The City of Angels... sorta
I haven't used LiveJournal in ages. I hope the link to my Facebook is still working and that this posts as a note there. The advantage of Facebook is that it's quick and easy and (almost) all my friends are using it. The downside of the quick part is that you only get the vaguest outline of an idea, while LiveJournal allows you write a lengthy discussion on your thoughts about a topic. It's also much more fun to read looking back.
So, I'm in Bangkok. Well, maybe not by the time I find a stable Internet connection and post this, but as I'm typing it, I'm in Bangkok. I'm really not too sure what I was expecting when I came here. I slated a week of time, more than enough to get a feel for any city. I've certainly gotten a feel for Bangkok. It's an amazing city, a city of colours and contrasts, of ups and downs, highs and lows. A city where almost any desire is catered to, one way or another. I'm fairly sure that if I lost my passport then the strange little man at the markets could get a new one for me far faster than the embassy. I think it'd almost certainly pass as well, despite the claims of chip technology having stopped all that.
One of the things I've done here that is fairly unique to Bangkok is to explore its stunningly diverse gay scene. Parts of it are spectacular, parts of it are mundane. Parts of it you won't find anywhere else in the world, or at least not as easily. Parts of it have left me conflicted. The gay go-go bar is one such area. For those who don't know, these bars are effectively pimps. That's drastically simplifying what goes one there, but that's the crux of it. You walk in, you pick a 'boy' and then you walk out with your purchase. At first I was mildly horrified, but then I got a grip. Prostitution has been going on for thousands of years. No one is going to stamp it out now, might as well be upfront about it. Plus these bars do shows etc. and are worth having a look at. But who wants to walk into a bar by themselves? Especially when you have no idea about how it all works. As luck would have it, I met two Singaporean guys at my hotel who knew the scene well. We had dinner and then they took me to one of the tamer bars to show me how it operates.
So here's what happens: you walk in and get ushered to a seat very quickly. They then take your drink order, which is massively over-priced. The drink isn't optional, really it's a sort of cover charge. You might pay for it then, or they might pop a container with a little ticket in front of you that they'll keep running up until you leave. There is a stage in front of you and in my case a show was going on. There were drag queens and guys in very little. The show goes on, soon the guys are wearing nothing. Then there's a shower scene. By this point I've kinda warmed to the whole idea of the thing. The show is quite good. Then the show ends. And you get a bunch of guys standing around on stage wearing very little, with numbers pinned on them. I'm slightly confused, "What's this?" I ask my new friends. Basically you use the numbers to pick a guy, they then come over and chat with you. If you like him then you pay the bar a fee (something like 350-400baht) and you get to take the guy. What happens after that is up to you two. Yeah, the bar is a pimp and you pay them upfront. Bang, I've gone from warming to the idea back to mildly horrified. The show is over, so we wander back out onto the Soi (what they call streets here) and take a bit of a walk. We end up outside a place called Tawan. My friends are going to head back home, but they suggest I go in and check it out, by myself. I'm nervous as hell about doing this, but a couple of other guys have suggested that Tawan will be somewhere I'll like, so I bite the bullet and head inside by myself.
Much like the previous bar Tawan is a bunch of seats facing towards a stage. The show seems to not be running at the moment and there's just a bunch of guys in their underwear standing on stage looking passive. Everyone was right though, Tawan is somewhere I like cause it has exactly my type of guys on display, at least physically anyway. I get a drink and settle in. I've warmed back up to the idea again. The guys rotate around the stage going on and off. One of them comes up to me, sits down and starts talking. HIs English isn't great, but it is passable. He talks for a while to me and then subtly, one of the staff comes up near me and says something along the lines of, "You want take boy?" Ugh, that was a jarring thing to have happen. Alright, so the guy is standing there talking to me in his underwear, I shouldn't be surprised I've been asked, but it did kind of jolt me back to what these are all about. I indicate negative and say something about just exploring some of the nightlife. The staff member wanders off and I chat some more with the guy. I tip him 100baht (cause I'm told it's customary if you chat to them a while, that or buy them an over-priced drink), finish my drink and go to leave. This is when I get a much better look at the place. Almost everyone in here is late-middle-age or older, over-weight or generally unkempt and horrible looking. I've wandered into a retirement village for gay gentlemen who like young, muscle guys. I'm probably about half the median age. I leave and dwell a bit on the whole thing.
