Pattaya, Thailand

Thailand is budget friendly. A 5 star hotel costs a little over $100 a night. The food is good and not too expensive. I’m sure there are cheaper hotels and restaurants farther from the beach. The gogo bars don’t charge an entrance fee, but you’re expected to buy a drink immediately. You can sip a beer, check the dancers out and then leave if you don’t like what you see. A beer is $3 to $6. The best 2 bars I’ve found are Pin-Up and XS. They seem to have the same ownership. They have 90 to 100 dancers every night, which gives you a lot of choice. Every girl wears a little round badge with a number on it like 295 or 444. You can ask a waitress to have a dancer come see you. The dancers with money by having you buy them lady drinks. After a few drinks together, they will start asking you to buy drinks for the waitress and other staff. The lady drinks, I believe, have little or no alcohol. However, the dancer gets commission on these drinks. This is much like American strip clubs. The dancers make their real money by going back to the hotel rooms of the customers. Unlike American strip clubs, all of this is done in the open. Nobody cares that you take a dancer out to have sex. You must pay a “bar fine” to the club for the loss of her services for a time. And you have to pay the girl. The prices seem to be set depending on the club in the Dancer. You might be able to negotiate a better price with the dancer but I haven’t tried. I did not fly halfway around the world to save 30 to 50 bucks. I’m paying more in Pattaya than I did in Bangkok. In Bangkok the bar fine was 1500 Thai baht ($50) and the bar girl was 3000 to 4000 TB ($100 to $133). Here in Pattaya the bar fines have been 2500 TB ($83) and the bar girls 5000 TB ($166). That’s still a bargain to have a young lady spend an hour or two in your hotel. The higher prices may have something to do with the bars here having “models.” The models, who seem to be just very good looking dancers, go for a higher price. I’ve been to Thailand four times. The first three times were in Bangkok. This is my first time in Pattaya. On Walking Street you see a lot of single white men, mostly middle-aged, dorks, and geriatric tricks. I’m a geriatric trick. Pattaya would have a lot of advantages as a retirement home. The girls being the greatest advantage. But it is so damn hot here . you need to go to the beach early in the morning because by noon you don’t want to be out in the sun. In the evening as soon as the sun sets it cools off considerably and a breeze comes off the sea, making it much more pleasant. Lady boys are not as big a problem as many people seem to believe. I’ve seen a few lady boys outside the lady boy clubs. But they are not in the go-go bars set up for men. If you want to pick up a freelance prostitute on the street, you may want to ask her if she is a boy. They are not trying to fool anyone and they would not want to go back to someone’s hotel room and be subjected to anger and violence.

It was 27 hours from leaving Detroit to arriving in Bangkok. Two stops. I think the leg from US to Doha, Qatar, was 14.5 hours. I was going to Asia anyway. So I might as well visit Pattaya. It’s like drowning in girls.