#1 Soi Cowboy

Waking up in a foreign land is a lot like waking up in any other place except to say that if you need something it takes a bit more doing to get it.

On the car ride from the airport after a thirty-six hour travel day I took in the sights of Bangkok. There is nothing remarkable about the route we took to my hotel, there were no large beautiful buildings and no real scenery to speak of except for a mass of filthy freeway interchanges, decrepit buildings, and traffic that held to no standard of organization. My cab driver had a shrine in the back of his cab that lit up all red and blue when he hit his brakes. Every time he broke I freaked out because not only were we slowing but there were red and blue lights flashing behind me. “Great,” I thought, “half an hour on the ground and I'm already having problems with the cops.”

When I woke up the next morning I took a walk around the neighborhood where my hotel and company were located. The hotel didn't have a map, can you believe that? I eventually ran into a subway which I took to one of the more known parts of town. The main drag was fine and I knew that I'd be back to seek out all the little gems the area had to offer but I was possessed with a mission to find a typical Bangkok neighborhood. One where I would be the only westerner.

It took me some time to find it although I eventually did, and as I went I walked by a side street that had a sign reading “Teen Massage,” an alluring invitation to observe just how forward this culture could be. Half way down the street I realized that there were only massage parlors on either side and as the girls cat called to me I smiled and wondered if I came down this street for more than just the spectacle. These girls were all dressed rather provocatively for Thai culture but I'd seen American girls dressed more provocatively on the way to high school.

My search for the hood I wanted was long. I would wander off the main street and when I got too far off I would grab a motorcycle taxi back to the main drag. At first I paid the dollar and a quarter charge but after the third such trip I realized that I could get by for just eighty cents, bastards didn't even have an extra helmet for me.. Three motorcycle taxis later I found the hood I'd been looking for.

Two stories high on each side and patch worked with peach and tan plaster when there was plaster. Mostly the plaster had fallen away and the bricks that had been used to build the houses up were bare. Clothes hung out of all the windows and there were many little balconies the protrude out from the windows a foot or two. The neighborhood looked like it once might have been built to quite a high standard but now it had fallen into a disrepair that poverty and weather had ushered upon it. Motorcycle mechanics and tailors all sat out on the cobblestone street that had no sidewalks. There are occasionally barbers who mostly work out of old dentist's

chairs. At one such place there was a middle aged man sitting in a seat and next to him in a folding chair was an elderly man who had no teeth. I wonder to myself if this is the product of such work. Little children scurried through the building's open doors and played games, the cars and motorbikes that occasionally passed by stoped for them as though they were royalty, these same cars nearly hit me as they drove by. It was an odd feeling being in that neighborhood. It felt like being in a strangers bedroom. There was nothing of note there and I was nothing else but a tourist, but not even a tourist because there was nothing there that was meant to be seen. I think to myself, “I am only a foreigner here, one who is unwelcome.”

Earlier in the day a light breeze had begun and ended in the space of a few minutes and again this began as I walked through the double tall dwellings that made up this neighborhood, only this time the rain intensified. In ten minutes it turned into a thick rain the likes of which I was sure I would need to get used to. I moved quickly through the streets looking for a way out but it took me some time to find a major street that offered any shelter at all. As I looked through the four lanes of traffic I saw no taxis and realized that this food stand vendor's umbrella I was taking shelter under was insufficient. The wind blew in sideways and the umbrella was becoming less and less helpful when a Tuk Tuk pulled up across the street and the driver moved from the front seat to the back to sit and wait for the rain to end.

I can best describe a Tuk Tuk as a motorized rickshaw. Two people fit in the back seat spaciously and there are no doors or windows save a miniscule windshield to keep the dust and dirt from slapping you in the face. They are always brightly colored with many greens, blues, and yellows.

A Tuk tuk

I ran across the street and jumped in the back seat of the Tuk Tuk right next to the driver who was greatly surprised. I told him the name of the street, the only name I knew in fact, and once he understood me we bargained a bit and agreed on a dollar to get back to Sukhumvit. As we whipped through the winding neighborhood streets bouncing over speed bumps and rocking in the strong winds I was taken aback at the beauty. Everywhere there were trees that were exotic to me, walls that looked like they should be on a movie set, everything covered in vines and all the while popping over bridges that spanned canals and drainage aqueducts. It was the most beautiful thing I could remember seeing since I hiked through the Eastern Sierra Mountains two years ago.