Overall I had fun and I've got to admit I enjoyed talking to the guy, even if I wasn't planning on 'offing' (the term for paying the bar and taking the guy) him or anyone else. The scene here is really not much different to Amsterdam, except that it's much gayer. I decide I'll Google more information about the whole thing and then go back, but pay much more attention to my surroundings and less to the stage. I come across Dancing With The Devil in The City of Angels, a fantastic, well written blog about Bangkok's nightlife and the gay go-go scene in particular. Reading through the posts gets me up to speed on pretty much everything and answers a lot of the questions. Are the guys mostly gay or straight? Mostly straight. How much does one tip a guy afterwards? 1500-2500baht (AU$45-$75). Why do different guys keep asking the exact same seemingly innocent questions? They're sizing up how good a prospect you are. What kind of rabbit hole have I fallen down? A deep one. I feel better armed to try this again.
I go back to Tawan. It seems a good choice. It has guys I like and the staff don't seem too pushy, which is something I've now been told can be a problem in some bars. I go early figuring this way I'll get a better range of things going on to see. I walk in, get a table with a good view and an overpriced drink. The club is quiet, there's only a few customers in here, but since it's early most of the 'stable' (the guys on offer) are still here. The music is playing and they're slowly rotating around the stage. Since there's about 30 of them and the stage fits about 4 they come on and off. I observe closely what's going on. My curiosity about the whole thing is going to get me into trouble, but I'm determined to figure it all out. When the guys are not on stage they do a range of things. Some of them might approach a guy, some sit around and read the paper. Some work out on a small gym machine in one corner of the club. Some sit around talking and mucking around with each other. Some put their shirt back on and some just stay in their underwear.
More people are entering the club. Some do pretty much what I'm doing, sit and watch. Some come in, watch briefly, select a guy and then leave. I start to notice a trend in the groups of guys. There are actually plenty of guys around my age coming in. However they're all Asian (presumably from wealthier cities like Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore etc.) and they don't hang around. They come in, watch for 10 minutes or so to see the whole stable, select a guy and leave. On the other hand, all of the white guys are much older than I am and do seem to want to hang around and watch.
I've been observing the comings and goings for about an hour when the place seems to suddenly start getting much more crowded. The music gets louder and the show starts. The ladyboys come out and lip-sync to various Thai hits. I like a good drag show, but it does kind of ruin the testosterone laden atmosphere that Tawan has going for it. Then some of the guys get up and do various bodybuilding style poses. I'm not really into that, but a few people seem to be loving every second of it. Then there is a short sex show, of which I will spare you the gruesome details. I conclude that the shows are not a reason to visit this particular club. Even though it's more explicit than the show I saw at the other club, it's just not very interesting. The show ends and the guys get up and start slowly rotating again. The club drains in minutes. A few people quickly off various guys, but most just pay up their drink tab and leave. Then I notice something else, some of the guys that I've seen getting offed are now back on the stage. Presumably they have finished their business with their client and are back to find more. I later find out that a lot of Tawan's clients are into 'muscle worship', which means they pretty much just want to see the guy pose and rub him down, meaning the guy can come back and be good to go again. I've concluded that my curiosity is satisfied. It's time to pay for the orange juice I've been nursing for the last two hours and leave.
Then suddenly there's a huge dark figure right next to me. This guy is about a foot shorter than I am but has about 25kg on me, all of it pure muscle. He's also incredibly cute and has a grin on his face that is lighting up the, admittedly dingy, room. "Hi," he says, thrusting his hand into mine, "I'm Tong." I stammer out some kind of reply and he asks me the usual questions, then asks the key one. "You want me to come back to hotel with you?" The logical part of my brain immediately kicks in. "Thanks, but I'm just exploring the nightlife tonight," I reply. "No problem," he grins back at me, scoots a bit closer, "So, what you do in Perth?" he asks. A staff member starts to approach, presumably to ask if I want to take him, but he quickly shoos him away. And we spend the next thirty minutes or so chatting. Eventually we wrap it up, after all he needs to get back to finding clients who actually will pay. I tip him 200baht, it really has been fun chatting with him. He shakes my hand, grins massively at me and then suddenly pulls me in and kisses me. "Enjoy Bangkok," he says and wanders off. I walk out of the club grinning like a damn idiot.
If you've read this far, well done. Here's my conclusions. What have I learnt? That this scene is nothing like I would have expected. That it is populated and customed by a far more diverse group of people than I would have thought. And that for all the ways these places seem like a meat market, the guys in them are real people. Tong certainly showed me that. If anything was the take-away lesson here, it was that. It's a weird, strange trade, with weird strange customs. But if you sit down and talk with these people, well, they aren't that different to anyone else. It's been a learning curve, but one I'm glad I climbed.
