First Encounter With Oh, Thailand 1995 (Old Journal Entry)

I found a rather lengthy journal entry which entails the first time I saw Oh, the Thai prostitute I wrote about in TO TRAVEL HOPELESSLY.

 It also (I hope) provides an evocative description of Nana Plaza at that time. (I don't imagine it's changed too much.)

I'm trying to remember -- this is maybe the second or possibly third time I went to Nana Plaza, after I'd been working in Bangkok a few months, and before I'd actually had sex with a prostitute.

So here's a night out through the eyes of a whore-virgin 26-year-old  English Teacher X. Practically a new-born. 

* * * 

Monday June 12, 1995 -- 

I'm think I'm just too softhearted to be a good whoremonger. 

Last night I went to Nana Plaza with T and S, for a little enjoyment of Thailand's simplest pleasures, the little brown doe-eyed waifs. 

First we tossed down a couple of "Beer Sings" (Singha beers) outside of a place called Bubblegum, where a lot of guys were getting drunk and watching England versus Australia in Rugby. I stepped over to the Hollywood Lounge, not being overly interested in watching burly guys in short pants banging heads.

The place was packed, polo-shirted Aussies and florid Germans and drunk English guys with bald spots, and dozens upon dozens of little naked (or barely naked) brown nymphs running around, smiling and laughing and dancing, everything quadrupled in the mirrored walls. 

Soon I had a little g-stringed sylph rubbing against me. Her name was something like Tan. We went through the initial "where you from" exchange and it turned out her English was in fact pretty good. Curious, I gave her my level 4 book to see if she could read it and she breezed through it, no problem.

I was a little cold at first, but she finally said, "Is there anything I can do for you?" 

"Hmmm ..." I thought about it. "A back rub?"

She quickly and expertly began kneading my shoulders. Once she jokingly made as if to choke me; she was quite strong for a small girl. 

"I bet you feel like strangling people a lot in this job," I said.

She shrugged.

(Here, in the original journal, there's a lengthy description of our conversation, in which she said she was studying business and computers and would be graduating from university soon, and hoped to get a good job, and wondered why I would work in Bangkok when I could be making more money in America. I explained I could actually save more in Bangkok since food and drink was so cheap, but she was not, understandably, convinced -- Editor X)

I bemoaned my long hours and she rolled her eyes at me. "I work 9 hours a night and only get 3 days off a month." That sounded horrible to me until I remembered that I only get 4 days off a month, although we do get public holidays.

She went up to dance on stage after a while, and I handed her a 100 bhat note when I left. (About $4) She kind of got a look on her face like, "Sucker!"

Back at the Bubblegum, S and T were drunker, cheering on England in the rugby match. I wandered around a bit, looking at all the flashy bars. Most of the girls seemed overweight and often not all that cute. I mentioned this to T, and he said, "Yeah, sure you've got better looking whores at Patpong, but here you can relax, they don't try to rip you off." (He and S were busily accumulating a huge bar tab as they watched the rugby.)

Then I was literally dragged into a little strip bar by a rather Rubenesque, gap-toothed, but appealingly cheerful Thai whore who immediately tricked me into buying her a 60 bhat drink, by asking if she could get some water, and then returning with the bill and saying, "Oh, I put some whiskey in it."

It was a creepy little place -- four rather bedraggled whores danced on the bare stage while a couple of oddly ghoulish-looking older men made up the total audience. 

My whore cheerfully went through the "Where you from?" spiel, then told me she was just back from two years in Hiedelberg, Germany. She hadn't liked it much, but she liked Amsterdam fairly well. 

"Do you like Bangkok?" I asked.

"It's a business," she smiled toothily. 

I made a fairly quick retreat from that place, and back at the Bubblegum, S and T had become depraved. S had a cute, muscle-assed, boyish-looking Thai girl on his lap, one hand on her ass and a hamburger in the other, and loudly proclaimed that he'd found paradise, or at least the Buddhist state of Nirvana. T was draped all over the hugely-fat and ever smiling Mama-San of the Bubblegum, drunk and leering in an Aleister Crowley sort of way, kneading big handfuls of her soft Thai flesh. 

It occurred to me to admire that kind of depravity -- my own depravity being rather predictable and commonplace, especially in Thailand. (Teenage girls? Bondage? We do that before breakfast here, mate.)

(This was a blog entry that I made about T, who was sort of my mentor. -- Editor X)

Reminiscing about it this morning, T said, "She was ALL woman. I think I could have got her for free, too. Next time."

I wondered back to the Hollywood, which was still crowded; I quickly set my eyes on the sexiest young Thai girl I've seen in this country. Pointless, perhaps to describe her: the long black hair and smooth brown skin, the long legs and hard-muscled ass; but she was put together in a most luscious way, jutting breasts, full lips, all the cliches. 

She moved sinuously across the stage, and I noticed she was watching herself in the mirror, which turned me on greatly. (I'm a notorious self-watcher myself.)

I bought her a drink and sat with her; she spoke almost no English, as it turned out, had a rather bad case of snaggle teeth. But my god! The legs! The ass! I rubbed her all over, mesmerized. She politely took it. 

She got up, stripped off her bikini suit, and danced naked. I watched and quiet awe, and she just watched herself in the mirror. 

But I think I'd had my fill; they don't mind being touched, and they're warm and beautiful, but they're like dolls, they don't respond when you touch them, other than in mechanical sorts of ways. They spend all night every night being touched, what could you do to turn on such a creature?

Something so unsexual about it ... and yet ... I think that's why Thai whores are so popular, the combination of innocence and complete sexual abandon ... 

* * *

So it was probably like, a couple weeks later I had sex with her, the first of the dozen or so prostitutes I've had encounters with.

What could you do to turn on such a creature? The answer, I would find, is that you do the same thing you do to any girl you pick up, and the outcome is likely to be similar.

 You can read that touching story in TO TRAVEL HOPELESSLY, of course, or you can read the original version here on the blog.

On the subject of whores in general, when I was in Thailand last year with the Girlfriend, she asked if I'd had sex with any Thai prostitutes, and I admitted that I had. She said, "Fy!" which is Russian for "Yuck" and I said, with the Asperger-like reflexes that have made the rest of my life such a challenge, "Geez, I had sex with lots worse girls for free out of nightclubs in Russia."

To her credit, she was only angry for about an hour.

It's true, though, all the whores I met were extremely conscientious about hygiene and protection.



I never met any of the ones with razor blades in their vaginas, fortunately.