Pattaya Weekend January 2023
Happy Sunday, reader (if you’re reading this at time of posting). I’m typing this on my beach-view balcony in Pattaya, where I’m winding up a weekend in this exciting seaside town.
When a Bangkok monger (Bangkonger for short, copyright BKK7) hits Ptown (short for Pattaya), it’s akin to that scene in Swingers when the LA transplants get psyched up for a trip to Vegas. On the road south, my mind swims with anticipation, and I ignore the quiet voice in the back whispering “I hope it doesn’t all go tits up.” And my Ptown visits often do, because I’m bad at making decisions, and because everything I attempt in life always ends in miserable failure. Overall, though, my short holiday wasn’t a total disaster. Here’s how it shook out…
I rolled in at 2 pm on Friday to find blue sea, hot sun, and cool breezes. So far so good. I checked into my Soi 3 hotel room with a balcony and beach view and popped over to Fat Coco, the restaurant nail-gunned to the front of the At Sea Hotel, hankering for their Thai fusion tacos as advertised on their Facebook. The first hiccup of the trip was finding no tacos on the menu. Staying positive, I pivoted to their truffle salami pizza—a half truth. ‘Twas really a salami pie with truffle oil for 580b++. Ultra-thin crust and small enough for one person. I ordered from their exotic cocktail (exoctail) menu, eyeing the Red Spritz and Lychee Summer. The former was a bitter MF’er, the latter was refreshing and delicious. 280b++ each. I put away the pie in under a minute and sat sipping the drinks in the afternoon breeze. The total bill for this sad sup was 1,341 baht. That was my first and last visit to Fat Coco.
Currently, Ptown resembles a city recovering from a sustained bombardment. Hordes of tourists swarm like fat, sunburned ants around bustling businesses that sit shoulder-to-shoulder with dilapidated, abandoned ones. In response to the return of tourism, a bunch of new and old attractions have sprung to life. The Runway Street Food Market on the 2nd Road is a fun attraction, backdropped by an abandoned passenger plane. Beer bar clusters have popped up and continue to pop up everywhere. There’s even one going in at the back of the Pattaya Night Bazaar. Like the tribbles in that Star Trek episode, they seem to be multiplying faster than available real estate.
Soi 6 looks like 2018 all over again, with so many girls in the bars they can’t all fit inside. They spill out onto the street like chunky gumballs from a broken machine. Some bars are still shuttered, Dolls, Envy, Offshore, and Pussy Club among them.
Tree Town has established itself as a legit Ptown point of interest. The larger eateries were buzzing before 20.00. I got suckered in by a huge billboard for Escape, a joint that touted itself as the biggest gogo in Pattaya. It might be the biggest in terms of square footage, but with only 6 chubsters wobbling around onstage, the size of the place only highlighted how slim the pickings were. But I applaud the trend. The more gogos and beer bars in non-traditional locations, the better. 120b for a SML.
For those who remember the beer bars on the sea side of Walking Street, it looks like Basilisk has reopened in Tree Town. The sheer number of bars in this area makes one’s head spin.
I popped into Prime Burger for a quick snack and a cider. 225 for a single patty burger, no plus-plus. I could’ve eaten four. From there I passed through LK Metro, stopping at Dolls (140b SMLs), and Lady Love (145b SMLs). Botth were teeming with girls and mongers. Spirits were high, dudes in good moods, staff laughing and joking around. After LK, ‘twas a hop-skip to Soi Boomerang where my buddy Dan manages Heaven Above. I inquired about foot traffic. He said business is good. In fact, I’ve never seen him so contented. The last time I hit Boomerang, there were only a few bars, and the only one doing bang-up business was Heaven Above. Now, the number of joints had doubled and everybody’s busy. 50 meters beyond Boomerang is a new gentleman’s club—Dynamite—run by a friend who recently left his job in NanaP to helm this soon-to-be juggernaut (1120b SMLs). With four short-time rooms and a 500b barfine, it’s set to be the new ‘best thing’ on Bukhao.
Then it was on to Walking Street for a couple 50b tiger glasses with Tony in Dollhouse. He casually mentioned that their two bars (Dollhouse and Electric Blue upstairs) recently took in nearly a quarter million baht in a single night. I guess we can safely say that Thailand—or Ptown, at least—is back to normal. Pin-up (160b SMLs) is still the hottest gogo on Walking Street, though some others aren’t far behind. Tantra’s (170b SMLs) girls are superfine, so when you can’t get a seat in Pin-up (a common problem) to ogle the sheer dozens of smoking hot babes, Tantra is an adequate substitute. So is Baccara (95b Chang drafts), where 1—I was the only non-Japanese/non-Chinese (who are somehow here, despite their country’s travel ban) patron and 2—the girls were so hot I about had an aneurism. In current year, Ptown destroys Bangkok when it comes to the staggering number of fantastic-looking dancers.
What’s Up? gogo’s downstairs is still under renovation, but their upstairs is open and buzzing.
