A Journey in Time through LOS

[pacman]

(johpam @ Jan. 16 2008,20:17) And the juke box - one song was played constantly, the ballard by ? ? [someone can remind me] "Let's just kiss & say goodbye"
Could it be  The Manhattans
Maybe  wrong spelling

The Manhattans.
Of course ! Thank you johpam.
If they had been paid a royalty for every time that song was played in Asia they would be very happy.

There were other classics played in every bar that you would hear every night that the girls knew every word, well their version of the lyrics. Hilarious to listen to some of them.

But there never has been a song to pack out the dance floor of a club or disco in Bangkok like Murray Head's masterpiece "One night in Bangkok". It is still played today & they still like it. And the shocking part about it was that it was rumoured to be about gays, kathoeys in fact. Oh quick, the smelling salts . . .

Who was Murray Head anyway? Sure would like to shake his hand.    

[Dieter]

My Pattaya song was from Midnight Oil.....Beds of Burning.....

Dieter

[vangough05]

(Dieter @ Jan. 17 2008,02:27) My Pattaya song was from Midnight Oil.....Beds of Burning.....

Dieter

You have good taste Dieter.
The song is actually"Beds are burning"
The lead singer from Midnight Oil, Peter Garrett is now the Enviroment Minister in the Australian Government.

[Guest]

The times back in the 80s were great indeed. I remember a bar that would from time to time have a boat on wheels and a guy would fuck a girl in this boat. They would push this boat around the bar. Maybe Pacman and fellows this was Mississippi Queen?



I like you all enjoy Patpong without all the venders. Great time for sure.



The Malaysia Hotel was a fun ride from Patpong in a tuk tuk. The tuk tuk driver turned right, left, right, left over and over this went taking the back alley streets, what a fun ride with your gal in tow. We would both be laughing all the way.

[Torurot]

How about the OLD Thermae coffee bar, (not the new one which is in the basement of Ruhamchitt Hotel). Closed at dawn, and always rumoured to be run & owned by the MIB. Sleazy but fun. Always a lot of "non working" girls hanging out to help pay the rent or whatever. Used to cruise down there in a fleet of racing Tuk Tuks after a night out with the crew at Patpong. Wake up in some part of Bangkok so far away it may have been Mars.

[bk120]

Wow, hard to imagine Sukhumvit Rd. as a dirt road!?

When I first went to BKK in 2002, Grace hotel was still open in the basement, although it sounds like it was just a mere shadow of it's glorious self back in the days of post-Nam war. Hundreds of girls in and outside, and my head spinning from looking.

With Nana rumored to go bye,bye i wonder how it would look in 20 yrs.

[pacman]

  Nana is in Soi 4, across Sukhumvit it becomes Soi 3 [?], that's the big wide street the Grace is in.
Sukhumvit has always been a main artery in my memory & you need to go back to before Bangkok ever had much traffic, for a time when Sukhumvit was a dirt road.
Certainly before the 70's.
I think Soi 3 was actually bitumen but when it rained it may as well have been a track. Drainage wasn't like today. And it was two way & the road wasn't wide at all.
Plus the times I wandered off to the Nana disco, I wasn't exactly sober.
If anyone can remember better please speak up.

Has any BM stepped foot into the Grace in the last few years? I imagine its glory days are well behind it.

[olekunde]

last time for me in grace was around 2004. when everything else closed, grace was still rockin ... until 6-7am. downstairs lbs wasnt allowed though. i dont know if they were allowed in the lounge or pool-area either but then again i was always blasted when i got there. last stop before i returned to my room.
at the end i also think there was a cc in the basement, 100b or so ... but the place was excellent. but there are still many 'illigal' places open until very late or early, depending how ur rhythm is. since new places pop up all the time i dont really miss grace. and i try to live in present and dont worry too much about how good it was. im not sure if it was so much better back 'then'. things change everywhere, but usually for the better. thailand was off the beaten track and there are much more tourists and stuff now, but i imagine the selection is the same if not better. you might see many fat girls but they existed before too, but they didnt enter the flesh-trade until later when the word got around there was farang-money to earn. it still would have been interesting to se sukhumvit unpaved though.

[Fred_Nguyen]

(pacman @ Jan. 13 2008,16:10) Back then I really was a hansum man.        What happened?       

You went broke!

[pacman]

I finally have a moment to finish writing my memories of my time in LOS in the 70's. I actually kept a diary of that trip, 9 months in Asia, wish I could find it ! I had dates, names, places - probably best to write the good stuff without reminding myself of the trouble we got into.

Two naive 21 year olds away for the first time without so much as a clue. You cannot imagine some of the places we finished up ! Read on. . . .  

One day we took a bus to Chiang Mai. No reason except we felt it necessary to visit what places we could, what other reason did anyone take these trips? Chiang Mai was a village after Bangkok & I just remember it being neat, cheap, very quiet & after Bangkok, clean. Every outing in Bangkok in the 70's left you covered in soot from the filthy exhausts of constant traffic. First thing I did whenever I arrived anywhere was to wash my face, a white towel wouldn't be white after one wipe.

