Cowboy

A narrow 200 meters, 2 minutes to saunter down though you will be accosted. Standard egg box minor soi architecture transformed. Many bars, majority a go-go, crowded signs tawdry unlit. How many prostitutes? And then sellers less carnal. Grocery shops and the ambulants, live fish and dead insects, fruit under glass with a light above, Green vegetables poor in flesh dipped in the varieties of Isaan spicy.

I like it best early. They stumble out of the bars blinking to the sunlight, gait no longer night sexy, make-up awry. Even just a few wistfully recreated by sleep, to the fresh young girls they are negotiating. Outside the bar entrances, ramshackle furniture draped by table cleaning cloths, grey pennants on pirate decks, washed out, to dry. Early punters drift by, perhaps customers at the Old Dutch to quaff a morning beer. They are mostly weathered. Among the pedestrians, the occasional car, and motorcycles rat run to Asok. There are few police until evening.

The afternoon hums softly louder towards the crescendo of the night. After five, hairdressers calling by the bars, clothes sellers too, hawking catchy microsizes. Girls start strutting, osmotically feeding off the cropped erotics to come ‘til at seven the band starts up. Perhaps these are hours of structural accounting, only later there is alcohol, music and sex.

About 10 go into a tardis bar, a daytime policeman doorman beckons, the odd familiarity of the hello girls, injured dancers some. Outside drop into your personal locker for bravado, which no one will purloin. Inside, the stage confronts you archly, the girl dancing nearest the door may be the prettiest or the least dressed, but don’t stop. Right side is a stooled corridor between mirror and dancers and who sits risks being hard core, eschewing comfort, missionary or in for a look. Order a beer, fend off a massage. The dancing girls will gaze at their reflected undulating forms but do not be deceived; they already know; your bar history is microfiched or first time, entered appositely in the archives. Left is more for revellers.

Then, at the end, are two hotels on the Soi. Your consort will have been to both before. The rooms naturally vary but remember not to insist the lights on. During you may even hear the mangled chords of live 70's classics. The twenty first century is far away.

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