I walked for a bit and admired the greenery and the towers all around and then perched in a chair and read my book for an hour or two.
On my way back, I found a supermarket hidden on the bottom floor of a giant department store and perused the isles, noting that a full pint of Haagen Daas is more than $11 here (presumably due to the refrigerated shipping I would think). While there, I picked up a flask of Hong Thong thai whisky which I often see the thais drinking. Im curious about it but also think it will just look cool sitting on the bar in my swanky hotel room.
I picked up a pork satay and another green papaya salad on my way back to the room. Both were good, but not in my top 10 (Im getting jaded).
After lunch, emails, blogging and a quick siesta, I psyched myself up for another adventure. I felt like I had the lay of the land now, so I just had to execute.
To last longer than I did the previous night, I had a 3-tiered plan: ear plugs, sunglasses, and a shot of Hong Thong.
First stop was going to be Cheap Charlies, an ex-pat dive bar on Soi 11 which, according to my travel guru (nomadicmatt.com), is his "favorite bar in the world".
Cheap Charlie’s is on a jog in Soi 11 that’s only open to foot traffic. Its literally a hole in the wall with a bunch of interesting-looking junk decorating it (kind of like Cafe Van Kleef in Oakland) with a few token bar stools. But since the bar only has one wall, most people just stand around in the alleyway yaking. It seemed like a good-natured ex-pat group. I went up to the bar and got a thai Tiger beer and started talking to the first person I saw who wasn’t talking to anyone else.
And I quickly learned why he wasn’t talking to anyone else. I asked him if he was from around here and he said, “oh GOD no! Oh HELL no!” His name was Nicholas, or “Nick", from London but now living in Australia, probably in his mid 60s. He was very outspoken and opinionated and had something racist to say about just about everyone, but still seemed to be oddly good-natured, friendly and funny. “Well at least Im HONEST”, he said.
So since he was so honest, I got right to the point. I said, “Nick, what do you think is going on here? Why are SO MANY people here in Sukhumvit? There’s shopping, good food, cheap hotels, thai massage . . . but there’s no casinos, no gambling, so what is it? Is it sex???”
And Nick said, “Boys, girls, anything you want here you can have it. You just have to pay for it.” (thats not why he was here, of course. Just on a Christmas holiday with friends). We chatted some more about his life story, why he was such a curmudgeon and never married and when I could take no more, I said, “So Nick, I am out to have an adventure tonight. What do you think I should do?”. He said to go to Soi Cowboy, one of the red-light streets and have a drink. He said, “If you go there, they’ll tear you apart, they’ll rip you apart!” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but it sounded interesting. Nick shouted after me down the street, “be good. But not too good”.
The earplugs turned out to be one of the best calls of the night. They cut down on the sensory assault by 50%. I figured out one reason why this area is so loud— its because the concrete skytrain runs above Sukhumvit Rd and that, combined with the surrounding buildings create a concrete tunnel that amplifies the traffic noise.
Soi Cowboy is a short alleyway between Soi 23 and Asoke Rd. It is lined with red neon and go-go bars. Apparently there are 2 other red-light streets in the area as well (Nana & Patpong).
As soon as I turned onto Soi Cowboy I immediately felt eyes on me from everywhere. I just looked straight ahead and walked through, which took about 3 minutes. Then I turned around and surveyed the scene. It was still early in the night (maybe 9pm) so the bars all looked at half-capacity or less. They all had open fronts right out onto the street, so you could see everything that was going on inside. It didn’t look that scandalous— mostly guys just sitting around drinking (both white and asian) but there were also some couples too. There were a lot of young asian girls just standing around too trying to make eye contact, and a lot of them were also sitting on guys laps. At the back of every bar there was a small doorway that I’d occasionally see open up and a tourist go through. I knew the adventure wouldn’t be complete till I knew what was behind that door.
I had to pick a bar, so I chose “Cockatoo”, the one-and-only bar that advertised “ladyboys”. I figured it was some kind of AsiaSF deal (transexual guys who looked more like women than real women) and I was right. There were a bunch of “ladyboys” (the thai word for transexual is “kathoey” I think) in the outer part of the bar and when I walked up, they smiled (thinking I was a dude) but then realized I wasn’t and rolled their eyes and looked at one another like they were thinking, “what are we going to do with this one?”. When I pointed at the back door, they seemed glad (like "oh good we’re going to get rid of her now").
