Bangkok Nights
Warning: Contains adult language and scenes of a not very sexual nature.
A vast blue sky cut through with flecks of white paraded itself over my head as I headed towards Bangkok from the airport. A brilliant sun bleached the immaculate pavements, grass verges stretched and yawned, verdant trees leaned lazily toward each other like neighbours chatting over a garden fence.
As my taxi drew in towards downtown Bangkok, I was surprised by the number of gleaming towers perched upon the horizon, bright and proud like statues lining the road to some ancient state capital.
I yawned. I hadn't slept all night on my flight from Mumbai and that electric fuzz that sweeps around your brain when you're convinced it shouldn't still be light was shorting out my neurones.
The car left the motorway and turned onto Sukhumvit Road in the heart of the city. There were few vehicles here and all were driving in an orderly manner. The streets looked deserted; I wondered for a moment if it was some kind of national holiday. The few people that were around seemed to pace purposely, carefully and oh-so-slowly down the street, as if walking the prow of a ship in high seas.
The tall, elegant structures of glass and cement formed a hollow canyon and enveloped me in shadow.
"Where has the world gone?" spluttered my tired brain. It was if the earth's atmosphere had turned to tree sap, and all of us poor fools plodding slowly through it were gradually being entombed in amber, to be poised forever in six billion moments of mundanity.
Perspective is a funny thing.
Many people who have been to Bangkok may be surprised, even dumbfounded by my description of it. Most say it is a bustling, noisy, energetic city with far too much happening all at once. However, besides being over-tired, I had just spent nine weeks in one of the most populous countries in the world, where walking five abreast is the norm, where traffic jiggles and bounces around like a badly animated cartoon, where you are surrounded by the constant noise of car horns tooting and people jabbering. In comparison, Bangkok was not just sedate, it was almost tomb-like.
I had splashed out on a nice hotel in the city centre called the President Palace as I fancied a bit of luxury over the Christmas period. As soon as I had dumped my gear, as usual I was out on the streets having a gander at this strange new world I had found myself in. The hotel was on Soi 11 - a Soi being a lane leading from a main road.
I reached the junction at Sukhumvit Road and as if from nowhere, an Indian man appeared directly in front of me. I thought I was having some kind of flashback.
"Excuse me sir, it's your lucky day!" he chanted excitedly.
"No it isn't" I scowled and slid around him. My spiv dodging skills acquired in India were by now well honed. Even as I left him behind though, I thought I should have said to him in Churchillian fashion, "Sir, it may be my lucky day, but sadly it is not yours."
I found a supermarket - I'd forgotten all about these things - and stocked up on fresh fruit, salad, fresh bread, and wonder of wonders, Marmite! It's funny how you miss the simple things when you've been deprived of them. I also found a pharmacy and bought the secret elixir that seems to cure all my ills - Pepto Bismol. I'd been suffering from diarrhoea for the last eight days and I was starting to feel like a human colander. Within a day, this stuff had fixed up my insides. When I inevitably succumb to some fatal disease I'll just chug some of this stuff to cure it.
After a refreshing sleep, I wandered back onto Sukhumvit and walked around, eyeing the many market stalls crushed onto either side of the pavement. You can buy just about anything here as long as it is fake - watches, handbags, wallets, T-shirts and underpants - all mimicking famous designer names. There was also a vast selection of hooky DVDs ranging from poor cams of the latest movies to top quality copies of TV shows and a range of random porn flicks.
I hopped on the Skytrain - a modern elevated railway that runs through the heart of Bangkok. It was clean, fast, had a regular service and was beautifully air conditioned. I got off at the MBK Centre a large shopping complex that has many small independent traders. The fourth floor is packed with phone accessories and I picked up some Bluetooth earphones as a Christmas present for myself.
Outside, a boxing ring had been set up for a number of Thai boxing bouts between some local contenders. The fighting didn't look too convincing. It was a free event so the fighters were no doubt saving themselves for a money match.
As I headed back to the hotel, looking around at the sleek new cars and the sweeping overpasses, the people loaded with shopping bags and weighed down with jewellery, I thought how modern this city was and how much it must have changed even in the last ten years. Tourism has brought a boom to Thailand, and with favourable exchange rates and Western Multinationals moving in to take advantage of the new money in the country, Thailand, like the rest of Asia, is on the rise.
That night, I was determined to head out and investigate the red light district around Nana Plaza as I had discovered it wasn't too far away. I've always found run down, seedy places to be far more interesting than the new and opulent. I grew up in a New Town, so I'm used to the safe but mundane.
I threw on my glad rags and found my way to a small bar at the end of Soi 11 called Cheap Charlies. And cheap it was. Effectively a bar leaning onto an open road where you stand and drink, Cheap Charlies isn't going to win any awards for decor. However, the beer is cheap and the place has bags of character.