The night life was limited, not so many girls on the scene or so we thought. After a day or so the penny dropped that almost every young single girl we saw was available. I remember thinking how friendly they all were & how nice it was that they would speak to us until it became clear that they were looking to more then just talk.

I told you we were naive !      

I recall standing on a footpath one night & a girl sitting on a low fence started to talk to me. In the dark she didn't seem very old & I thought "that's nice, she wants to practise her English". We had experienced that a lot & I always enjoyed it, even being invited into classrooms to have conversations with the whole class asking me questions, etc. A vivid memory.

After a bit she wanted to know where I was staying as she wanted to come with me. I was staggered, she was barely out of school & to this day I don't regret walking away. That was just one such incident & when you read about the trouble you can get into with underage girls, the word "entrapment" comes to mind.

Not much to say about Chiang Mai, except you could take a girl for the night for 100 baht. We were tight as we still had a long trip in front of us, so 80 baht could be negotiated, but the short times - 40 baht, never heard of cheaper & these girls weren't just pretty they were dynamite in the sack.

Only regret was leaving  a day early. There was an open air bar by the bus station, where we sat having a beer waiting for departure. The entertainment was a young singer, definitely one of the prettiest Thai girls I ever saw. And she could sing. What wouldn't I do for a classy chick like her?

We sat for more than an hour, I think the bus was delayed, anyway I remember there were shop windows right next to where we were sitting & after she had finished I was idly looking at one of these shops displays, when I realised she was standing close by. I finally got up the courage to speak to her to realise she wanted to spend the night with me. At that moment the bus was boarding & I thought I just have time to grab my backpack & stay.

That's what I would do today, but that night it was all too hard. Still hard remembering her !    

Doubt I would have ever left.

Still haven't mentioned Pattaya. I will post something later. I am trying not to drone on.    

[stogie bear]

(Fred_Nguyen @ Jan. 19 2008,21:17)

(pacman @ Jan. 13 2008,16:10) Back then I really was a hansum man. What happened?

You went broke!

[stogie bear]

Thanks pacman... Great to hear about those stories of the old days. You can't buy that stuff.

[pacman]

(stogie bear @ Jan. 20 2008,13:31) Thanks pacman... Great to hear about those stories of the old days. You can't buy that stuff.  

High praise indeed, SB. Thanks.    

I hoped to trigger a few memories & responses from some of the old hands, the guys who were had been on the ground well before I arrived. I met a few but I guess if they had kept up their wicked ways through the 80's they would all have died from AIDS.

I suspect that would have been my fate & it was fortunate I gave LOS a bypass for much of that period. There were condoms available, the girls in Chiang Mai insisted on them & all carried there own. But in Bangkok, there was never seemed to be the time to go to the trouble. Once you had one of those little nut brown bodies naked & squirming the little head took complete control.    

And I won't hear that feminist crap about sexual exploitation. If the sex stopped before they had finished you could expect a telling off at least, but many times they would hit you in frustration. We all experienced it & I grin at the memory of when I realised that we just might be getting used. Some only wanted money, the young, pretty ones who we sought wanted orgasms more. When we found a sexually compatilble partner, the payments stopped & they stayed while the action kept coming.    

Don't believe me? Ask my father about the Thai girl who rang me a week after I arrived home. By coincidence she had been given a ticket to my home town - a long story, and one morning I was woken to be told there was a girl on the phone who sounded foreign. She had professed her love for me at the airport as I was leaving & I was sorry to be leaving this 40 kilo fucking machine.

In typical Thai style, heart over-ruling the head, she had followed me 7 days later, with the idea that we would continue. That got complicated & I hope she found happiness.

And the connection we shared? Unbelievable sex. I can picture her now standing in the Grace Hotel, giving me this look, we all know the look I am talking about ! The first thing she said to me : "My name Frog. You fuck Frog, you never forget Frog."

And I never will.      

Pattaya to come . . . . and the first time I saw a beautiful girl . . . who wasn't a girl.    

[stogie bear]

I hoped to trigger a few memories & responses from some of the old hands...

Here's something I heard from a surviving member of the old school...

He said "It used to be a lot brighter... you could see the sky!"

He was referring to Sukhumvit in the days before the BTS opened! Dunno why that stuck with me, but it did.

[pacman]

30 years between visits to Pattaya & what happened? Where did all the coconut trees go? And when did they put up all those apartments? And traffic lights, one way traffic, Walking Street, what's going on here?

It looks like they paved paradise & put up a parking lot. Sorry, Joni Mitchell put it better than I ever could.

I remember the drive down was mostly through jungle, or so it seemed. The dirty ribbon of a beach was then a broad sandy beach with houses opposite. The water was cleaner, the whole place felt like a Thai village with a town centre.

And that was the Marine Bar. The first Marine Bar, open front, huge sound system, heaving mass of drinkers & dancers with only a few inadequate fans to cool the place down. Everyone went there & no-one left sober or alone. Many more girls than guys, scarcely dressed just grabbing every guy who wanted to come in.

