Pattaya trip report, Dec. 2019

[frequent]

I have friends who no longer need to go to Thailand or even leave their home town, such is the number and variety of Asian students now abroad. Is that reason #6?

[pong]

And about names: the guy you think is BON most likely is called translated from Thai as BALL. Bon is not a Thai name at all (it means UP), ball is and the Thai tendency to be unable to speak a final S after a word als makes any final L being turned into N. Its a high rising tone. And he most likely got it as a teen while he liked to play-
football then of course.

[pong]

And then to BKK: wel, I must have retraced your steps last night-and I dont come there that often. You missed out on the venerable Golden Cock-one of the very, very few bars remaining on the same spot since some 30 yrs. On the other forum was a recent report of people visitng the 3 cheap bars there as 1st timer and also described the renovated surroundings in all 3-long overdue. They must feel the heat of the competition now much closer by and all made new just a month or 2 ago. Ist that the Pullmann in black beside the superhyped-trendy W Hotel, across from the Plaza with Arena massage in it?

[arsenal]

Can I nail the myth that there are fewer boys willing to work in go go bars. There aren't. Go go bars full of customers are full of boys. It's the lack of customers that is the problem. Fill your bar with customers and the boys will come. IE. Winner Boys, Toy Boys and previously Nice Boys.

Please God. Give Nice Boys a second coming and deliver it from closure. Hallowed is its name and let it give us our daily bread. Forgive those who trespass against it for it is the kingdom.
Ahhh. Men.

[Marsilius]

Monday 23 December

[Apologies: in previous posts I referred to my Bangkok hotel as “Pullman 9”. Goodness knows where that came from! It is, in fact, Pullman G. I must have been having a “senior moment”.]

Monday was the first of our two full days in Bangkok. My husband and I, as the dear Queen might say, spent the day pottering around in a mixture of pleasure-seeking and fulfilling some long-overdue domestic requirements (and no, I don’t mean auditioning and recruiting a new poolboy – that’s one of your own fantasies for once!)

Feel free to pass over the next paragraph or two with the merest cursory glance if the details of another person’s domestic life aren’t your cup of tea. In my considered and considerable experience, however, there’s a reason why many homeowners’ first investment is in some net curtains: and while it may not always be that they’re preventing others’ salacious and prying eyes from observing their dalliances with the aforementioned poolboy, there’s usually something that they’d rather others didn’t see. Not so in my trip report – it will be a policy of full disclosure here. There’s another, more practical reason, too, why I’m going to stick in some of the minutiae of daily life – in order to maintain the sheer length of the Bangkok reports. I don’t, you see, wish to convey the impression that the life of a thriving southeast Asia mega-metropolis ought to be entirely subordinated to the daily shenanigans taking place in a vibrant but rather (enjoyably) seedy seaside resort that, 50 years ago, was little more than a fishing village - albeit one with a neatly profitable sideline in providing R&R facilities to US servicemen taking a break from the Vietnam War and who would otherwise have been left twiddling their thumbs (or else, more probably, another more substantial and interesting bodily digit).

Anyway, down to brass tacks – though thankfully nothing quite as mundane as those were on our shopping list. After a very filling breakfast at Pullman G, we decided to clear the cobwebs with a 90 minutes klong trip. That’s a great way to see something of Bangkok’s arse – the rears of those houses that present a proud façade to the world but, in reality, can be quite decrepit on the side that only passing water traffic observes. You also see something of the intimate details of Thai domestic life on the water too. We spend, after all, a great deal of our time chasing arses of quite another sort in Bangkok so it doesn’t seem too out of place to explore the less fragrant urban one too. My husband was, as ever, the consummate bargainer. At the Saphan Thaksin pier, we were first of all quoted a price of 3000 baht for a long-tailed boat to ourselves. He said no. The vendor reduced it to 2000 baht. Husband countered with 1800 baht. Agreed. We waited ten minutes, to then received another offer (I think the vendor was fed up with us glowering at the delay): 300 baht each if we sailed with one other couple. Down from 3000 to 600 – a result! Our driver (or should I say Admiral?) was a good sport who, given his relatively light load, kept up an exciting pace. Only twice were we held up for substantial periods at lock gates – I think that the vendor must have radioed ahead to his cousin, the lock gate operator, so as to pay us back for being cheapskates.

After the klong trip, we headed to the western end of Silom where, for years, we have been patronising a cutlery shop and building up an impressive collection at home of one particular design. Last year we managed to clear the dear old soul out of her chopsticks – but that had produced a sum total of 11. Unfortunately, our quest to find a one armed dinner party guest (he’d presumably have to spear his noodle strands) had drawn a blank, and so it had become imperative, if we are to maintain our position among the social elite of southwest England to obtain that 12th chopstick. We were, however, defeated yet again by the idiosyncrasies of the Thai capitalist model. Ah, you might suppose, the shopkeeper, having sold all the stock last year, will sense it’s an item in some demand and replenish her stock. Of course, she hadn’t! (Even though she actually remembered that the eccentric falang had bought an odd number last year!)