I started chatting to some British boys in their early twenties who were just finishing up their first tour of Thailand and were full of that all knowing world weariness that only youth can afford.
Inevitably, my bladder filled and I headed for the toilet - a frail wooden outhouse by the side of the road. Inside the stinking shack, I heard some scuffling near my feet. I looked down to see a furry friend had decided to pay me a visit - a rather large rat. Now I like rats, and this beauty looked terrified of me, but when it saw that I wasn't moving (for fear of spraying my feet in the cramped conditions) it just scuttled under some pipes and disappeared through a hole in the wall.
I returned to the lads, got some recommendations for their favourite places to visit in Thailand and disappeared into the night.
It was three days before Christmas and I still wasn't in the mood for festivities. It was 30 degrees at night and sweat was running down my legs. However as I approached Nana Plaza, the local red light district, I heard a ho, ho, ho. Three of them were walking down the street, chatting.
I ducked into a large bar called "Gulliver's Travels" that looked half empty. Various older "farang" (Thai for Westerner) were sitting around with much younger girls glued to their sides. Another bunch of girls were playing pool. They were very good at it too, suggesting they spent a lot of time in bars. I chugged my beer and moved on.
I walked down Soi 4. This was it. The red light district. I braced myself. I found another bar and dived in. It was pretty full with what appeared to be karaoke on the stage. This wasn't so bad, I thought to myself as I tucked into my fourth beer. Not nearly as seedy as I thought.
I looked around. The bar was populated with couples - Western men, Asian girls. I got looks of surprise from the men, as if wondering why I hadn't hooked up with someone yet. It's funny how expectations of behaviour vary according to your geography.
I ordered another beer and noticed that the awful karaoke was actually a band playing mindless pop tunes with vacuous lyrics such as, "I love you and you love me, will you marry me?" Apologies to anyone who used that sentence as a proposal.
I was getting increasingly drunk. A middle aged woman walked into the bar, screwed up her face, turned around and then left. A large glitter ball that had remained static for most of the evening now started to slowly rotate, spilling beams of light over the faces of the disappointed, the lost or the just damn strange. By now I was on my sixth pint and I was convinced this wasn't a red light bar. It was just too much like any European club but with a large proportion of Asian girls.
My tolerance for alcohol was at an all time low. I hadn't drunk this many beers in the last four months and I was starting to feel a little blurred around the edges. Then something happened that made me sit up with a clear head and bright eyes. No, I wasn't being genitally manipulated by some Thai girl; the band had started playing "Killing in the Name", and what a great cover it was too. Clearly, they were talented musicians - they had just been playing too much rubbish all night. I got up and made it to the dance floor, stomping around manically and screaming the chorus when it came along - so much so that the singer beckoned me over for the final chorus and handed me the mike, where I happily screamed the final line over and over, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" Three days later I was surprised and thrilled to find out it had been the Christmas number one in the UK.
I staggered down the road after chucking out time and started chatting to some Brits who were standing by the corner of the main road. A Thai woman was getting drinks from somewhere and bringing them over to us. I was just happy to still be drinking. As we were talking about Bangkok and our first impressions of it, I was approached by a Thai girl in her mid twenties. I was giddy with the cooking lager by this stage and don't remember a lot of what she said, but I do remember she was very restrained and started relaying some kind of sad story to me. I suddenly realised where I was, that I was more drunk than I should be and it was time to go home.
As I was weaving down the road, two more girls approached me and tried to convince me that I should take them both back to my hotel. They were very pushy and aggressive with their proposal, but softened it all with smiles and laughter which deeply confused me.
I made my excuses and left.
The following day I had a nice long break from the world, watching telly and reading. I noticed that the Thais seem to love sad songs. I watched a few music videos - each portraying tragedies more graphic than the last, culminating in a video for a slow, melancholic song drenched with minor chords in which a tearful girl watches over a boy in a coma who then wakes and chases her from the hospital only to see her hit by a car. I was laughing my arse off.
I decided to upgrade my room for Christmas and as I stood at reception paying for the extra amount, one of the young interns stood at the counter, hands clasped together, smiling and bowing every time I spoke. She was so cute that I wanted to put her in a cage and keep her as a pet, although unfortunately there are laws preventing that, even in Thailand.
I went for a walk and up at the intersection, there was my Indian mate again. He was a Sikh and his job obviously wasn't sitting well with him as he almost had sorrow in his eyes as he spoke to me. Sikh's have a fearsome reputation for honesty, so perhaps that's what was making him uneasy.
"Hello sir, today is your lucky day..." I tried to remember the undelivered response from two days ago, but I got confused and just waved him away with a stern, "No."
Christmas Eve, then, and no one to visit. I'd done some internet research and found out that although I had been near the red light district I hadn't actually been in the thick of it. With that in mind, I dressed as a vagabond and melted into the darkening alleys. This time I found Nana Plaza straight away.
