If you’re reading this at the time of posting, happy Sunday, reader. My name’s Seven and this is my blog. It’s been a typical week for this worn-out redlight monger. I spent most of it in Patpong, per usual, with the exception of a short excursion to Soi Cowboy. More on that later.
As you’ll know by the time you read this, Bangkok was spared the impact of Typhoon Noru, which dissipated on landfall and kind of meandered around to the north of TLOS. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t get wet. ‘Twas another soaked week for BKK and subsequently Patpong and Soi Cowboy. Nana Plaza was dry, of course, because it has a roof. Whoever thought of that should get a Nobel Prize.
I’m currently off work, and so it’s less-crucial that I get home early on a night, for that 6:00 am alarm, so I’ve been hanging around the Pong later into the evening. Turns out late-night Patpong looks nothing like sensible-hour Patpong. It transforms completely. King’s Castle has nude shows around midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. I wouldnt’ve even known if it wasn’t for a deluge. I was sitting outside with my pal Ice, enjoying some pad thai and spring rolls from Derby King, when the skies opened and the street flooded, splashing water all over us and our grub. So we moved inside, where the only two open seats were stageside. The nude show was in full swing. Girls I’ve casually known for years suddenly had their shaved minges in my face. The endorphin release was akin to a surprise birthday party, or receiving a Christmas present late in the mail. Ice found it hilarious.
Two years without tourists has spoiled me. Not only was I used to peace and quiet in the redlight, I forgot what shitty assholes most people are. From shoving gogo dancers for the crime of touching their arms as they pass by to jumping onstage and dry humping the girls to picking fights with strangers in the gogo, there’s no limit to the kind of vulgarity displayed by Thailand’s guests. I’ve often said that 90% of people on the planet are brain-dead retards. I think around 70% are also assholes. And all of them seem to choose Thailand for their holiday, for some reason.
Dream Boy—one of the gay cabarets at the north end of Soi 2—has opened a backdoor entrance on the side street that Paddy Field looks out onto, not unlike a metaphorical butthole. Now, gaytrons (gay patrons) can sneak in from the back.
I’m genuinely worried for a gogo dancer in The Strip. She’s a couple weeks pregnant, and although she’s stopped drinking booze at work, she can’t say ‘no’ to Ketamine. I can’t imagine what kind of damage it’s doing to the baby. Speaking of The Strip, they’re in something of a bind at the moment. One of the sometimes mamasans has systematically driven off all the hot girls. One by one, either through coincidence or calculation, has been sent packing by this irrational behemoth of a bar manager, who extorts them for large chunks of their earnings. The owner has tried to quell the problem by sending her to Phuket, but like a persistent venereal ailment, she keeps coming back. If things continue on the present trajectory, there’ll be nothing but trolls and chubsters in there by Thanksgiving. At the moment, there are only two perfect 10s in The Strip, giving them the smallest ratio of hotties to notties in Patpong. Everywhere else has at least half a dozen. The 10s get barfined out of The Strip by 9 pm every evening, usually by punters who’re so drunk, they won’t even remember banging a 10 by the time they get back to Chelmsford.
Overall, though, Patpong’s doing well in the hot girl department. In fact, the RLD that used to boast the best babes—Soi Cowboy—can’t hold a candle to Patpong in current year. The ratio of hotties to uglies in the Pong kicks Cowboy’s ass at the moment. More on that later.
In other Pong-related news, they’re about to get a burrito kiosk—a thing I’ve been asking for for nigh on a decade. It’ll be perched outside Joe Delaney’s soon-to-open live music bar at the old Tavern location (next to The Old Other Office).
As for my jaunt to Soi Cowboy, here’s how it shook out…
In my post last week, I said that 1/3 of Cowboy is still dark. This is no longer true. In the two weeks since my last visit, more places have opened. In fact, I counted only 5 bars that are still dark, one of them being my favorite gogo on the soi—Lighthouse. There’s a ganja kiosk there now—one of four in Cowboy. The RLD is brighter, busier, and noisier than before, mirroring the uptick in foot traffic all along upper Sukhumvit. But goddam is it shit. There are some gogos without a single hot girl. And the ladyboy infiltration that’s a mild irritant in the Pong is a full-on onslaught in Cowboy. There are gogos that were 100% lady bars before the scamdemic that are now peppered with LBs, like whack-a-mole moles. And I love the LB mafia, don’t get me wrong. But when I’m looking for a steak dinner, I don’t want to have to wonder if I’m about to bite into something plant-based. Differentiate, is all I’m saying.
