In a departure from the usual Bartripping format, Dan takes ‘M’ – not James Bond’s boss but a novelist, NGO worker, actress, singer and all-round famous person from New York out for a night on the tiles. She’s so famous in fact, that M asked us to keep her true identity a secret.
While Untamed Travel doesn’t usually cover the red lit parts of Bangkok, it was at M’s sincere wish that Dan accompany her on a walk down a memory lane of dark bars, flesh for sale and questionable gender.
9:20pm, Champagne Room, Sukhumvit Rd
Dan: Having not been to the Champagne room before I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Champagne, I guess. This upstairs bar at the start of Sukhumvit Road opened in June and I was escorted into the voluptuously decorated bar by a sumptuously turned out hostess. Seated on an enormous couch, my eyes adjusted to the light and I took in my surrounds. The room oozes with luxury and wealth, from the bar surrounded by comfy-cushion barstools to the eight large booths along the outer walls, each theme-decorated. Sipping my complimentary glass of bubbly, (sadly, the high costs and low wages of a writer’s lifestyle preclude me from paying for my own alcohol) I eagerly awaited my guest.
M: The Champagne Room is cool, plush and gives us free drinks, which is welcome, but I’m confused because it feels like an upscale Manhattan banker’s retreat. But I must be in Thailand because there are a half dozen smiling, gorgeous Thai chicks proffering drinks and one is permitted to smoke cigarettes (insane but true, lighting up in a New York bar is now a punishable offence). The hostesses are dressed in upscale mall gear, not much lycra ‑ I prefer the Sukhumvit Slut look myself. I’ve done some of my most successful shopping at Nana Plaza after midnight. In fact, Nana Plaza in five minutes away. Why are we comparing Burmese visa scams over champagne? We’ve got to hit the poles!
10:00pm, Angelwitch, Nana Plaza
M: Nana Plaza, my refuge. I have spent some of the most sublime, reckless, aesthetic, drunken nights of my life here. I had feared that the New Millennium Puritanism that is infecting global nightlife with smoking bans and early bar closings might decimate Nana Plaza, but thankfully, Anglewitch restores faith in tradition. Lots of cheery, grateful Farangs getting suitably plastered. In go-go fashion, black boots are out, black garter belts and denim hotpants are in. We arrive in time for the show. Someone says that the Anglewitch owner is a German kabarettist who makes an effort at presentation. The dancers have an ersatz Egyptian slave look, the choreography moves from slow pirouettes to two girls fellating a banana. Kind of hard to explain, I understand.
Dan: It’s been an age since I last set foot in Nana Plaza, but I’m sure all is forgiven or forgotten since then. Actually I usually avoid the place, not because of the sleaze and smells but because they sting you for Bt120 a beer to watch ropey girls shuffling around a dimly lit stage. Not so Anglewitch (well, the beers still aren’t cheap). The show rates a special mention. There’s the usual application of body lotion, chicks in cowboy hats and the like but in a performance from the vault of the bizarre, two girls walked in slathered in shaving foam. A close shave indeed. The highlight was definitely the double-banana-fellatio choreographed to PJ Harvey, since she’s a favourite of mine. Things finished up with what I can only describe as an epileptic fit show. At the end of the foam show a girl mopped the stage with towels and I mulled over barfining her, since my apartment could use a good scrubbing.
10:35pm, DC-10, Nana Plaza
Dan: Holy cow! Not one minute into the place and M was already on the poles, spinning upside down like, well, a pro. Since we’d only met the night before, I didn’t know where to look, so took in the bar. DC-10 is a more traditional Nana place, small, a mamasan in a mumu, a few chubby girls and a funny smell. Still, since we were the only ones in the place it was our party, but my dicky knee precluded me from joining my twirling guest on stage.
M: We went in search of the Hollywood Stars, my favourite bar of all five continents, but it has morphed into DC-10. The mamasan is still there, so we get VIP treatment. I know that every Farang with a few baht gets VIP treatment; the unique genius of Thai bar girls is their uncanny ability to make you feel incredibly rich, cool and special – and to remember your name. The old DJ with the AC/DC hymnal was off duty, and in his stead we had some wanker who likes dreary grunge rock. I complained and at least we got Highway to Hell, the Nana Plaza anthem. We grabbed the poles and danced. The girls love it when an aging Farang chick dances with them, and for me, it’s dance liberation. Who cares what the fuck I do when I’m flanked by ten gorgeous Thai girls in lingerie? But with the new Millennium Puritanism, the girls no longer enforce the formerly mandatory initiation rite, wherein your shirt gets yanked off, for at least 30 seconds. In the old days your pants got yanked off as well. But still, this is bliss. The poles hold you up when you’re drunk, the girls give you cold towels when you collapse.
