‘Twas an All-Hallows’ Eve eve party this weekend in Cowboy, Nana Plaza, and Patpong, and this intrepid poon punter was a barfly on the wall for all of it. Here’s how the week shook out…
Sunday was quiet onPong, per usual. A dancer who is arguably the hottest in XXX Lounge went unbarfined. It’s shocking how well a noob could score if he knew enough to skirt Cowboy and Nana and head straight t’Pong. The hottie pickings are so much slimmer in proportion to customers in those other redlights. Bada Bing was mostly empty on Sunday as well, despite being rammed the night before, and despite having half a dozen absolute goddesses onstage. Since not a lot was happening onPong, I jumped a mototaxi and scooted over to Cowboy, since my friend Jack Nites of BangkokNites.com said he saw some new hotties in Dollhouse. The instant I arrived I remembered my standards are much, much higher than his. The bar was crowded—4/5 full. Among both rotations, there were only two hot ones. Back in 2010 I got lucky with a lovely girl in Rio, so I decided to pop in just to get a sense of the scene. 257.50 baht for a warm SML and a mamasan so rude and pushy that I didn’t drink the beer. I just paid and left. Their roster of 8 girls consisted of one skinny one and the rest porkers.
From there I had a beer in Baccara. Every gogo in Cowboy is the same. Bar: packed. Girls: hideous. It’s the same in Nana (except for Billboard/Butterflies/Spanky’s/Twister), and the opposite in Pong where the bars are mostly filled with comparatively many more hot chicks than customers (although the tide of tourists has been picking up steadily these past couple of weeks). Bar-for-bar, pound-for-pound per capita, Patpong has better-looking girls than both Nana and Cowboy—sorry not sorry. In terms of sheer numbers, Nana wins. But that’s because it’s quadruple the size of Pong. But there, you have to weed through a plethora of uglies and fight off hordes of sweaty dudes and even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll come away with the one you want. OnPong, it’s a reverse of that situation, and an advantageous one for anyone with the inside baseball. A clever monger who reads these posts has it over the idiot who just goes to Cowboy or Nana because that’s what everyone else does. Or because they take the word of…well, you know the kind of “Bangkok nightlife” tripe most people read.
On Monday—like so many days ending in Y—I had dinner in Derby King. There was a farang in there, I’m gonna say early 40s, sitting in a booth where he could look out the window and in the door of King’s Castle (their stage is pictured at the top of this post) across the street. He put away two big Leo’s while staring in that doorway, then paid and walked down toward Silom Road. Imagine flying thousands of miles, donning your best short-sleeve button-down, ironing your jeans, and venturing to the redlight, only to chicken out 30 feet from the gogo. It happens more often than you’d think.
By 20.17, all but two seats were filled in XXX Lounge and every customer had at least one girl. Kudos to those shrewd mongers who’ve figured out the difference between Patpong and the other two. I did my usual thing, grabbing a revolver to go with my cigar and perched outside on the terrace. Tong and Bpai came out to tell me they would record a selfie dance video between rotations and send it to me. I’ve been posting the girls’ content over on a members-only site (link at the bottom).
Summer always makes a last push before high season, and it started last week. After a few cool days, we’re back to hot-as-balls days and nights. As a cigar smoker, I try not to puff in the gogo. The girls hate it, and it’s impolite to the other customers. But damn, it’s hard to sit outside on a stool and sizzle in the heat of the Bangkok evening. Whilst there on Monday, a raggedy old shit with long white hair peeked into XXX, then opted to chat up a girl sitting alone outside at the edge of the terrace. At first, I attributed it to monger skills, like a shark picking out the lonely fish at the edge of the school, but really it was so he could run out on his bill. He ordered a drink, drank it, and when nobody was watching, slipped away and ducked into The Strip. But a XXX barmaid tracked him down and wrung the money from him. If you’re so broke you can’t afford the ginger ale, don’t come to the redlight. It’s out of your price range.
In other Pong news, rumors rose of the return of the Soi 1 Night Market in November. The hardware is there—the only problem at the moment is re-finding the set-up/breakdown crew to build and take down the market stalls on a nightly basis. Meanwhile more brick-n-mortar joints continue to open, with a cluster of shops, bars, and ping pong shows along Soi 1 lighting up that dark street once more. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Safari, which was one of the longest-standing bars inPong before throwing in the towel this month. It’s currently being gutted, with no word yet on what will replace it.
On the corner of Soi 1 and Silom Road, the space that was Patty’s Mexican when I first moved to the neighborhood, then became a gourmet burger joint, then a nail salon, is reopening as a tourist-friendly somtam restaurant. Expect mild spices and extreme prices.
On Wednesday, I raided the art store room of The Patpong Museum to pull some of my work out of mothballs for the upcoming “Patpong Now!” Gallery Night exhibition on 11 November. My stuff will hang in XXX Lounge—come check it out if you want.