The Tuk Tuk driver dropped me off at the Asok BTS station, which is their elevated train, and luckily there was a western bar right next to it. I walked in and sat down. My book was accordioned and slightly spongy but the print was all legible so I ordered a beer and began reading, not knowing when the rain would stop but hoping it would be soon. After about half an hour a British man came into the bar and sat down a few seats over from me and I asked him if it was still raining as I couldn't see very well out of the windows of the bar. He said it was and we began talking. He said he was in town for the football match, Bangkok vs. Khonken FC, he was the assistant coach. I asked him why he didn't travel with the team and he said it was his first year and it just wasn't required. He was wearing a tie and so I figured, different country different customs. We were talking for a short while when his girlfriend came to meet us. The Englishman could have been anywhere from his mid twenties to mid thirties and his girlfriend, who was Thai, could have been twelve or twenty-eight. He invited me to the game if the rain let up and they actually got to play so after an hour when the rain stopped he made a call and we grabbed a taxi to the stadium.

Cherry is the girl in the long blue dress.

A Khonken FC supporter

When we arrived at the stadium it became clear that what he meant by assistant coach was avid supporter, and what he meant by girlfriend was paid escort. To be fair the girl was quite sweet and I spent more time talking to her than I spent talking to him. They had said that prostitution was more social here and so far it appeared they were right. The Brit had a wife in the north east of Thailand, which is the poorest part of Thailand where most of the farming goes on. The area is notorious for producing wives for western men. The soccer game was fun except that it became obvious that Daniel (the brit) was actually quite drunk and he had decided that Cherry (the thai girlfriend/escort) liked me and would rather spend the evening with me than him. He took no offense and in fact was quite amused by how we hit it off. Cherry tried to pay for her own ticket, which I didn't allow as the tickets were my responsibility since Daniel had paid the cab fare, and then she went and got Daniel and I some food from a street vendor, a nice gesture that really just made my stomach a bit unsettled. Once the game was over we found a taxi to take us to a bar that Daniel and Cherry were set on going to but the taxi wanted to charge a bit more than Daniel was willing to pay so he jumped out of the taxi and literally ran across the street, jumped over the median, and headed down and out of sight. Cherry and I were a bit stunned at his sudden departure, I mean he literally ran away from us and now I was stuck with a Thai prostitute on my first day in Bangkok, not a position I had envisioned myself in.

Now I know that for most of you this would be quite an uncomfortable situation, but in Thailand the culture does not permit any sort of open conflict, and prostitution is so common and visible that an interracial couple would probably feel more awkward in America than a white man with a prostitute in Bangkok. That being said I did personally feel rather uncomfortable but as I talked to Cherry, who's real name I would later find out was Tonkhaw, she struck me as very nice and quite engaging. I thought that perhaps down the road I would like to pay her also, but not for sex, to hear some stories and find out what the underbelly of this sort of prostitution really looked like.

Cherry assured me that Daniel was headed to the bar that was agreed upon and that we need only get there. I wasn't about to pay for a taxi for us so we headed for the BTS and after she led us astray on it I took over navigation and brought us to where we had to go. Apparently she was quite useless when it came to directions. While we were in transit I tried explaining to her that Daniel wasn't really the kind of guy that I wanted to be around and that I would rather go find my own way in the evening. She said that really he was a very nice guy but that they'd been up all night the night before and he'd been drinking whiskey since six in the morning and so he was a little drunk. I wanted to leave but I was worried that he might be mad at her if she showed up at the bar without me and that it might reflect badly on her. I was quite sure by now that this bar had some arrangement with Cherry to bring her customers to it and that it was in fact one of the famous Thai go-go bars.

On the train ride there Cherry ran into one of her friends from the bar and they began talking incessantly. I had read about how close these girls get because they support each other through tough times and rely on each other for everything from mothering and sisterhood to help with abusive boyfriends and disease. Her friend was about four foot ten and with an old man that was six feet tall and terribly unattractive. I didn't say a word to him, I gave him one smile and ignored him as politely as I could. The whole situation was getting more and more awkward by the minute.

