Nightmarch

[PattayaPete 530]

Incontestable: If anybody wonders about the crowd-pulling power of dance contests or special events in dens of the chrome pole, the period between Friday 27 April and Monday 30 April would be sufficient to dispel all doubt. Over the four-night period three ogling dens conducted contests worth quite a bit of prize money and all three places attracted large crowds. The first contest off the rank took place in the Taboo chrome pole palace (Soi 16, Covent Garden complex) and featured 26 dancers from Club Boesche (also Soi 16), Coyotee’s (Soi Marina Plaza), Highway Star (Beach Road),Living Dolls Showcase (Walking Street), Tahitian Queen II (Soi BJ), and Tigers Lounge (upstairs in Soi Diamond) as well as the home side. With 5,000 baht to the winner, 3,000 baht for second and 2,000 baht for third place, the contest proved close.

 

One of the presumed drawbacks for inter-bar contests, be they of the dance, wet T-shirt, or even dwarf throwing variety, is the belief the host boozer ‘rigs’ the judging in such a way as to ensure a home-town victory. Having been involved with quite a few contests in a number of joints down through the years what’s most noticeable is the effort by the management of the host establishment to see a result that is as fair and equitable for all participants. My own experience has been that the winner is always the damsel genuinely favoured by the judges, whether she represents the home side or not.

 

Occasionally, the composition of the finalists is fudged in such a way that visiting contestants are given priority: for example, if the points between two dancers are the same, the girl from the visiting den will be given the nod. The home side is always the toughest to beat, no matter whether we are talking about football matches, cricket or Fun Town dance contests.

 

In Taboo the four judge’s scores after the first round showed a tight contest between seven or eight dancers. The eventual winner was Khun Fern from Taboo who outdanced Khun Nui from Club Boesche and Khun Koy from Coyotee’s.

 

As regular readers will be aware I’m not a fan of the average ogling den DJ, as most seem to possess the between-the-ears capacity of a two-watt light bulb. Not so the guy in Taboo: he knows his craft, understood what the dancers in each team wanted to hear, and once he’d got the joint pumping he kept the momentum going. Nothing, musically at any rate, went on too long.

 

The second special event was a sexy body dance contest in Coyotee’s on Sunday night with 10,000 baht in total prize money and featuring dancers from Bangkok as well as Diamond (Soi Diamond), The Sea (Soi Diamond), Taboo, and Tahitian Queen II. The dancing kicked into life around 11:00PM and the place was standing room only for most of the competition. One of my mates made the comment that he had never seen a bar as packed.

 

As far as sexy bodies were concerned I would have hated the judging job because there wasn’t one dancer who didn’t rate highly in the physical attraction stakes. Although I didn’t stay until the end, I’m told a girl from Coyotee’s finished first ahead of a dancer from Diamond. Just like the Taboo and Coyotee’s contests that preceded it, the Miss Suntan/Black Widow contest held in Diamond on a wet Monday night also drew a large crowd. There were just 13 competitors who came from Angelwitch (Soi 15), Casino Club (Soi Diamond), Coyotee’s and What’s Up (Soi 15) as well as Diamond.

 

This wasn’t a dance contest per se, rather a Miss Dark-Skinned Personality competition divided into three rounds. In the first the damsels came on stage and were each asked three tough questions: What’s your name? How old are you? What province do you come from? The hardest part for the girls was remembering what name they were using this week and what age they should be this year. The second round saw the damsels perform as dancers while the third and final round had the contestants whittled down to just five finalists and they were each asked a different question. For example: which brand of mobile phone do you own, today? Does it have a ring vibrator? And, do you like the vibrator? Another question asked what nationality a girl preferred, and the answer was “Finland”, the damsel suggesting they are good performers in the mattress dancing stakes, although the terminology she used was a word in common usage and rhyming with ‘duck’.

