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The sun at nine in the morning is still a bitch, in Pattaya that is. I woke early today. God knows why. I was up until the wee hours, doing what one does when they are in Pattaya the first night back after some months away. Partying. Sanook, maak maak. But, still suffering from a minor case of jetlag, with an internal clock as screwed up as a newborn baby's when knocked off its schedule. I'd only slept a couple of hours.

I decided to go for a walk down Pattaya Klahng road to the now open Thai Farm Bank and cash a traveler's check. On the way back to the hotel it seemed a good idea to stop at Pink Lady 2 restaurant and grab their "American Breakfast". I was a bit hungry after the long evening's festivities, which were mostly liquid refreshments consumed I'm afraid, rather than anything of a more solid substance. Hey, it's cheap here at Pink Lady 2 shop, but if this "American" breakfast was served up in the good 'ol U. S. of A. they'd be closed down in a week for lack of customers. In Thailand though you take what you can get for farang food, as long as it tastes good, or close to good even. I stopped and ordered what passes for scrambled eggs and ham, with toast and jam. The coffee is decent there. I had stopped on the way down the soi and grabbed myself a Bangkok Post to read over breakfast before crossing the street, and dodging the maniacal traffic, over to the Pink Lady 2.

After ordering the food and settling in over coffee and the morning paper I scanned the street from my sidewalk table. Puying suay (beautiful ladies) glide by damn near constantly, distracting me from the ever pleasant world news in the Post. Farang stumble, sashay, (the sashaying done by a fat assed portly man as he walks by with his barely legal looking Thai boytoy) power-walk (there's a sight to see), jog, mince, and stroll and walk by my table by the hundreds per minute it seems. It's always amusing to people watch here in Pattaya.

The local Thai maniac, looking as though he had slept in a puddle of mud last evening, comes over to beg from me. I send him away with a curt "Mai, mai! Krup!" (No, no!) before his presence can ruin my appetite. He rants and raves, and looks to me as though he may collapse at any moment into a fit of convulsions, or maybe draw a knife and slit my throat. Either way I refuse to contribute, and he staggers on in search of easier prey, stopping occasionally to scream at the sky, or at a passing farang and his Thai beauty. Totally out of his skull.

My so-called "American" breakfast arrives and I dig in, if not with relish, than at least with an appetite. It doesn't take long to finish the meager meal. I should have ordered two.

Once finished I sit back and digest before taking the walk home. Across the street I spy another ragged Thai derelict. He's behaving strangely, furtively, walking in spurts then standing still and looking blankly about himself. I notice him pull a plastic baggie from his dirty shorts pocket and place it over his nose and mouth. He inhales deeply a few times, seems to come alert with a shudder, his eyes opening widely with the jolt from the fumes of the, what looks like from my vantage point at least, silver paint inside his plastic baggie stash. He's a "huffer", a paint sniffer, glue, whatever the hell he can get his hands on he inhales for the high. He's a walking dead man. Hopefully he'll stumble in front of a speeding baht bus and it'll end quickly for him. His brain is full of the lesions caused by his deadly habit. He's rotting away, literally, from the fumes he inhales for his kicks. Another sad casualty of this crazy city. Pattaya. Electric BarLady Land.

I have a love/hate relationship with this city. At night it sparkles and beckons. My beer-addled brain sees the laughter and the endless party. The pretty ladies seem the sirens of old, luring us all to our doom, for which we are all so grateful for the most part. The music blares in swirls of deafening cacophony, and the bass beat quickens your pulse as you wander from bar to bar, from pretty face to pretty face. The scent of the alluring women whose charms are for sale wafts through the night air, the odoriferous fragrance of an Asian ambrosia conferring immortality on all those who partake, tantillizing your nostrils as you sniff the airs in search of your one true love, well, true lust anyway. Her identity is usually unknown to you, but you know you must continue the search from musty gogo bar establishment to rancid beer bar with ancient games of chance to cause you to linger longer. You know she exists here tonight only for you, waiting with her slippery pink love for your baht to be conveyed to her cool palms. You stop for yet another beer to quench your thirst, and, raising your muzzle to the moon-laden black velvet skies you howl your pleasure to the ancient gods of bacchanalian revelry along with the rest of the misfits and merrymen. Mad with intoxication, you then continue your search for your Isan Venus, your Lao Aphrodite. The goddess you seek eludes you in this bar, but there are many places to search, and much fun and amusement along the way. Time to move on. Check bin krap, darling.

It's party time, and nowhere in the world is there a greater party atmosphere than in Pattaya. It's everything exciting you've ever experienced all rolled up into one sleazy, alluring, amusing, gut quivering package. It's your eighteenth birthday party, your senior prom night, your first full out piece of young ripe ass, your first drink, your best high, your first mind blowing blow job, the scariest movie you've ever watched, your absolute favorite meal, the richest most delicious piece of chocolate you've ever tasted. It's an ego trip, at Greyhound bus prices. It's a massage for your battered soul, your most perfect remembered day, of any time in your life, day or night. It's hanging with your best buddies, and having a hell of a time. It's the fastest you've ever driven in a car and lived to tell the tale, an asshole puckering outrageous fling in the face of death, and you care nothing of the dangers. It's winning a race, or a football playoff game, and you are the champion. It's winning your first fistfight, in front of your favorite girlfriend. It's the epitome of that first time you realized you were young, dumb, and full of cum, and you have your whole fucking young life ahead of you. It's all that, and more, rolled into one monster party city on the exotic coconut palm tree dotted smelly shores of the Gulf of Thailand.

But remember, it's all an illusion. It's a place to visit and party, and have fun. A vacation spot. A sanook zone ... maak maak. But it has its dark side. For Thais and farang. Be careful.

It's Electric BarLady Land. "I want to show you, different emotions." as Jimi sang. 

I love it, and I hate it, but I always return.


Aengus Og



"The greatest source of pleasure is variety."

Samuel Johnson, Life of Butler



"I have found that one big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones."

Francis Bret Harte,
Two Men of Sandy Bar