back to Adam and Eve and was very attracted to a young gogo dancer gyrating sinuously on stage. That was the norm back then, not the lazy, bored foot shuffle that we're used to now. Unfortunately, my skin had started to peel (and itch like crazy) as a result of my frying-sausage imitation on Jomtien beach and I was feeling a bit self-conscious about that. While I ummed and ahhed, a silver-haired, tanned, gold-chained senior citizen exuding wealth and poise (goddamn him) called him over and they soon looked delighted to be in each other's company. I returned the following night, but no sign of the boy. Ever since I've occasionally wondered what would have happened if I'd acted more decisively. An exercise in futility of course, but in a town where initiating a sexual encounter is rarely more than a nod, a smile or a beckoning hand away, I find it's the ones who got away who tend to kick my fantasies into overdrive.

I left Pattaya at the end of that first trip with two powerful and conflicting emotions. On the one hand I hated its ugly, sleazy, dispiriting appearance. On the other hand, the easy, cheap availability of handsome, friendly young men was wildly exciting to me. That motive has predominated over the years, as evidenced by the fact that I now live in Pattaya, but the ambivalence is always there in the background, causing me some unease.

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