After moving the art over, I found myself in redlight limbo: 7:00 pm. Can’t watch the girls coming to work as they’re all already there, putting on makeup and wolfing down fried pork. Can’t hit the gogo yet as they open at 8:00. That hour is like the 3rd slice of bread in a club sandwich. It’s an unnecessary extraneous (unstraneous) bit of nothing in an otherwise adventurous snack. Speaking of, I grabbed a club sandwich in Tuk Lae Dee (130b) and then a Tiger pint in Paddy Field. Then I actually contemplated going home, but it’s hard for this redlight addict to call it quits without a fix, so instead I did a lap around Pong before plopping down in XXX. ‘Twas another quiet night. A quartet of smoking hot XXX girls went undefiled again, proving once more that the unwashed masses of tourists are retarded, thank Buddha. They’re all ogling fat, ugly girls in Nana and Cowboy, leaving the Pong goddesses to locals like me to feast our eyes on. At around 22.00 a dude came in and sat down. The mamasan paraded 8 of the best girls in front of him to choose from. He got up and ran out the gogo. I guess his vagina started to itch or something. I swear, I don’t understand what’s happened to Western men.
My new route routine (routetine for short, copyright BKK7) onPong is XXX Lounge, followed by King’s Castle, then Pink Panther, and finishing in Bada Bing. These are the bars with the hottest girls. The return of the Muay Thai boxing exhibition in Ping Panther has been something of a comfort, calling one back to the pre-pandemic days when redlight life was so much better. Luktal (aka Catgirl) is already back dancing in the Bing after a short run in Twister Nana Plaza. Joy (also from the Bing and pictured here) has signed on with our team over at Bangkok Gogo Dancers and will be providing exclusive content for our members only site (link below) going forward.
On Friday I made a 2nd trip to Nana Plaza, starting out with the usual buffalo chicken tacos at Hooter’s, then on to Twister because of all my friends who dance there—at least, that’s what I thought. None of them were on rotation that night, opting instead to work Sat-Sun. But they had two 18-girl rotations early on. A perfect 10 with dyed-blonde hair was onstage, clearly using the time to sculpt her body. She fixed her eyes on her reflection and did an aerobics-style abdominal workout—that is, until she realized I was staring at her. Then she switched to dancing. I wanted to tell her she didn’t need to dance on my account. I’m happy to watch her exercises, especially since it’s giving her a nice trim tummy.
From there I skipped up to Spanky’s, a gogo that’s now one of my top 4 in Nana. If I could sum up this bar in one word, it would be TITS. Tits, tits everywhere. Big ones, small ones, fake ones. It’s boobapalooza in there. On the night, I also met the lovely Ja (pictured), who took my asking for a photo as a pickup line. She then engaged me in a long conversation that I had to tear myself away from. Luckily a buddy of mine manages Spanky’s and he rescued me. We chatted about the current state of the Bangkok redlight. He read my mind and said “Is it me, or is Cowboy chock full of ugly chicks?” I said, “It’s not you.” He then lamented about how hard it is to get and retain girls. They’re constantly moving, switching bars, switching redlights, and sometimes disappearing all together. I told him it’s the same everywhere. Still, neither of us would choose any other country, or any other life. The dream continues. He’s also been put in charge of finding hotties for Blondie on the ground floor, renewing my hope for that joint.
From Spanky’s I of course stopped in at Billboard. They had two 14-girl rotations on the carousel at 21.00 with only one skinny girl between them. The Bangkok redlight scene in 2022 is a chubby chaser’s wet dream. A couple weeks ago, I reported that Mandarin’s downstairs was nearly ready to open after a Covid remodeling. It’s called Red Dragon, and it’s open now. I predicted the dancers would be ugly. I was only mostly right. They had two 12-girl rotations with two hotties in each. 170b SMLs and lots of red velvet. It’s roomy—they knocked down a wall, turning two small gogos into one medium-sized one. I was accosted by a lovely tattooed blonde with fake tits, and the inevitable pushy pudgy barmaid—you know the type. They always try to squeeze a drink out of you when you buy one for your gogo dancer. I downed my SML in three gulps and made a hasty exit.
It was an overall redlight disappointment to not find any girls in Halloween costumes on the weekend. There were lots of decorations up around the redlights, but no spooky cosplay. This year, the 31st falls on a Monday (tomorrow, at the time of posting). In the US, when the holiday falls on a weekday, people party the weekend before. Not so in Thailand, and I guess if you’re a tourist on vacation, every day is a weekend. If you’re reading this on the 30th, I’ve heard that the girls plan on dressing up tomorrow night—both inPong and in Nana Plaza. Black Pagoda’s girls will be in costume tonight as well.
And 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 companions for these posts (except this week. For some reason I didn’t take enough photos for a new slide show–apologies for that), 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: This nugget of advice is part of one of my Top 10 Tips lists over on my Substack, namely the one called “Rules for Redlights” and I’m posting it here because it bears repeating. I’m even thinking of making a T-Shirt out of it, and here it is: In the gogo, never leave before the rotation. The team of girls who’re onstage when you enter the bar is only half (sometimes a third) of the dancers that work there. If you don’t see someone you like, then wait. In a few minutes, a whole new group of chickies will take the stage. And gogos often stack one rotation with their best girls, so if you don’t see any hotties, give it a minute before bailing to the next bar.