( Bangkok is supposed to be a great place to get a sex change, by the way. The hospital where most of that work goes down is Bumrungrad Hospital, just a block or two from where Im staying (dont worry mom, I dont have enough time for that). Bangkok is also big on plastic surgery and is reputedly one of the top spots to do it, as well as all other kinds of surgery. People come here to have it not only done cheap, but done really well. “Beauty” is a huge industry here and the thais seem obsessed with it, to the point of all lotion having “skin whitener” in it (for women AND men). My favorite skin whitener here is called “Snail White”. )
I went through the door and inside was a Blue Velvet-like go-go bar scene with a small glowing stage in the middle and seats all around it with individual glowing tray tables. Immediately all the trannies inside (4 or 5) came over to me and sat me down and handed me a drink menu. Most of them did look more like girls than real girls except one who was clearly a dude in a wig.
They invited me to order a drink for myself and also a drink for one of them and then, according to them, “they would talk to me”. I said I’d have a water. They said, ok, now who do you want to talk to (and buy a drink for)? I said, “but what if I dont want to talk?" They said I had to talk. I said, ok lets talk (meaning, like, “hey girlfriend! whats it like being trans in this city? I know a lot of trans people where Im from in SF!”). But, no of course it wasn’t like that, it was all business.
My water arrived and I said I was just going to sit there and drink it, but no they said they wanted to talk. There was a little back-and-forth in a teasing kind of way about talking/no talking (Monty Python’s “argument sketch” came to mind— its about a guy who goes in to a shop to pay someone to have an argument and ends up arguing about how much the argument costs and winds up getting a free argument) until I saw a nasty glint come into one of their eyes and I remembered Nicks words ("they’ll tear you apart!") and decided I’d better just pay for the water and get the hell out. They charged me $5 for the water (its usually 25 cents for a bottled water), which I gladly paid. Then they left me alone for a minute like it was going to be ok for me to just sit there. The guy in the wig was the only one who stayed sitting beside me like he actually did want to talk and have a real conversation.
I stayed long enough just to survey the scene and get a distinct vibe of “yuck”. The yuckiness was just the self-deprecating vibe between the girls and the guys in there. It probably didn’t help that I noticed a huge bruise on the shoulder of the guy in the wig next to me and that he didn’t look very happy. Anyway, Ive seen it before in SF, nothing that new here. Onwards.
A redeeming quality of Soi Cowboy is that it has good street food. I got some fried fish there (small, whole fish complete with fins and tail) with rice and it was good.
I then tried getting to the top of several of the more interesting-looking towers in the area, but found that the tops of these towers were inaccessible unless you had a key card. Someone told me they were residences/penthouses at the top and there wasn’t anything cool for the public. Unlike in SF, here they all have their restaurants and bars and lounges in the middle, not on the very top.
On my walk around, I met another sex worker named Esthow from Rwanda. I was walking by a restaurant and she made eye contact thinking I was a dude and said hi and started talking. Ive known a few sex workers in SF, so its no big deal, they’re just people like anyone else, so I sat and talked for a little bit and she seemed to be able to relax and just have an ordinary conversation. She comes here every now and then to work for a couple weeks and then goes back to Rwanda. Its more money than you could ever hope to make there. She seemed a little skeptical of me when I told her I was queer and had a girlfriend, so I asked about gay people in Rwanda and she said there were lots but you dont ever see them. She started focusing mostly on her cellphone, so I told her I was off to my next destination.
I was off to check out a dance club called Club Q which was not where it was supposed to be and instead I found a blues club in which some live music was playing. So I sat down and had a gourmet brownie with vanilla ice cream (really good) and listened for about an hour. The drummer had a “West Coast Oakland” t-shirt on. It was a pretty decent band with a good harmonica player. That was the last stop of the night.
P.S. Penny is doing well in Vietnam and having a great time for the most part. She only has her iPhone and poor internet access, so she might not be doing much blogging. She goes home on Friday (same time I leave for India).