Our second object of the day, if we discount the unsuccessful recruitment of the would-be poolboy, was to look at paintings. We’ve recently had the sitting room redecorated (in Farrow & Ball’s “Bancha” and “Hay”, since you’re all dying to know) and last year had bought in Silom Road a large copy of one of Zhang Xiaogang’s striking Bloodline paintings (they take them off the frame for you, roll them up in a cardboard tube and you then reframe them to your taste back at home). We thought that a second one might look good too, so visited the same art “gallery”, even though, given that more paintings are just stacked on top of each other than are actually hung on the walls, it’s a bit of a plum pudding of a shopping experience. A couple of rather good copies were for sale, so we might go back again to take a second look tomorrow.

After that, we were joined by a friend, quite new to Bangkok, who asked us to guide him back in the direction of the bars where, the previous night, he’d spotted lots of masseurs on the streets touting for trade. It was now, maybe 1.30 pm or so and rather naively, based on our experience of Sodom-by-the-Sea where the massage joints open from late morning (“Handsome maaaan!... You want massaaaage?”), we assumed there’d be no problem. Shows how little we really know Bangkok. Last night the sois had been full of eager hands offering to demonstrate their skills in, no doubt, the most revivifying of places. In the cold (well, 35 degrees C) light of day, however, there now wasn’t even a solitary finger. Of course, you don’t need to tell me that there are dozens of establishments to be found at the drop of a telephone book. I’d always thought, for instance, that the name Hero was a particularly well chosen one for such an establishment, given that – looking at some of the farang passing through its necessarily wide portals – you’d have to be something of a hero to work there. In the absence of carrying the necessary information with us, however, our friend’s quest to locate an on-street masseur proved a sadly abortive one.

After Pullman G’s free late afternoon cocktails and canapes, we took a little nap before setting off for dinner. Our friend is not one to allow the fact that he’s in a fascinatingly exotic environment get in the way of a good piece of meat, so to speak, so our journey involved a very substantial taxi ride – in exceptionally slow traffic – to a Marriott Hotel which boasted a New York Steak House. I have to admit that the steak (an enormous porterhouse, shared with my husband) was one of the best that I have ever eaten. I suppose, though, that we will soon need to start filing such wonderful experiences away in our memory banks if St Greta of Thunberg gets her way and has us all eating seeds and grass as we weave our basketware.

Our lack of preparedness / general knowledge of Bangkok became all too apparent once again when we asked the Marriott staff about getting a taxi back to Patpong and they pointed out that Nana Skytrain station was just a few hundred meters away. The stressful initial taxi ride that had got us there 25 minutes late could easily, it seems, have been avoided in the first place!

At Patpong, we explored two more go-go bars. The first was Dream Boys and the second was Lucky Boys. Dream Boys’s layout was interesting. A small thrust stage allowed three boys at a time to showcase themselves before moving back into the throng of, I’d guess, 20-30 boys on the main platform. The quality of the young men was really high – I’d have been delighted to have virtually any of them scouring the algae off the sides of my pool or, indeed, giving my own personal plumbing a once-over. The audience filled most of the available seats and seemed to enjoy comparing and contrasting (as we were always exhorted to do at A level) the various appendages standing proud and in full view when not actually impaling some benighted (or, more probably, delighted) soul. Our friend selected a young man who seemed remarkably affectionate in public, so I only hope that that promise was fulfilled later in private.

Lucky Boys had even more boys on display – more than 30, I’d have guessed. Their standard routine was cleverly constructed to show each of them off to maximum effect - an admirably executed, if necessarily crude, attempt to emulate the Paris Opera Ballet’s Grand Defile (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ozV8Dw-OQ – your culture fix of the day). It gave an excellent opportunity to see them all and repeatedly up close and, although we didn’t get to see a show in Lucky Boys, the eye candy alone made it a worthwhile visit. It’s all to one’s personal taste, I appreciate, but I did think the Lucky Boys scored even higher in the looks stakes than the Dream Boys.

Once again, we made our way back to Pullman G where we enjoyed yet another enjoyable night’s sleep.

[Marsilius]

And about names: the guy you think is BON most likely is called translated from Thai as BALL. Bon is not a Thai name at all (it means UP), ball is and the Thai tendency to be unable to speak a final S after a word als makes any final L being turned into N. Its a high rising tone. And he most likely got it as a teen while he liked to play-
football then of course.

That's exactly the sort of thing that many of us here won't know, so thank you for enlightening us. I will keep calling him Bon if you don't mind, however, just for the sake of consistency.

[frequent]

That's exactly the sort of thing that many of us here won't know, so thank you for enlightening us. I will keep calling him Bon if you don't mind, however, just for the sake of consistency.

