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Swish - Chiefly British informal - stylishly elegant; fashionable. (Dictionary.com)

 

After a year’s absence from Thailand due to an obsession with all-things Philippine (especially the Pinays of Makati and Angeles City), ‘swish’ is the word that popped into my mind on first sight of the new Suvarnahumbi Airport. The contrast was especially marked by comparison with my departure airport, Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Manila.

How different from the seedy art-deco of Don Muang, which on my first trip five years ago, was part-and-parcel of the ‘on the edge’ experience of visiting Thailand. The large Thai writing on the signs (Thai script seems less predominant in Suvarnahumbi – or is that just an illusion?) and the quaint fixtures and fittings (especially in the toilets) were in-keeping with my first third-world experience, as was Airport bus No. 3 to Nana with its cracked window, smoky exhaust, and generally dog-eared appearance. The airport buses also run from Suvarnahumbi, but they are a new fleet of modern, European style buses which are, well – swish.

The next surprise was my hotel. On my first visit I stayed at the Dynasty Inn in Soi 4. In those days it was somewhat run down, but popular because it was near to the action and girl-friendly. But walking into reception this time was like entering an alternative universe. It was exactly the same, apart from a repositioning of the reception counter, but bright, gleaming, modern – up-market even – definitely swish. I found out later that the whole front building has been demolished and rebuilt. I’m not sure whether I was pleased or disappointed to find the room I was allocated was exactly the same as the ones I occupied in ‘the good old days’. It had the same fading 1970-ish decor, worn bathroom fittings, and dodgy plumbing. But on the plus side, it had a bathtub (unlike the rooms in the new section) even if there was no plug (a common problem at the Dynasty, but soon resolved by a phone call to reception).

After meeting up with Dan (that’s Dan, not Dana), a Bangkok-based friend, we headed for the bar that dominated my fantasies during my long absence; Baccara in Soi Cowboy. Baccara has always been swish, so no change there, though the prices were swisher than ever – 140 baht for my Singha beer, and 150 baht for a lady drink for the cute young thing in school uniform who took my fancy in the upstairs bar. For those who don’t know Baccara, downstairs is the standard gogo bar layout where girls dance on a central stage in floral pattern bikinis. Above them is the famous (or infamous, depending how you look at it) glass ceiling, upon which girls dance in school uniforms minus knickers (to use another British expression). Every now and again the blouses come off, though you have to be in the upstairs bar to appreciate that. The girls are chosen for that petite, schoolgirl look favoured by the Japanese (though all of them are over 20), and while the Japanese have a negative effect on prices (by overpaying), to give credit where credit is due, they also push up girl-quality. Dan said that he always went where the Japanese went as he shared the same taste in girls: ‘The Japanese can’t be wrong’ was how he put it.

Dau was a good example – five foot nothing, not a spare ounce of fat on her body, and a pretty face with high cheekbones and large doe-eyes. However, she was hard-nosed enough when it came to money and asked for 6,000 baht for long time. Dan told me that she was pushing her luck at that price, and that 4,000 would be more realistic (before you tell me that this is too much, remember that this was Bacarra, a bar in which the girls have always commanded swish prices) but his policy is never to discuss money. I said that this approach was OK for someone in the know, but I was out of touch with the rapid inflation of bargirl tips in Bangkok. In any case, it was my first night out in Bangkok for a long time and I wanted to look around first, savour the atmosphere, and talk to several girls before making a choice.

Next stop was Midnite. On my first visit to Bangkok it was one of the grottiest bars on the strip, but also one of the raunchiest. At that time nudity was ‘off’ in almost all the other bars – the Baccara girls kept their blouses on, the Dollhouse girls wore sailor-suit bikinis, and even in Long Gun, nudity was only glimpsed during the shows. But the Midnite boss must have had the right connections among the Boys in Brown because all his girls were starkers; they also seemed to have more than their fair share of girls with big tits who mingled with customers topless. As a newbie, I was too shy to touch, but the girl I sat with took my hand and placed it on her ample bosom. It did the trick; she got the barfine. So imagine how surprised I was to find that Midnite had been gutted and refurbished and was now as swish as everything else in the new Bangkok – surprised and disappointed because it has lost a lot of its atmosphere in the process.

