Nightmarch

[PattayaPete 530]

You Show Me Yours and I'll Show You Mine: The Angelwitch shows-r-us den finally opened its doors to the paying public on Thursday night January 5 in the dog-leg Soi 15, off Walking Street. The opening should bring back a lot more trade into Soi 15 and should augur well for two other dens situated next door to Angelwitch - the Fantasia Showcase shows-r-us palace, and the What's Up gogo.

 

Fantasia Showcase runs a series of 20 shows on a rotation basis, each series lasting just over an hour. The core group involved are a collection of lady-boys dressed in the kinds of garish costumes you tend to associate with gender-bending show bars. There are a few dancing damsels who are able to open bottles, smoke cigarettes, blow whistles, and write letters all without the use of their hands. There's also a standard lick-me-where-the-sun-don't-shine show, although the real highlight is probably the fire show - talk about burning the tonsils!

 

Next door, in What's Up, there are no shows, just damsels caressing the chrome poles. Drinks are 89 baht for pretty much everything all night, not unreasonable, and the dancers are a generally friendly bunch who make eye contact, and if you show any interest will wander over for a chat.

 

What's the Question? The Wednesday Quiz League - originally set up as a fun alternative to the Sunday version - now has a new question-master for the 2006 series. This followed a number of acrimonious exchanges over a long period of time between the previous question-master and the two people in charge of answering appeals for the Sunday and Wednesday quizzes. The Wednesday quiz had degenerated to such an extent that in the last round for 2005, a different set of questions were deliberately issued to one team. The really stupid thing about all this is that victory in either the Sunday or Wednesday leagues carries with it no financial prize or any other tangible kudos (for example, a perpetual trophy).

 

Shock and Whore: Lady-drinks and the price thereof have been the subject of a few emails sent to me in recent times, with one correspondent asking if anybody could top what has been his worst experience in this area in all the trips he's made to Fun Town.

 

He writes of being in a beer boozer on Soi 7 (no name given) and sipping away contentedly on a bottle of Chang amber at 'a reasonable 65 baht' when he decided to buy the damsel chatting with him a lady drink. She scampered off and came back with one of those bottles of Breezer thingys and a bill for 160 baht. As he wrote: 'I can buy it for less than that in Newcastle' (the English version, not the Aussie one, although I suspect it's just as cheap Down Under as in the Pommy joint). When he asked the management about the high price they simply answered 'New Price'. Guess which bar just lost a customer?

 

I don't know which bars in Pattaya could lay claim to the most expensive lady drink but I'd love to hear from readers on this issue. To the best of my knowledge, the priciest place is:

 

Kitten Club (Pattayaland Soi 2), where a friend told me he coughed up around 155 baht for a lady drink. He couldn't be sure of the exact amount because he was with another mate and between them they ordered four or five drinks. The drinks were duly registered on a bill but no prices were appended. It was only when they asked for the bill that they were given a total amount, but with no itemized prices.

 

There are places who claim their lady-drinks are a standard price, but if the damsel orders a special libation then the impost jumps significantly. My own empirical research has resulted in many damsels and serving wenches quoting the higher amount for lady drinks, rather than the standard.

 

Let me put this into perspective. Most of the chrome pole palaces on Walking Street - where rents are usually quite steep and wages for dancing maidens equally Everest-like - tend to price their lady drinks between 85 and 100 baht a pop and still most bar owners keep having back problems from sitting on their bulging wallets.

 

Where Are the Punters? If visual evidence from wandering past at various times in recent weeks is anything to go by, I fear many of the Covent Garden beer boozers (Soi 16, off Walking Street) are not doing very well?and this, being high season, is the best it's going to get. The go-go's there now number four with the opening of X-Zone. This is upstairs from Club Boesche and Catz. The latter pair are doing quite well.

 

Club Boesche seems to have found its feet (most of them very wet judging by the indoor Jacuzzi) with a recruitment of classy showgirls, while Catz has also managed to increase the numbers of its damsels stroking chrome poles. They come in all shapes, sizes and skin tones - in other words, you should find something to your taste. Libations, after happy hour, are a reasonable 95 baht and management stages a few shows at regular intervals.

 

X-Zone is a large barn which means it is a difficult place to make look busy or attractive. There's no draught amber (so there goes the early drinkers and many long term ex-pats) and the bottled gear runs between 90 and 100 baht with liver wasters 120 baht. I confess to only having had a quick reconnoitre late one evening, and didn't see anything special to recommend the place. There again, most new places do take time to find their place in the chrome pole pecking order.

 

The Lunatics Are In Charge Of The Asylum: Some time ago one of Walking Street's more prominent go-go bar owners (contact: pattayaleisure@yahoo.com ) approached other chrome pole palace operators by way of a collective letter and suggested a meeting be convened to discuss issues of mutual concern. Primary among them was the escalation in the salaries for dancing maidens, and, specifically, show girls. A secondary issue involved the price of libations.

 

His missive was met with a collective blank. Since then, more than a dozen new palaces of the chrome pole have opened their portals on Walking Street, yet the yearly influx of farmers' daughters swapping a straw hat and the back of a buffalo for a g-string and thigh-high boots has apparently been reduced to a trickle.

 

One of the newest and largest dens in the Walking Street area is offering almost unheard-of salaries for dancers, showgirls, and serving wenches, and this is causing a few rivals to become concerned, not only in relation to the salary level but the very real possibility the damsels will start asking for the kind of outrageous amounts their counterparts are mouthing in Bangkok for a tumble in the mattress.

 

As most operators know, Friday and Saturday night's in Fun Town sees an influx of walking wallets from Bangkok. One of the reasons for this expat exodus from the Big Chilli is that it is still possible to offer the girls hugging the chrome poles in Fun Town a grey and purple note for an evening of organ recitals or mattress dancing. This is still around double what it was before salaries started heading north, but better than the usual three or four grey notes asked by some puss-in-boots princesses of the trade in Bangkok.

 

One bar owner recently suggested to me: 'the show girls should all be issued with diamond tiaras - they think they're superstars.' The overall attitude of a large swathe of showgirls and dancers is such that they apparently believe their defecations are aromatic! They are making so much money from tips and drinks - as well as their salaries that they can't be bothered trying to chat up customers. This in turn leads to an element of disaffection among customers and one can only guess at the long-term effects.

 

It is my firm belief it is in the interests of every go-go bar operator on Walking Street to come to some kind of sensible and workable agreement on salaries for their dancers, thereby reducing the overall overhead for bar owners. Unfortunately, this can only be achieved by an agreement between all operators, not just a few. It is also in their interests in terms of customer satisfaction. Those operators interested in trying to put the lid on salaries should contact Andy at the above-mentioned email address.

 

Apologies to Graham Greene: Every now and again I use this column for a shameless plug, and in this little item I'm going to do it again. About a month or so ago, I released yet another book on the unsuspecting public, entitled Our Man in Pattaya. It's a collection of most of the columns published under that name in the Pattaya Trader magazine over the last three years or so (and in the Phuket Gazette newspaper, where it is known as the 'Streets of Pattaya', and the book is available at Bookazine Royal Garden, DK Bookshop Soi Post Office, DK Bookshop on Central Pattaya Road (near Beach Road) and a whole lot of other outlets, or via the internet at www.pattaya-books.com and all for the sensationally, unbelievably fantastic, great value price of 395 baht. End of shameless plug.

 

Piece of Pith: You shouldn't compare yourself to others - they are more screwed up than you think.