So, I'm in Bangkok. Well, maybe not by the time I find a stable Internet connection and post this, but as I'm typing it, I'm in Bangkok. I'm really not too sure what I was expecting when I came here. I slated a week of time, more than enough to get a feel for any city. I've certainly gotten a feel for Bangkok. It's an amazing city, a city of colours and contrasts, of ups and downs, highs and lows. A city where almost any desire is catered to, one way or another. I'm fairly sure that if I lost my passport then the strange little man at the markets could get a new one for me far faster than the embassy. I think it'd almost certainly pass as well, despite the claims of chip technology having stopped all that.
One of the things I've done here that is fairly unique to Bangkok is to explore its stunningly diverse gay scene. Parts of it are spectacular, parts of it are mundane. Parts of it you won't find anywhere else in the world, or at least not as easily. Parts of it have left me conflicted. The gay go-go bar is one such area. For those who don't know, these bars are effectively pimps. That's drastically simplifying what goes one there, but that's the crux of it. You walk in, you pick a 'boy' and then you walk out with your purchase. At first I was mildly horrified, but then I got a grip. Prostitution has been going on for thousands of years. No one is going to stamp it out now, might as well be upfront about it. Plus these bars do shows etc. and are worth having a look at. But who wants to walk into a bar by themselves? Especially when you have no idea about how it all works. As luck would have it, I met two Singaporean guys at my hotel who knew the scene well. We had dinner and then they took me to one of the tamer bars to show me how it operates.
So here's what happens: you walk in and get ushered to a seat very quickly. They then take your drink order, which is massively over-priced. The drink isn't optional, really it's a sort of cover charge. You might pay for it then, or they might pop a container with a little ticket in front of you that they'll keep running up until you leave. There is a stage in front of you and in my case a show was going on. There were drag queens and guys in very little. The show goes on, soon the guys are wearing nothing. Then there's a shower scene. By this point I've kinda warmed to the whole idea of the thing. The show is quite good. Then the show ends. And you get a bunch of guys standing around on stage wearing very little, with numbers pinned on them. I'm slightly confused, "What's this?" I ask my new friends. Basically you use the numbers to pick a guy, they then come over and chat with you. If you like him then you pay the bar a fee (something like 350-400baht) and you get to take the guy. What happens after that is up to you two. Yeah, the bar is a pimp and you pay them upfront. Bang, I've gone from warming to the idea back to mildly horrified. The show is over, so we wander back out onto the Soi (what they call streets here) and take a bit of a walk. We end up outside a place called Tawan. My friends are going to head back home, but they suggest I go in and check it out, by myself. I'm nervous as hell about doing this, but a couple of other guys have suggested that Tawan will be somewhere I'll like, so I bite the bullet and head inside by myself.
Much like the previous bar Tawan is a bunch of seats facing towards a stage. The show seems to not be running at the moment and there's just a bunch of guys in their underwear standing on stage looking passive. Everyone was right though, Tawan is somewhere I like cause it has exactly my type of guys on display, at least physically anyway. I get a drink and settle in. I've warmed back up to the idea again. The guys rotate around the stage going on and off. One of them comes up to me, sits down and starts talking. HIs English isn't great, but it is passable. He talks for a while to me and then subtly, one of the staff comes up near me and says something along the lines of, "You want take boy?" Ugh, that was a jarring thing to have happen. Alright, so the guy is standing there talking to me in his underwear, I shouldn't be surprised I've been asked, but it did kind of jolt me back to what these are all about. I indicate negative and say something about just exploring some of the nightlife. The staff member wanders off and I chat some more with the guy. I tip him 100baht (cause I'm told it's customary if you chat to them a while, that or buy them an over-priced drink), finish my drink and go to leave. This is when I get a much better look at the place. Almost everyone in here is late-middle-age or older, over-weight or generally unkempt and horrible looking. I've wandered into a retirement village for gay gentlemen who like young, muscle guys. I'm probably about half the median age. I leave and dwell a bit on the whole thing.
