Nightmarch

[PattayaPete 530]

The Odd Couple: Take a lanky American with a pronounced drawl, add a stocky Welshman with attitude, and you have the makings of what is almost certainly the longest-running bar business partnership in Pattaya. Congratulations to Stan and Colin, the proprietors of the Cheers laid-back boozer (Pattayaland Soi 2) who celebrate 18 years in business in Fun Town in the same location, on 18 November.

 

The bar, sans hostesses, is not the oldest on the street. It may have kicked off in 1988, but it ranks as only the fourth longest-running. The oldest bar is Sue's Place, followed by the acclaimed Mexican noshery Blue Parrot and the Viking Beachcomber. The latter is the only one not in the same location on the soi.

 

More Than Just Beer: I know some people who've been reading this indulgence in valuable printers ink for long enough have wondered at the relative paucity of material concerning the multitude of beer boozers stretched the length and breadth of Fun Town . The reason for this is simple. In my experience, the vast majority of beer boozers are not havens full to the brim with gorgeous damsels, but rather tiny oases with the odd diamond in the rough. In other words, for every good sort willing to engage in a game or 20 of Connect Four, there are 10 or more who might best be described as ‘homely'.

 

Therefore, the popularity, or otherwise, of a beer boozer usually comes down to the person, or persons, who own and run it. So, the following is just a small collection of places where I happen to be reasonably well-acquainted with the management (read: this means they don't ignore me even though I rarely drink anything more intoxicating than a cup of strong tea) and can recommend as at least offering a welcome to the weary traveller.

 

One nice place is the Lek down in Soi 7, about 50 metres from Beach Road . In all the years I've been wandering into the joint there might have been four or five damsels worth a second look, so it's not a real ‘hostess' boozer. It's the kind of place you go into with a friend who knows either the eponymous Lek or her Pommy husband Charlie. I doubt many people would simply wander in off the soi of their own volition. Lek and Charlie are a very welcoming and friendly couple and if you have a hankering to listen to any particular style of music (and I do not include rap, hip hop and techno in that word ‘music'), then it's almost certain Charlie would be able to find a CD or two to satisfy even the most eclectic of tastes.

 

In Soi 8, the Coral Reef (towards the Second Road end) can usually be counted on to have a few damsels worthy of more than a second glance. A good place to relax and watch the perambulators of Soi 8, and chat with Pommy Phil who has enough years in Fun Town to qualify for a bravery medal.

 

Down in Soi Yamato, the Nervous Wreck, run by the friendly ‘Nervous' Dave, is a small but popular boozer. It's on the Wednesday night quiz circuit and they do pretty well, but I'm sure they'd always be happy to have a new face or three to bolster their team. It's also a good spot to watch the outlandish antics of the Jake-the-peg brigade employed in the Stringfellows meat-and-two-veg den across the road.

 

The OK Corral in Soi Rungland (off South Pattaya Road, opposite the International Telephone Exchange) is another part of the Wednesday quiz league, as well as the Sunday quiz league, the Friday darts league, the Monday pool league and they run golf days on Tuesdays and Thursdays if my memory serves me correctly. With all that erudition and physical exertion you'd think the joint would be frequented by persons of Aryan-esque stature with memberships in Mensa. Fat chance. It's a good place to watch sport on a large TV and every now and again the personable Denis the Menace somehow snags a good sort to work behind the bar.

 

In Walking Street, the Roo bar (for many years known as the Jan bar) is run by Bob and Roundy, a couple of good Aussie blokes, and while it might lack a crew of hot sorts just salivating at the thought of a wide-eyed punter taking them home for a night of romance, it's a great and friendly place to watch the passing parade on Fun Town's premier stretch of tarmac.

 

The Wallet Snipping Club: While this column and its comments represent my own personal feelings and attitudes, I tend to go out and about with a variety of locals and visitors and take into account their feelings about the places we visit in the desire to gain a consensus with regard to what I write. This preamble is necessary in the context of what follows.