The story was repeated in Shark – swish – and Susie Wong – swish. The only bar that was defiantly unswish was an old favourite, Rawhide. It is still seedy, but whereas in the past the girls seemed to be the leftovers from the famous sister bar next door, Long Gun, this time they seemed prettier – though that may have been the effect of the contrast with the bodged-up interior. By bodged-up (is that also a British expression?) I mean the low beam that the girls have to duck under to get onto the stage, and the poles which wobble because they don’t go all the way to ceiling, not to mention the tatty upholstery and the tired 1980-ish decor.

I got chatting to Noi, a very pretty, petite 20-year old with a little pony tail slightly to one side and a sweet personality – every bit as good as a Baccara girl. I really liked her, but as I mentioned before, this was my first night in Bangkok for a long time and I wanted to look around a bit more. I told Dan that I would probably come back for her later. He said I’d be lucky if she hadn’t been barfined by then, and told me his pet theory for girl hunting: ‘Turn down the first girl that you fancy, and then take the next one that is better’. According to this theory, Noi was the girl I should barfine. He explained some fancy mathematical algorithm that predicted this was the best method to get the best in any aspect of life. But Dan is full of fancy theories, so I didn’t take much notice.

We popped into several more bars – and in some cases straight out again because they were very quiet. It was low season, and while popular bars like Baccara were doing very well, several other bars were almost empty. One thing that struck me was how big a lot of the girls are these days – big in every respect – tall, big-boned and overweight. Perhaps they’ve given up on insects and rice in Isaan in favour of a swish, modern, burger-based diet. That’s one of the reasons I find myself spending more time in the Phils as Pinays are generally more petite. Each to his own taste, but if I wanted the 0-gauge variety (to use a railway modelling metaphor), I might as well never have left Europe in the first place.

Before I knew it, it was nearly one o’clock and I still didn’t have a barfine, so back to Rawhide for Noi. The mamasan said she’d ‘gone home early’. Dan told me that was a mamasan euphemism for ‘been barfined’ – so that the ‘girlfriend’ illusion can be preserved. It was the same story at Baccara, though Dan comforted me with more of his words of wisdom: ‘You never miss a girl, only your turn.’

A few more bars and I found Miss Right (for the night) at Deja Vu – not a particularly swish bar – though the price Ae wanted for the night was swish enough; 4,000. I don’t usually negotiate, because I want a girl to be happy, but that was twice what I was paying a year ago, so after a bit of haggling, I got her down to 3,000. To be honest, she turned out to be Miss Wrong, or to put it another way, Miss Starfish (perhaps she was sulking that I beat her down by a thousand), and I had to admit to Dan next day that his fancy algorithm would have yielded the best results on that particular occasion.

There were many more examples of swishness over the next few days, ranging from Rainbow 4 – always swish from when it opened a few years ago, but apparently not swish enough for the new Bangkok, as rumour has it that it is going to be closed for renovation in July, to the swish new toilets in Angelwitch. The last time I was in the Angelwitch toilets I was surrounded by a group of cuties soaping themselves up for the soap show – now that has to be better than separate cubicles and swish ceramic tiles!

If you’re a Bangkok resident these changes will have taken place so gradually you’ll hardly have noticed; if you’re a newbie, you’ll still get that sense of living on the edge – but if you’re an occasional visitor like me, you’ll get the time-lapse-photography effect of a country that is getting wealthier, and is now more two-and-a-half world than third world, but arguably less exciting.

Well, it’s back to Manila on Saturday, which is about as unswish as you can get, and when I’m walking from one Makati bar to another, anxiously scanning ahead for gun-toting muggers, I’ll probably be thinking that living on the edge is not so much fun after all, and long for the safe, sanitised experience of the new, swish Bangkok.

 

 

 

© Bangkok Byron, 2007. All rights reserved by the author.