Overall I had fun and I've got to admit I enjoyed talking to the guy, even if I wasn't planning on 'offing' (the term for paying the bar and taking the guy) him or anyone else. The scene here is really not much different to Amsterdam, except that it's much gayer. I decide I'll Google more information about the whole thing and then go back, but pay much more attention to my surroundings and less to the stage. I come across Dancing With The Devil in The City of Angels, a fantastic, well written blog about Bangkok's nightlife and the gay go-go scene in particular. Reading through the posts gets me up to speed on pretty much everything and answers a lot of the questions. Are the guys mostly gay or straight? Mostly straight. How much does one tip a guy afterwards? 1500-2500baht (AU$45-$75). Why do different guys keep asking the exact same seemingly innocent questions? They're sizing up how good a prospect you are. What kind of rabbit hole have I fallen down? A deep one. I feel better armed to try this again.
I go back to Tawan. It seems a good choice. It has guys I like and the staff don't seem too pushy, which is something I've now been told can be a problem in some bars. I go early figuring this way I'll get a better range of things going on to see. I walk in, get a table with a good view and an overpriced drink. The club is quiet, there's only a few customers in here, but since it's early most of the 'stable' (the guys on offer) are still here. The music is playing and they're slowly rotating around the stage. Since there's about 30 of them and the stage fits about 4 they come on and off. I observe closely what's going on. My curiosity about the whole thing is going to get me into trouble, but I'm determined to figure it all out. When the guys are not on stage they do a range of things. Some of them might approach a guy, some sit around and read the paper. Some work out on a small gym machine in one corner of the club. Some sit around talking and mucking around with each other. Some put their shirt back on and some just stay in their underwear.
More people are entering the club. Some do pretty much what I'm doing, sit and watch. Some come in, watch briefly, select a guy and then leave. I start to notice a trend in the groups of guys. There are actually plenty of guys around my age coming in. However they're all Asian (presumably from wealthier cities like Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore etc.) and they don't hang around. They come in, watch for 10 minutes or so to see the whole stable, select a guy and leave. On the other hand, all of the white guys are much older than I am and do seem to want to hang around and watch.
I've been observing the comings and goings for about an hour when the place seems to suddenly start getting much more crowded. The music gets louder and the show starts. The ladyboys come out and lip-sync to various Thai hits. I like a good drag show, but it does kind of ruin the testosterone laden atmosphere that Tawan has going for it. Then some of the guys get up and do various bodybuilding style poses. I'm not really into that, but a few people seem to be loving every second of it. Then there is a short sex show, of which I will spare you the gruesome details. I conclude that the shows are not a reason to visit this particular club. Even though it's more explicit than the show I saw at the other club, it's just not very interesting. The show ends and the guys get up and start slowly rotating again. The club drains in minutes. A few people quickly off various guys, but most just pay up their drink tab and leave. Then I notice something else, some of the guys that I've seen getting offed are now back on the stage. Presumably they have finished their business with their client and are back to find more. I later find out that a lot of Tawan's clients are into 'muscle worship', which means they pretty much just want to see the guy pose and rub him down, meaning the guy can come back and be good to go again. I've concluded that my curiosity is satisfied. It's time to pay for the orange juice I've been nursing for the last two hours and leave.
Then suddenly there's a huge dark figure right next to me. This guy is about a foot shorter than I am but has about 25kg on me, all of it pure muscle. He's also incredibly cute and has a grin on his face that is lighting up the, admittedly dingy, room. "Hi," he says, thrusting his hand into mine, "I'm Tong." I stammer out some kind of reply and he asks me the usual questions, then asks the key one. "You want me to come back to hotel with you?" The logical part of my brain immediately kicks in. "Thanks, but I'm just exploring the nightlife tonight," I reply. "No problem," he grins back at me, scoots a bit closer, "So, what you do in Perth?" he asks. A staff member starts to approach, presumably to ask if I want to take him, but he quickly shoos him away. And we spend the next thirty minutes or so chatting. Eventually we wrap it up, after all he needs to get back to finding clients who actually will pay. I tip him 200baht, it really has been fun chatting with him. He shakes my hand, grins massively at me and then suddenly pulls me in and kisses me. "Enjoy Bangkok," he says and wanders off. I walk out of the club grinning like a damn idiot.
If you've read this far, well done. Here's my conclusions. What have I learnt? That this scene is nothing like I would have expected. That it is populated and customed by a far more diverse group of people than I would have thought. And that for all the ways these places seem like a meat market, the guys in them are real people. Tong certainly showed me that. If anything was the take-away lesson here, it was that. It's a weird, strange trade, with weird strange customs. But if you sit down and talk with these people, well, they aren't that different to anyone else. It's been a learning curve, but one I'm glad I climbed.