A square surrounded by three stories of bars and clubs with names like Fantasia, G-Spot and Hollywood. Random neon flashes across your face in all possible colours. Transient people enter and leave the square constantly. They often come in as a party of one and leave as two or more. But others arrive too; working girls striding in to start their shift or returning from an earlier job; voyeurs like me just here to observe the human cavalcade of oddities - such as each other.
I sat at the bar in the centre of the square and bought a beer. A couple of girls working the bar eyed me seductively. I ignored them and they left me to it. I watched the streams of people melt and flow through the place, observed their initial hesitance as they stepped across the threshold of the square or the boldness of their movements as their intent became clear. Some had come looking for love and affection, others a quick grope and a cheap fuck. One thing was for sure - if you had money you could easily buy the second and at least the illusion of the first.
The bar girls now started laughing and joking and throwing me glances - trying to draw me in. One came straight up to me and asked where I was from. We started chatting and I bought her a drink. I asked her where she was from. It turns out that she came from a place where most of the professional girls in Bangkok come from, Udon Thani, a relatively poor agricultural area in the North East of Thailand. The girls from this area are slightly darker skinned than their Bangkok counterparts and are looked down upon for being uncultured peasants. Sadly, the TV and billboard adverts for skin whitening cream in Thailand are unremitting.
Bella, as she called herself, was remarkably open about what she did. She told me that a lot of the money she earns goes straight back to her family in Udon Thani. In fact, it is common and accepted there that a girl from a local family might be in the city, "working for a hotel."
As we were chatting, there was an almighty commotion from one of the nearby go-go bars, and a huge crowd formed. I stood up, and since the bar was on a raised platform, I could quite clearly see two of the bar girls going at each other ferociously. Fists were flying, hair was being pulled, red faces and tears were evident. I felt terrible, yet loads of men were standing around laughing. I wanted to jump down and split them up, but there was no way I was getting through that crowd, and to be honest, I would probably have been set upon by the locals for interfering.
After about five minutes or so, the fighting stopped. Only pride had been seriously wounded and the crowd started to disperse. The winner of the fight stomped back into the bar with her nose in the air and the loser stood around crying with nobody to comfort her. I don't know what she had done but I just felt like giving her a hug. However, I was in a red light district and that kind of behaviour could easily be misconstrued. The crying girl wiped away her tears and slunk back into the bar.
Now my curiosity was really piqued. I left Bella and walked down to the go-go bar which the girls had been fighting in front of. It was called Rainbow. I breathed deeply and walked in.
A long bar stretched from where I sat to the wall, mirrors on the floor, mirrors on the ceiling. Older women walked the space in between, making sure I had a full drink. Girls strutted on top of the mirrors. Music played. They shuffled tiredly. It was like watching performing animals in a circus.
I yawned. One of the girls yawned. I yawned again. Three girls yawned. At this rate we would all be asleep in ten minutes.
As they continued to shuffle tiredly across the stage looking as bored as I was, I looked around at the clientele. Nothing unusual; a few Japanese salarymen, older western guys and a few young bloods looking goggle eyed. A mamasan approached and asked me what number I would like. I didn't understand until I looked up at the girls and realised they all had a number pinned to their skimpy costumes. I politely declined.
The music stopped, the girls got down from the stage. Some of them sat with men who had expressed an interest, the rest disappeared into a room in the back where another set of girls emerged, climbed the stage and set off on the one step shuffle all over again.
It was a machine churning out flesh for consumption and short term relationships as inconsequential as the whisper of a lover in a half remembered dream. There was more life to be found in a body bag, more excitement to be had at a Royal Variety Performance and more sexuality to be gained from a mouldy pork pie.
I left the square thinking it was all a bit dull.
The next day was Christmas. I'd spent just about every year with my Mum at Christmas, and as the day dawned, miles from the people I loved, I knew that this day would never be special. Instead of pretending to enjoy it, I did little. I walked the streets of Bangkok, harrying with the local vendors. I stood at the street corner where the Sikh salesman usually accosted me in the vain hope I could use my killer line. I found a local vegetarian cafe that made me an amazing Thai curry for Christmas dinner. Sated, I paced back to the hotel and watched episodes of 24 on some hooky DVDs I had bought.
I could feel a strange sense of ambivalence in me. On one hand, I was in a nice, easy place to live with all the amenities a modern city provides. On the other hand I was bored. My time in India had changed me, and I was in a transitional state.
My friend Anil Nadig had once warned me: once you leave India you will miss it - the vibrancy, the crowds; the sense of being alive. I laughed it off thinking it would never happen, but he was right. Here I was, looking for some kind of thrill and excitement in any way I could find it.
Perspective is a funny thing.
This blog covers the period 20-27th December 2009.
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