11:15pm, Long Gun, Soi Cowboy
M: My companions say there’s a live show at Long Gun that is worth the beer so we bid farewell to my pals at DC-10, wind past the katoey bar and the G-Spot and head to Soi Cowboy. I have a deep fondness for Soi Cowboy because that’s where I learned to love the pole, years back. Like I said, it holds you up when you’re drunk. A live Pole, or Russian, or Brit, is never as supportive. The girls in Soi Cowboys love to dance. Sometimes at Nana Plaza I end up giving dance instruction, like proper technique for the splits. However, no Farang chick could ever hope to deliver a passable Bangkok Pole Slide. We settle in Mick Jagger’s seat at the Long Gun and get the full circus act followed by a full stage of topless babes in cowboy hats, all doing the Bangkok Pole Slide. The show really shuts up the awed Farangs. That’s what you learn when you get on the pole; you look down upon a sea of mute, awestruck white faces. Really, if every city had a Bangkok go-go bar, with complimentary foot massage, there would be no war. I think I’m the only Farang chick in the place, which is often the case. A German guy asks me if I’m gay, I reply that I’m not (I’m not). I just love to dance and I’m in awe of these Thai women. I come as a pilgrim to study how they dance, smile, dress, laugh, yawn. I ask my companion, what’s their secret? He says it’s contentment. And the gorgeous climate. I slip out of the Long Gun and inspect the other dance joints. One has a live Farang rock band, in another a compassionate genius in the DJ booth is playing One Night in Bangkok followed by The Real Slim Shady.
Dan: It was a night of musical firsts as we walked into Long Gun just in time to catch a nudie show performed to Hey Jude. Another quality go-go bar packed with punters, but let the eyes wander and see who we’re sharing the bar with. In front of me was an enormously fat man folding up his walking stick; blocking my view of the stage was an older fellow with a truly terrifying permed mullet. It seems a law of nature that the greater the concentration of beautiful women, the greater the ugliness of their admirers, present company excluded. Averting my eyes, I took in the rest of the night’s entertainment, naked women pissing flowers and shitting roses. One young thing we nicknamed ‘Red Adare’ was blowing out birthday cake candles with her intimates. Sort of like lighting farts in reverse. After a woman opened a bottle with her privates (!) I relished the opportunity to lean over to M and whisper “Bet you can’t do that,” but she didn’t bite. Cleanup on stage once again stirred fantasies of domestic hygiene.
12:40pm, Titanium, Sukhumvit Soi 22
Dan: Things get a little blurry at this point. Four bars and a shitload of beers had done their job and I was doing my grinning idiot act. I’ve been to Titanium before and enjoyed their vodka bar, kept at -10 Celsius, the plasma screens showing silent classic Russian movies and the percussion show. I’d forgotten about the graffiti art in the toilets though. In keeping with the theme of the night, waitresses were clad in faux Ao Dias with a ‘cumpulsory’ no-bras rule. I was surprised that at the end of the night one of them demanded that I take her home and I was forced to explain that Mrs. Dan wouldn’t be amused. Still, it’s nice to know that, even 20 beers to the wind, the old animal attraction is still there.
M: Now it’s a neon techno bar called Titanium. We go upstairs into the ice room, which has a huge block of, well, ice for a bar. Okay, like I get the picture, it’s cold as all hell! I’m sufficiently drunk enough to consider going back to my hotel, since I’m supposed to fly to Koh Samui in a few hours. Say goodbye and hail a cab back to Khaosan Road. But I succumb to the lure of the streets, the scent of food, incense and charcoal, old disco songs mixed with temple bells, three wasted rastas playing guitar. I go to the Siam Oriental Inn, to the 24-hour coffee shop, to watch the stream of tourists and peddlers and hustlers. Everyone looks utterly fascinating. Maybe it’s the humid night air and the Singha beer and my insane love of Bangkok, but even though they close the bars way too early now, Bangkok nightlife reincarnates on the pavement, in the streets, down the alleys, and in your head, of course. It’s only 2:30, still time for a two-hour massage in the place next to my hotel, 100% guaranteed hangover prevention, better than sleep. I lie on the cool bedsheets, they begin with my head and my feet, I feel all knotted soul and muscle pain melt away…Dear God, in my next life, may I please be reincarnated as an ex-pat with a trust fund and a flat in Sukhumvit?