Pin-up has addressed their problem of not enough space by opening XS, a huge gogo next door to Fahrenheit. XS doesn’t stand for ‘extra small.” Rather, it’s an abbreviation for what the bar is—a place to send excess Pin-up patrons. Both of these joints are packed with superhot ass. One more word on Pin-up: if you call a girl down offstage to sit with you, you’re obligated to buy her—wait for it—five drinks! Thankyou no-thankyou. I understand why, though. The massive number of holiday chumps who’ll fork that out is literally unfathomable. Get yours, Pin-up. Get yours. Full disclosure, I loved every second in the place. It resembled that scene in From Dusk Till Dawn, before all the strippers turned into vampires. The air was so thick with sex, sensuality, and sin, you could practically choke on it.
The girls of Ptown have adopted a new kind of dance to replace the skytrain shuffle. I call it the “Jack Sparrow,” because they sway and dip as if they’re standing on the deck of a ship in choppy seas. My description might not sound sexy, but I assure you, reader. It is.
Fahrenheit is another joint with unspeakably hot girls (60b SMLs).
The original Windmill is closed for remodeling, but they’ve got another location—Windmill 2—just across the Soi. Same vibe, same girls, also with an upstairs and 90b Chang drafts.
On my firs two days/nights in town, I walked Soi 6 three times and never stopped into a bar. It was too crowded, too crazy, and also, there are no longer any ATMs on The 6. A bar girl said there was one near Liquid, but I couldn’t find it. The only one was a Bangkok Bank machine on the corner of the Beach Road that was out of service all 4 days of my trip, mimicking the same problem one finds in Patpong and around Bangkok. ATMs are disappearing, and several remaining ones are out of service. The Pong has only 2 working ATMs now. Is this more evidence of a future push toward a cashless society? Yes, and when that happens, reader, we’re all fucked. So enjoy life while you can. The noose is tightening.
But I digress.
I don’t know about you, but I like to pay my checkbin before my beer is empty. This is so that, if they take a long time to return with my change, I have something to sip on. Three separate times in Ptown, the barmaid snatched away my unfinished beer once I’d paid. This is very. Bad. Form.
Ptown is suffering from the same disease as BKK’s redlights, namely wide-eyed vanilla farang couples in the gogos. I saw them in Dolls, XS, and Dollhouse.
Of all the places I hit, only two—Dolls and Tantra—put on the hard-sell to buy lady drinks. In Dolls, a farang girl turned down the chance to get onstage, temporarily restoring my faith in the modesty and common sense of white chicks.
As for the old beer bars on Sois 7 and 8, a little more than half have reopened. Shooters is back and going strong. It’s a proper destination once again, despite the multiple abandoned Eastiny hotels that for the moment stand like gigantic ghosts of better times.
One night on The 6, I stopped into Slice for their 2-and-a-beer 200b special. I got a pepperoni and a krapow, and sat outside to watch the circus. A Brit walked up and asked, “On a scale of 1 to 5, how’s the pizza?” I held up four fingers. And since a dude from the UK likely wouldn’t know good pizza if it walked up and fingered his butthole, I knew he’d enjoy the pie.
On Saturday I slid into Beefeater for their TexMex buffet. I arrived 10 minutes early (11.50) and there was already a queue that stretched almost to the Second Road. My first blunder of the meal was to order a bloody mary. It took them 30 minutes to make it. Slip-up number two was grabbing hard shells to make tacos with. Though they were delicious, it was hard to shoehorn in the ingredients. Soft shell is the way to go. It’s a fun buffet, rife with unique offerings like Texas chili, Mexican spring rolls, quesadillas, chicken fajitas, carnitas, bbq ribs, chicken wings, and salad. The place was completely full by 12.15, with Japanese tourists, (very) old regulars, and farang dudes with their Thai girlfriends. ‘Twas my first time seeing a white dude in his 60s with a Thai girl in her 50s. Now that must be love. I had to look three times to be sure. By 12.45 I was stuffed and happy, and bailed back home for a nap. 545 all-in, no plus-plus.
Several places around town searched my man-satchel for weapons, yet another strange practice also taken up in BKK (well, in Nana, at least).
And that’s where I find myself at time of writing, reader. I’ve got one more night in this sea of skin before retreating back to Silom. If anything noteworthy happens, I’ll let you know. For a photo slideshow of the above antics, you can pop over to YouTube in a bit. I’ll put it together right after posting this to the interweb.
That’s all the monger that’s fit to ponder for now, friends. Check back next Sunday for another summary of red-light events. In the meantime, you can read more about Bangkok life on my Substack: https://bangkokseven.substack.com/
Redlight videos and slide shows, including the companion for this post, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/c/BangkokSeven
Follow me on Twitter @BangkokSeven for daily pics from the redlight, and until next time, keep your balls warm, your beer cold, and cheers to another week above ground in the greatest country on Earth: Thailand.
Pro Tip Post-Script: In 2023, the number of frigging idiots on planet Earth outnumber smart people by something like 4 to 1. This means that the people who make our food, drive us around, handle our bank accounts, and sit next to us on the bus to Ptown will consist overwhelmingly of morons. By the time we’re senior citizens, there will be no intelligent people left to run the old folks’ homes. In short, we are all doomed. So live every day like it’s your last, friends. Because eventually we’re all going to wish we were dead, just to escape the stupid.