 

As with the Taboo and Coyotee’s contests the judging was close and the winner of 5,000 baht first prize was Khun Dao from Angelwitch by one point from Khun Coco from What’s Up who collected 3,000 baht. The competition for the ogling den baht is more fierce now than at any time in Fun Town’s long history and dance contests and other special promotions and events are one way for many places to try and keep ahead of their competitors.

 

Corporate Merger: The XXX, Baby Dolls and Club 69 ogling dens (Soi 15, off Walking Street) were sold in recent times to the people who also operate the successful Windmill and Tramps chrome pole palaces (Soi Diamond). The latter trio are now being run along the same lines as Windmill, although by the time you read this the XXX and Baby Dolls, which had already been turned into one den, should be closed for a complete refit. Club 69, which was closed during April for renovations, was due to re-open at the beginning of May. As a promotional tool, a VIP card offering a 10 percent discount on all bills above 200 baht, including lady drinks and bar fines, has been established for use in Windmill, Tramps, Club 69, and Baby Dolls. There is also a two-for-one libations offer on bottled amber fluid operational as well as a two-for-one for 95 baht house liver wasters promotion between 10:00PM and 3:00AM in all the dens except Tramps.

 

An Afternoon Friendly: There are only a handful of ogling dens open from the early afternoon and one of them is Far East Rock (Soi Post Office). They play good music and the den has a friendly atmosphere with a small crew of dancing damsels, 11 on the afternoon I was last in. It would be ridiculous to expect the afternoon dancing brigade to be of the same standard as, say, the Coyotee’s or Peppermint chrome pole palaces, but there were two or three who wouldn’t have been out of place in many a Walking Street establishment while the remainder were a personable bunch. Worth a stop-off on a hot afternoon.

 

Around and About: Denis the Menace, mine host of the OK Corral (Soi Rungland) was recently back in the Land of Unused Soap and ran into Laurie, one of Fun Town’s former well-known beer boozer operators who asked to send his best wishes to all his old mates back in Pattaya. Laurie used to have what is now the Wonderful II beer boozer (corner of Second Road and Soi 13) for some years before moving to Skaw Beach and then to the small soi behind the Tim ogling den.

 

The Lennies beer boozer (Soi Diamond) opened a Bob’s BBQ Express in the joint on 1 April with food available from 7:00PM until 2:00AM. The happy hour in Lennies goes from 5:00-7:00PM and anyone purchasing an alcoholic drink between 6:00 and 8:00PM can have a free Taco; good for soaking up the booze.

 

On Saturday night 19 May the Nagas Motorcycle Club will be opening their new boozer in Sri Racha. The party gets under way around 7:00PM and the boozer is formerly the Beretta bar, situated next the night market. All welcome.

 

I’m told the Club Electric Blue Jnr table-dancing den (Soi Diamond) was sold a little while ago by the original management and has since been sold again.

 

After a hold-up in putting the details on the website, the third edition of Pattaya By Night magazine is now available on-line at www.dcothai.com The magazine is also available in the best bookshops, but not Bookazine, where it is currently banned because it has pictures of females rather than males.

 

The Dollhouse ogling den’s (Walking Street, behind the Muay Thai boxing ring) shower area seems to be very popular with the convention of amateur gynaecologists who live in Fun Town, and the damsels are quite content to offer a tactile (with soap) experience for a small red-coloured note as a token of customer appreciation. There’s also now a ‘play’ area in one of the back corners of the den where dancers throw beach balls around; for all I know there could be a collection of plastic building blocks and colouring-in pencils back there as well.

 

On Wednesday afternoon 23 May the Boxing Roo beer boozer (Third Road, opposite Soi Lengkee) will be the place to be to watch the first State of Origin rugby league match. The Origin, an annual series of three matches between New South Wales and Queensland (Australian states for those whose geography is on a par with the average US or UK 10-year-old), are always close-fought tough encounters and a terrific introduction to the game of rugby league for sports lovers. The Boxing Roo is a perfect place to watch the games as the atmosphere is always good and the management have prize draws and bring in free pizza from Scoby’s next door.

 

Piece of Pith: It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a bad example.