My first destination was Dollhouse, because I slagged them off a bit in last week’s post and I felt guilty because I’ve loved that bar for 12 years. There were two perfect 10s onstage. The rest were….not. It’s not the bar’s fault—the talent has flown the coop everywhere. Happy Hour beers now 110b. It’s still the cheapest on the soi, but I miss the old 90b price. Maybe when they’re safely back in the red, it’ll drop back down. Fingers crossed.
One of the two 10s onstage had a glorious back tattoo that stretched over both ass cheeks. I offered her 300 baht to take a photo of it. She said no. Gogo dancers are such strange creatures. I could barfine and fuck her, but photos of tattoos cross the line.
Two Asian (I’m not smart enough to discern Chinese from Japanese at a glance) sat down uncomfortably close to me. Their breath was so bad, my eyes watered. And that blurred vision might be why I thought I spotted Dino—longtime manager who went Stateside for the plandemic—back in the house. Thanks to the Japlitosis (Japanese halitosis) I fled outside to the terrace, where I spotted a family of Asian tourists—mom, dad, and clearly underage son—sitting outside Suzie Wong’s. They were listening to the entertainment—a farang dude singing cover tunes with a guitar and harmonica. He must not know too many, because in an hour’s time I heard the same song twice.
Then I popped into Cowboy2, since back in the day it was home to the hottest girls on the soi. Not so anymore. There were five chicks onstage, and five more lounging outside. No 10s among them but there was an 8. 140b SMLs.
One nice thing about Cowboy: there are less white girls. For some reason, Patpong is lousy with farang chicks. It makes me ill, as I loathe them with deep-seeded ferocity. In trying to take a quick mental tally of the crowd, Cowboy appears to be busier than Patpong. But it’s 1/5 the size. If you squeezed all the Pong tourists at a given time to the size of Soi Cowboy, the crowds would be comparable, that is until you got to Cowboy’s live music bars at the west end of the soi. Those places are jammed. The only place in the Pong that gets that busy is Shenanigan’s, and only on Fridays when the Bangkok Beatles play.
After that I popped into Shark Bar, because I used to be acquainted with the owner. I’m not even sure he’s still the owner, but onstage were five very thick munchkins. 160b SMLs felt like highway robbery when compared to the view, and the beer was warm. The only good thing I can say is, the air-con was fabulous. My last stop was Crazy House—a joint I swore never to return to. The last time I almost darkened their door, the bouncer said I had to remove my earbuds and order a beer before entering. I said “fuck you” and went to Baccara. That was in 2019. This time no one stopped me at the door. Inside, things looked fairly normal—as in, 2018 normal. Nude chicks onstage, nary an empty seat in the house. The ratio of hots to nots wasn’t as good as before. I quickly made my way upstairs and found a table. The SML was 150. I handed the server 200. Three rotations later, bottle empty, she still hadn’t returned with my change. After 15 minutes, I gave up and left, reiterating to myself again that I would never go back. You know where they don’t steal your change? Patpong.
And speaking of, that’s when I beat a hasty retreat back there. Where I belong. In sweet Patpong. As I pulled up a stool outside The Strip with a black russian and a banana Backwoods, two female Chinese tourists who were too shy to even peek in the door of the gogo were suddenly and unknowingly whisked off to a ping pong show on Soi 1 by a Thai barker.
Out of curiosity, I swung through Soi Thaniya. The crowds are still thin, but that hasn’t stopped the karaoke/gentleman’s bars (Japanese clients only) from reopening. I counted 14, all with crowds of nicely-dressed hostesses parked outside, all regarding me with disdain.
There weren’t a lot of Pong parties at the weekend this week. XXX Lounge busted out their schoolgirl cosplay uniforms. The Strip held another “Candyland” themed party (photo slideshow available later this afternoon on my YouTube channel–link below). That’s the end of the list. The next scheduled soire will be Oktoberfest at XXX Lounge on 7-8 October. I know because I saw the advert stuck to the wall in the toilet.
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/ for general Bangkok-related stuff. In honor of Oktoberfest I’ll be posting a comprehensive beer review for G’s German on Soi 4 sometime later this week.
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. Follow King’s Castle’s Twitter @SPatpong, 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: Thais solve problems in creative ways. For example, I’ve noticed in the last week or two that the bts skytrain slows way down at the sharp turns. I suspect there might be a problem with the concrete supports and/or the tracks at those turns, and instead of fixing them, the decision came down to just go more slowly. Have fun riding the train, mofos!