There's a skin clinic chain in Bangkok (branch in Silom for example) whose signs proclaim it to be "Nitipon" in English but the Thai is written as "Nitipol" - นิติพลคลินิก สาขาสีลม transliterates as Niti phl khlinik s̄āk̄hā s̄īlm according to Google Translate. A friend of mine's Thai passport name is also Nithipol but he pronounces it Nithipon

[BOY69]

"Although I have been to the city, many, many times, I have not set down roots there to the extent that I have in Pattaya. I know no characters there, in the sake way as I know them in Pattaya and Jomtien "

I feel the same as you, Pattaya is like a second home for me where I feel more calm and comfortable everything is reachable by walk distance or short drive by Baht bus.Bangkok is too big for me,too much traffic, pollution and crowded.
Lovely report Marsilius enjoyed your excellent writing skills.

[Marsilius]

Ist that the Pullmann in black beside the superhyped-trendy W Hotel, across from the Plaza with Arena massage in it?

I am told that there are two Pullmans in Bangkok and, although when I went out this morning I looked at ours from various perspectives, it didn't seem to tally with your description. If you exit Chong Nonsi BTS and head north up towards Silom Road - and then turn left and head westwards towards the river along Silom Road, our Pullman may be found after a couple of hundred meters or so on the opposite (northern) side of the road. Its address is given as 188 Silom Road.

[Marsilius]

Tuesday 24 December

This, the final full day of my brief visit to Bangkok, was somewhat abbreviated – as this report will also therefore be - by the fact that I was suffering the effects of a very heavy cold. It was brought, I think, from the UK where several people with whom I come into close contact, most notably my husband, had been affected.

The first order of the day, however, was to visit the Silom “art gallery”, i.e. one of those places where talented copyists turn out a copy of the Mona Lisa that’s so convincing that your guests back home will think that you’ve got the original while Paris’s Louvre Museum must perforce be exhibiting merely an insipid copy whose careless forger has unaccountably forgotten to show the enigmatic subject with a spliff gripped firmly between her teeth.

This particular establishment does not have the usual resident artist beavering away at a fake Roy Lichtenstein or Tamara de Lempicka and so might conceivably be mistaken by a (very) naïve tourist as a purveyor of the real thing. You can’t, however, fool me or, more particularly, my thrifty husband who was determined to pay no more than the minimum necessary to acquire a large copy of one of Zhang Xiaogang’s strikigly in-your-face Bloodlines paintings to join the one we bought last year and is now to be found in our sitting room back home.

My husband, as I have already noted, loves striking a bargain. I, on the other hand, like many other westerners, get so embarrassed by the whole negotiating process that I prefer to wander off and listen from a distance while the pecuniary details are hammered out. Even the great Michel Barnier himself could not, I think, have struck a better deal – not with the gallery owner himself, a rather mild man who’d proved relatively easy to beat down in price last year, but with his far tougher wife who’d given him a severe tongue-lashing 12 months ago when she discovered how little he’d got. Even Madame herself was, however, no match for husband who, by a combination of resolute stonewalling and a few minor tactical concessions that allowed his opponent to save a modicum of face, secured the purchase not for the original asking price of 18,000 baht but for just 5,000. Of course, we all know that the gallery will still be making a profit at the lower figure but, as husband forcefully made plain to Madame, it was either 5,000 baht in cash or no Christmas turkey on her table this year.

The excitement of the transaction – along with my heavy cold – forced me to retire to my Pullman G bedroom for the afternoon, but by the evening I was sufficiently recovered to prepare myself for the long-anticipated dinner at the Oriental Hotel’s two-Michelin-starred Le Normandie restaurant. Presumably because of the festive season (ho, ho, ho, young man, have I got a surprise in my sac for you!), its normal a la carte menu had been replaced by a seven-course tasting menu with each stage complemented by a different specially-selected wine. Writing at justified length about the food would require far more space than I have available here, so I will merely report that the whole experience was rather magical. With, however, my resolutely blocked sunuses impairing my senses of both taste and smell, the evening was made memorable less by the food - which, I found in any case, a little on the heavy side - than by (a) a mini concert by an accomplished group of Thai carol singers (not only Silent night but a rousing account of Santa Claus is coming to town of which Phil Spector himself might have been proud) led by a charming young lady who proved a masterly virtuoso on the triangle, (b) a spectacular fireworks display launched from river barges sponsored by The Oriental and its neighbouring Peninsula Hotel, and (c) the final bill (when I tell you that our introductory glasses of champagne came in at 1,600 baht each, you'll get the eye-watering idea, so thank the lord that we saved so much on Bloodlines).

After a trip back to the Pullman to change out of Le Normandie’s required jackets – but not ties – it was off to Patpong to explore the yet unsampled Hotmale go-go bar. There were only about ten boys in the place when we got there, though once again the standard was very high. There were hardly any customers apart from us. We passed quickly on to Lucky Boys, our preferred destination of the night before, where once again the number of boys on stage must have been at least 30. No-one could have failed to find a boy to their taste at Lucky Boys and we enjoyed, for our last evening in Bangkok, the skilful ministrations of one of them - a memorable finale to our side trip to the capital.