Well and truly cheesed off with urine tests, childish curfews and oh-so-cool nightspots, a bibulous Dan & Andy embark on a perilous mission into the wilds of Pattaya for a climactic final entry to the Bartripping column.
Waterfront, 7:05pm
Andy: Far more civilised than jumping straight in with the animals, we warmed up with a couple of beers, al fresco, by the beach as the sun went down. The sun wasn’t all that was going down on that beach, I can tell you. I declined the offers of cheap sex and amphetamines, much too early for that, and satisfied myself by watching a pack of gerbils being attacked by stray dogs.
Dan: Ahh, the sun on my face, the sand in my shoes – there’s nothing like a quiet beer on the beach. Not to mention being easy on the wallet too. The beach was a crowded place that evening as the syphilitic, under-aged and trans-gendered quietly plied their trade behind us. I was astonished to see, on our right, a bald gentleman sitting on the sand and getting tattooed, while on our left assorted vermin scavenged in a rubbish bin.
The Swiss Bar, Beach Road, 8.30pm
Dan: This being my first visit to Pattaya, I rode a motorcycle taxi around town with wide eyes, occasionally being chased down the street by hordes of young ladies from the many beer bars that litter the town. I have truly never seen immorality on such a scale – there must be thousands of open-air bars in Pattaya and we managed to find the worst one. Being under 40, under 100 kilos and sans moustache I felt a bit out of place. Nothing a few beers wouldn’t fix.
Andy: A veteran visitor of the biggest zoo in Asia, I slipped easily into the sophisticated ambiance of the Swiss Bar. An ambiance that was sweetened by the arrival of a gargantuan boar of man and his lovely wife. Not so unusual except that this man was tattooed from foot to face and not tattoos of a style that made me think he was a man with a stable mind. His wife perfectly complimented him with bleached blonde frizzy hair like a poodle, and a fashionable black eye. Tattoo man thoughtfully bought a wooden elephant from a souvenir seller, presumably to put wifey straight with if she got ideas above her station. I always wondered who actually buys that stuff. Now I know.
Living Dolls A Go Go, Walking Street, 10:45pm
Dan: Being sophisticated gentlemen of leisure, Andy and I decided to forgo the crass amusements of the street and established ourselves at the stage of the sumptuous Living Dolls go-go bar. We could tell we were in a classy place by the inflated drink prices and highly erotic shows, such as a girl with a cat ‘o nine-tails spanking the stage and throwing a chair around. Top-shelf stuff by anyone’s standard.
Andy: Having braced myself for truly bottom-of-the-barrel entertainment I was pleasantly surprised by this bar. Especially when a gaggle of young girls paraded across the stage looking as if they’d just spent the day in a Grimsby chip shop. Never before have I seen so much oil on such little bodies. One especially small girl had obviously got the brunt of the oil spill. So oily, in fact, that a badly dressed man with a dead ferret on his upper lip couldn’t stop himself from caressing her buttocks, which were almost as greasy as his moustache.
Marine Disco, Walking Street,
1:20am
Dan: Not to harp on Pattaya’s oversupply of prostitutes, but I was still in shock from their pervasiveness: on the beach and streets, in the bars and even in the shopping centres. So I had few illusions about what Marine Disco would be like – a loud, dark, knocking-shop. The music was rubbish but I was too far gone to care. Being in the mood for romance, I hit the dance floor to shake my groove thang, using my patented “spastic jerks and twitches” technique, always guaranteed to clear a space on the floor. Soon I was surrounded by females, attracted by my dancing and bright plumage, and in the gloomy light and drunken stupor, every one of them was a 10. Obviously, my dance routine is a far more effective method of attracting a mate than Andy’s “piss on the bar and pass out” system.
Andy: Although not a club I’d recommend it for its swanky design, and the fact it has an escalator. As Dan proved, even a spastic can pull in it. Taking a pole-position at the bar, I spent as much money as I could in 20 minutes. Memories from this point became rather hazy but I do remember a fall down an escalator, a man with a lizard and a camera and a burger with extra chili sauce. Dan and I left the next day with a Bt15,000 hangover and the pride that we’d done our bit for Thailand tourism.
And so ends the last entry for Bartripping. Sadly, due to legal, financial and medical constraints, Dan & Andy are no longer able to bring vicarious drinking pleasure to readers each month. We hope you have enjoyed the last 10 months and look out for celebrity appearances by Dan & Andy in a bar near you.