Forget about Angkor Wat... Pattaya it's where it's at!
After trekking like Stanley and Livingstone up and down the umbelievable temples of Cambodia, we crossed back into much more developed Thailand and visited the biggest whoring capital of the world: Pattaya, a place where the tackiest nacos from all over the world converge to get cheap Thai prostitutes of both sexes. The first thing I saw in downtown Pattaya was a sea of bobbing bald white heads belonging to wrinkled European old farts who hang out with young-er Thai women. Some are here on holiday, but many pensioners make it their home, eventually marrying their whores or whoring eternally. Pattaya beach is an enormous wholesale brothel but it is a rather festive affair; and it feels like a perpetual San Gennaro of sex. I am sure there is plenty of sordidness but what we saw was rather chaste (by design; I won't pay to witness too much human degradation).
The most depressing part was the ennui of the young guys and girls who parade themselves on stage for someone to take them (they have a number and you pick them as you would the nicest sack of potatoes at the market). At a gay place, the guys didn't even bother dancing. They just stood there grabbing their packages rather absentmindedly. They were winking at us three girls on the off chance we were looking to pay for sex and their winks were sweet and cheesy, almost innocent rather than alluring. I was a bit embarassed for them. The highlight of the night was a fabulous drag show we caught at a cabaret called Boyz, an old fashioned affair of glamour, feathers and sequins with Marilyn, Beyonce and your garden variety universal divas and their enthusiastic male chorus boys and it was fabulous. I applauded wildly. At last, talent was involved.
Then we went to a titty bar where nice looking young women were mostly phoning it in. I liked that they had nice, natural bodies and were not grotesquely pumped up with plastic. But they seemed exhausted and dispirited. They only make significant money if someone takes them off the stage. On what they call the Walking Street there are bars that cater to Russians, imported blondes for Asian men, fluoresecent lit hookah bars for Arabs, and whores for every nationality. For a country that seems endowed with prosperity (at least compared to its neighbors) there are sure way too many people whoring themselves to make money.
But as in Bangkok's Nana Entertainment Complex, an actual mall of three stories of sex bars and sex shows, the entire thing feels breezy and carefree, refreshingly shameless: something I have never seen anywhere else.
After trekking like Stanley and Livingstone up and down the umbelievable temples of Cambodia, we crossed back into much more developed Thailand and visited the biggest whoring capital of the world: Pattaya, a place where the tackiest nacos from all over the world converge to get cheap Thai prostitutes of both sexes. The first thing I saw in downtown Pattaya was a sea of bobbing bald white heads belonging to wrinkled European old farts who hang out with young-er Thai women. Some are here on holiday, but many pensioners make it their home, eventually marrying their whores or whoring eternally. Pattaya beach is an enormous wholesale brothel but it is a rather festive affair; and it feels like a perpetual San Gennaro of sex. I am sure there is plenty of sordidness but what we saw was rather chaste (by design; I won't pay to witness too much human degradation).
The most depressing part was the ennui of the young guys and girls who parade themselves on stage for someone to take them (they have a number and you pick them as you would the nicest sack of potatoes at the market). At a gay place, the guys didn't even bother dancing. They just stood there grabbing their packages rather absentmindedly. They were winking at us three girls on the off chance we were looking to pay for sex and their winks were sweet and cheesy, almost innocent rather than alluring. I was a bit embarassed for them. The highlight of the night was a fabulous drag show we caught at a cabaret called Boyz, an old fashioned affair of glamour, feathers and sequins with Marilyn, Beyonce and your garden variety universal divas and their enthusiastic male chorus boys and it was fabulous. I applauded wildly. At last, talent was involved.
Then we went to a titty bar where nice looking young women were mostly phoning it in. I liked that they had nice, natural bodies and were not grotesquely pumped up with plastic. But they seemed exhausted and dispirited. They only make significant money if someone takes them off the stage. On what they call the Walking Street there are bars that cater to Russians, imported blondes for Asian men, fluoresecent lit hookah bars for Arabs, and whores for every nationality. For a country that seems endowed with prosperity (at least compared to its neighbors) there are sure way too many people whoring themselves to make money.
But as in Bangkok's Nana Entertainment Complex, an actual mall of three stories of sex bars and sex shows, the entire thing feels breezy and carefree, refreshingly shameless: something I have never seen anywhere else.
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On my first or second trip to Thailand -- I was 6 or 9 -- my uncle took me and the whole family to Pattaya to watch a drag show. I was SO CONFUSED. That's a woman because she wears makeup. WAIT! She's not wearing a top and she has no breasts. WAIT! NONE of these women have breasts. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
ReplyDeleteThai people and sex -- it really is a trail mix up in that psyche.