And did we ever want to go in.    

It was so hot, every one was sweating & we poured Singha down our throats like there was no tomorrow. I never see anywhere today in LOS where there is the sexual tension like there was in the Marine Bar in 1976. There was a real hierarchy amongst the girls, I remember turning from the company I was talking to when a couple of cuties walked past & they were immediately threatened in Thai to leave. Which they did, too afraid to talk to me again.

The ring leader was a tall beauty with big tits who kept thrusting her hips into me. I found her quite intimidating, but strangely alluring. My fate was sealed, her ego was now on the line with her peers & I had to take her home or I knew something bad could happen.

Sound ridiculous? Read on . . .

Very pissed I made some weak excuse I had to go. She grabbed me & said she was coming with me. No argument but I thought once back on the street I could get away from her. Tell her I was tired & she wouldn't lose face.    

What was I thinking? This was no longer about losing face, she needed fucking. There were simply not enough tourists to keep them all occupied & it was only six months ago they were being shafted daily by the R&R boys coming over from Nam. Back at her room I was threatened with the biggest glass ashtray if I tried to leave. She promised to smash my head. Boy, that sure woke me up.

One part of me didn't want to leave but drunk as I was I wondered what she thought I was capable of in the sack. I guess the adrenalin rush from mixing sexual excitement with sheer terror got me excited in spite of myself.    

She was the first time I ever experienced that uniquely Thai style of sex, where she is on top with one foot alongside your chest & the other leg at full stretch. With superb muscle control they can lower themselves onto you & slowly raise themselves up & down until climax. They seem to come quickly & my date that night was a sex-star. I may have been drunk but I remember she went off like the 4th of July. First she wanted to kill me, then after she was kissing & cuddling me like a girlfriend.

Lunchtime the next day when we awoke, she wasn't that interested in me. There was no offer for a farewell fuck,  just paid her some money & I left, hungover & confused. What had happened here? Had I just been raped? I certainly enjoyed the sex but the terror she instilled in me had me as frightened as I can ever remember in my life.

There were not many bars in Pattaya then, hard to believe now, but there was a place along what is now Beach Road we would visit. There was a small stage with 5 girls dancing max. A few lookers but the one who appealed to me kept to herself & would only talk to the other girls. One night I thought I would grab her, maybe she had no English, but the universal sign language would leave her in no doubt to my intentions. Sitting up close to the stage, I waited for her to finish dancing. The girls would go off to a mirror to tend to make-up, etc, out of sight of the customers. I was in the only seat in the place that if I looked over my shoulder I could see them.

My girl at first fiddled with her hair, then started adjusting her top, suddenly unsnapping it to fix her bra or something. My heart was racing because the next thing she had dropped it to her waist. There was no bra because there were NO TITS.

I sat there dumbfounded. I am in lust with a boy ! I need a beer.

I left alone that night. At the guesthouse I stopped at the floor below mine to see where my mates were, & hitting the stairs, who is coming up behind me but her, . . I mean him. She was staying in the same place. Recognising me she gave me a big smile & disappeared into her room. Not a word was spoken & I went to bed completely confused. I kept thinking of knocking on the door, inviting myself in, then I would snap out of it. Have to stop thinking this, I am not gay, but her beautiful face haunted my dreams, that night & many since.

Nearly forgot about the owner of that bar. A Thai girl who had been left very wealthy by the death of her husband, an American serviceman. One of our group had a thing going with her & she invited us out for a day. Arriving early, we piled into a big 4WD [an SUV without the luxury], her father was there to drive & we headed off for a swimming spot. I thought we going a few miles down the coast, but hours later after driving 100 plus miles through jungle, we came to a beautiful waterfall.

The water was freezing but after being in a truck with no air-con it was heaven. Several hours were spent in one of the most amazing places I have ever seen. After lunch a couple of us swam across the river only to meet up with some soldiers. They were the size of school boys, in brown uniforms, carrying a lot of weaponry. A couple were having a dip in their undies & we walked over to the two who weren't.

"G'day, you speak English?"

Nothing but they invited us to sit down & offered us a drink of Mekong. Never much fancied that Thai whiskey but a swig tasted good that day.    

"Show us your guns." was met with an enthusiastic response. I don't know how those fellows carried the big rifles they had with them, but I was more interested in the semi-automatic hand guns they had.

Never held one in my life till Thailand now I was holding the best I had seen on the trip. It was a Browning, still remember the name stamped on it. After a while we bade farewell & we all stood around shaking each others hands. Good blokes. They didn't have to say anything, their smiles said it all.    

When we swam back, I could tell something had happened. Our host, May, was beside herself. The fellows we were drinking whiskey with were Khmer Rouge & she was sure if weren't kidnapped we were going to be shot. She could not be convinced that they were fine. It's funny, had she warned us of them before we saw them I wouldn't have gone near them but I guess seeing a couple of foreigners out in the middle of the jungle must have seemed more amazing to them.

Amazing Thailand. Where you can encounter more than you bargained for.