 

The Beavers table-shufflers den ( Walking Street ) celebrated its first anniversary on 12 October. The place has about 15 or 16 damsels of varying shapes, sizes and age brackets and while it offers draught amber at the traditional discounted prices, everything else is at ‘gouge' level. I say this because one of my friends, who recently flogged a farm in his homeland for the equivalent of more than 50 million baht -and he wasn't short of the folding stuff before that anyway- made a comment to me about the price of the libations (from 100 baht for lolly water to 135 baht for a top-shelf snifter). He also wasn't impressed with the quality of the table shufflers and suggested we decamp and check out the Happy gogo. He decided not only were the prices in Happy reasonable, but the numbers and quality of the dancing damsels far superior to those in Beavers.

 

On another evening I went into the Hooty's agogo ( Walking Street ) with a mate, who is also not short of a few spare baht. On this occasion we had just come from Happy, where a top-shelf liver waster retails at 105 baht. In Hooty's, the same thirst-quencher went off at 130 baht. That said, the dancing damsels in Hooty's are a friendly and accommodating bunch and the place has a generally good atmosphere; I happen to think they need to look a little more closely at their pricing policy.

 

Increasingly I hear more and more people, of diverse nationalities but with plenty of ‘wedge', make comments regarding what they consider to be price gouging in many gogos, beer boozers and especially the late night boogie barns. These people are not two-week millionaires on holiday from a factory job in Asphyxiation, Alabama , they are the real deal. They could spend more money in a day than most of the two-week millionaires earn in a month; but they know the value of a dollar or a pound or a baht and refuse to be bludgeoned. A wealthy Englishman, with businesses and houses in Spain , told me, “In some of these places they are charging more money for a drink than I'd pay in England !”

 

The argument that “in England/America/Australia you'd be paying xyz more to see than what you get here” doesn't wash when you make the relevant price per capita comparisons, especially since there isn't a bar owner in Fun Town paying anything like the hourly rates of staff in the aforementioned countries.

The reason 98 percent of people go into a palace of the chrome pole is to perve on the women. There are many people I know who don't mind what they pay for a thirst-quencher, but their priority is in numbers and quality of the women on show. Once a customer realises he's being taken for an idiot, the chances are you'll lose him. Witness the demise of Pattayaland Soi 2 as a prime example.

 

What impresses me about Happy -and the similarly-managed Peppermint as well as Diamond and the Casino Club late-night boogie barn - is they seem to have taken the ‘if it ain't broke don't fix it' attitude. All these places offer tremendous value-for-money in their libations pricing policy and are absolutely awash with dancing damsels, the very reason most people go into a den of the chrome pole. They seem to take the Chinese style of profit-making: have a large turnover and turn a small profit each time, which eventually equates to a tidy sum each and every night. That's why they've stayed on top for such a long time and will probably continue to be in the forefront even as more and more competition opens around them.

 

Around and About: According to Deadly Derek of The Clinic sports emporium and boozer (Soi Yamato), Chris Henderson has flogged off his founding partnership in the well-known Dogs Bollocks beer boozer and has returned to the Land of Coal Baths.

 

The aforementioned Clinic kicked off in about 1990 and since that time Deadly claims to have noted 165 foreign bar owners and investors who have hung out a shingle along Soi Yamato and then departed with threadbare wallets.

 

Piece of Pith: It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.

[glynbuk 29]

thanks for posting this, interesting read

[kunjon 1]

Excellent commentary.

 

Lek-was fun, Coral Reef fun,

Hooty's ...my favorite...this trip that is but really I find that the selection of ladies bends my opinion more than price. Yeah, I could spend hours in there and come out with a tab rivaling my bar tab in the States but I went pretty hog wild with the girls who are very accomodating.

 

Casino is fun.

 

The most expensive place I went was Candyland Disco on WS 4 drinks = 700 B but the live band is fun.