The street where the bar was was lined with go-go bars, strip clubs, and western bars. Out in front of every single place, whether it was a proper go-go bar or not, there were women, who to varying degrees appeared to be there for the taking. It was also here that I saw what I had originally expected to see everywhere, which was women wearing ridiculous outfits, the kind you would expect to see coming out of a Japanese anime. When we entered the bar the only Thai men in the place were playing in the band, which played covers of western songs, and they were in fact quite good. I had been told that Thai men have their own go-go bars and western men are not allowed in.

Daniel was drinking and dancing at a table and because I entered with Cherry none of the girls followed me in so it was just the three of us until Peter and his girl came and sat down with us. Peter bought us all shots of whiskey otherwise I would have been gone right away. To be fair though the bar had quite a nice atmosphere and there were women that were past their young years floating around socializing and every one of them with a personality that shone through brilliantly. I suppose that's what they're paid for. After I took the shot that Peter bought me he began to look less repulsive and I began to talk with him a bit. He was Swiss and had been to forty different US states. Despite his predilection for small Thai women he really did favor travel as a hobby and I imagine he'd seen quite a lot of Thailand. I bought him a shot of whiskey and straight away he thanked me and handed me a Swiss army knife. If nothing else about this evening was worth it, which is not true anyway, then that Swiss army knife made it a worthwhile evening.

We left the go-go bar, which was called Soi Cowboy, and went across the street. Across the street was another band made up of Thai men but it also had a Thai woman and Daniel said that the keyboard player in this band was quite good, he was right. After the set of music was over we went back to Soi Cowboy, which translates to Cowboy Street, and this time a Thai woman followed me in. She had fair skin, fairer than mine, and she was dressed more provocatively than the other girls in the bar. Apparently she was an outright prostitute that the bar paid to hang around and bring them prestige because of her skills. As girls walked by she would whisper in my ear, “I fuck better than her.” While I didn't doubt her skill I also didn't doubt that caution in a country with an HIV rate of about four percent was a great skill to practice. After a few minutes of watching the band she began putting her hands all over me and I eventually looked her dead in the face and said, “Look, I'm not going to pay you for sex.” “I give you big discount, you pretty like movie star,” she said. I seriously doubted her honesty on this point and despite her own beauty, in fact the most beautiful girl I'd seen that night, I said to her again, “I'm not going to pay you so you should find some other guy.” “No no,” she said, “tonight I take night off, I like you, I know hotel nearby.” I was not amused and shortly there after I left, making sure she, nor anyone else was following me.

Eventually I found an ex-pat bar that had been recommended to me earlier in the day and this bar had girls as well, like all the other bars, but these girls were much less interested in forcing money out of you for sex and were happy to simply sit and talk with you, or not, if that was your preference. While I was there I befriended a group of older men who were being a bit raucous in the corner of the bar. I began talking with them, a better group of guys to meet right off I don't think I could have asked for. Two five star chefs at local restaurants, a man who owned a cultural exchange company and another who politely excused himself from telling me what he did. After he left the others told me that he was involved in manufacturing and that it was all quite political and sensitive because there was so much bribe money that went around. The boys were great but it got late and I grabbed a cab back to my room. A twenty minute ride that cost about three dollars.

When I finally laid down I reflected for only a moment before I fell asleep. The breadth of people I'd met, the experiences I'd had, all I'd seen and all I'd eaten, if this was all Thailand had to offer I'd catch the next flight home but I knew better than that. As it stands now I've been here just over one full week and tomorrow I leave with four South Africans for Lao to go floating down a river filled with rope swings and bars on the banks that throw lines out to you and pull you in for a drink before sending you on your way.

Good bye my friends, and let me leave you with this, please think of me every time you toss a piece of garbage into a waste bin on the street, because in Thailand there are none, so I won't be doing that for quite some time.

Be careful, this cute cat has ringworm.

Some men painting the side of a building on the end of ropes.

A popular way to defend your home.

My new shades. One of the South Africans I'm going to Lao with picked them out.