Girls, Girls, Girls

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you look like or how old you are. If you come to Thailand and you have some disposable income you will meet women. If you have a pleasant disposition as well, you will meet lots and lots of women.

For me, it’s been ten years. Jobs have come and gone, apartments have come and gone but then there were the girls. They just keep coming. Maybe hundreds of them if you include the ones I bought out for one night or for just a few hours. Of some I only have shadowy, drunken memories. I’m sure there are some that I’ve forgotten completely. Some I remember in full living colour and some I got quite attached to. I often wonder whatever became of some of them and I wonder if any of them ever think of me.

In the LOS there are heaps of loose women everywhere. I was never attracted to the ‘good girls’. Why bother?

I know of at least three that wound up in the slammer in Singapore. I knew a few who married farangs and went off to live in Australia, UK and USA. Good luck to them and their husbands, I say. Others just faded away.

Meaw was one of the first bargirls I ever got to know. She was slim and pretty and a true professional. Meaw could smell a ‘newbie’ a mile away. Once she got one in her sights his ass was grass. She would snag him, shag him rigid and take all his money. She wouldn’t steal it. She didn’t need to. She just asked nicely and her helpless victim would just hand it over. I got past this phase with Meaw and we sort of became friends. I’m not sure if it’s possible to be friends with a working bar girl in the classic sense but she always made time to come and talk to me even when she knew I was no longer interested in being her customer. I helped her out with visa applications and one thing and another.

Meaw disappeared from the bar scene as these girls do and I forgot all about her until I met her again one day, completely by chance in a shopping mall in Bangkok. It must have been five years since I’d seen her. She still looked good. Her hair was shorter. She was well groomed and well dressed. That dazzling smile hadn’t faded one bit. We went for a cup of coffee together.

Meaw told me a big story about meeting a rich American and how she now lived with him in Singapore. He had bought her a house in Bangkok and they planned to settle there in the near future. She had all the money she wanted and she was very happy. I was pleased for her but I didn’t really swallow it all. I didn’t really care but it was nice to see her looking so outwardly happy. I wished her well and we went our separate ways.

A few months after that, Meaw was in jail in Singapore after getting nicked for prostitution in Orchard Towers. How I came to know that is another story but she was in there at the same time as two other girls I once knew quite well. Either her American boyfriend had been a figment of her imagination or things just hadn’t worked out. I don’t know but I suspect the former.

Then there was Malee. What a girl. Malee was a looker. She was also as sharp as a tack and bad to the bone. Malee took quite a few hundred dollars off me over a short but very enjoyable time. I would catch myself feasting my eyes on Malee’s womanly curves when I thought she wasn’t looking. What an idiot. She knew full well I was looking. I was always looking and not only me. She knew full well that every heterosexual man within a mile and a half was looking. She was quite a doll. 

I liked her a lot. The problem with Malee was that she was all business. There were no freebies with Malee. If you wanted it, you paid for it. If you didn’t have the money, you were no good to Malee. She had no emotions. She probably had no soul.  

Malee was there one day, gone the next. When I asked her friends about her they told me she had married an Australian and gone to live in Sydney. I never heard from her or saw her again. When I close my eyes, I can still see her wicked smile and sparkling eyes. I wonder how it worked out for her and her beau. He certainly would have had his hands full.

Now Em was a different story altogether. Em picked me up one night when I was just sitting there watching the football. She just sat down beside me as they do, introduced herself and invited me to buy her a drink. I just nodded without taking a lot of notice. Once the football was over, I turned my attention to this lady who had been wittering on in the background for the last half hour or so. Now, she was saying something about ‘flenfly’. What was this woman bleating on about? ‘Flenfly??’ Ooohh…. ‘french flies’, she wanted me to buy her some French fries. Well, excuse me but I don’t speak American so I bought her a plate of chips and there began a strange and mostly pleasant relationship.

Em was a little bit younger than the women I usually got mixed up with. She was probably about twenty three at the time. I would have been about thirty seven. There was something about Em that I liked, though. She always seemed to be just a little bit out of her depth all the time. Waitresses never took any notice of her when she called them. Taxis never seemed to stop for her. She always seemed vulnerable. I got the feeling that she was just in the wrong profession. This made me feel the need to look after her. And maybe that was just the MO that worked best for her……. or am I being cynical?

I took Em back to my apartment which was something I very rarely did with bargirls. She would stay overnight sometimes but she never gave me any nonsense about moving in, or anything of that sort. What I especially remember about Em was that she had a fantastic pair of jugs. She would frequently go about the apartment wearing nothing but a pair of lacey knickers. Damn it was hard to concentrate on anything when she did that.

Things got a bit weird with Em. She would call me at all hours of the night wanting to come round. Sometimes she was a bit drunk and there was always some kind of drama. One night she claimed that a taxi driver had stolen her money and on another occasion she said that some farang had beaten her up in his hotel room. I took it all with a pinch of salt. It all got a bit much and when I told her to stop calling me I expected her to become a problem but no. She just disappeared from my life as quickly as she had entered it.

I would have married Dar. Bloody idiot that I am. But I didn’t. In truth, I didn’t get the chance so that was just as well.

Dar worked in a Nana Plaza bar. One of the open air ones. When I first met her it was quite late on a Friday night and I had had a few beers. I don’t know why she was still there really. She must have had offers. Maybe she had and maybe she had taken them for all I knew. Anyway, we got talking and even in my well oiled state I noticed this girl was a pretty one. We talked the usual nonsense for an hour or so and just as the bar was about to close Dar asked me if she could come home with me.

This was the first time that I employed a novel way of making my mind up when I am either drunk or just undecided. You know how it is sometimes. You’re not sure if you can or even if you want to.  Whenever I find myself in this predicament now I apply this simple test.

First there is the minimum height requirement. Tall is good. Anything over 5’5’’ gets the thumbs up. Next is the nail polish test. Fingernails and toenails must be painted. Colour is not important but green, yellow and certain shades of blue might instigate a rejection. And finally, there is the shoe test. High heeled, strappy sandals are winners. Anything else is rejected unconditionally.

So Dar was the first to get the ‘Union Hill Fit For Purpose Sex Test’.

I asked her to stand up and face me. Yep, she was certainly tall enough. I had already noticed that her fingernails were painted a dark red. I looked down at the floor, at her feet.

When you do this of course the lady thinks you are thinking, considering the answer to her question which was ‘I go with you tonight. OK?’ in case anyone had forgotten. Technically, I suppose I am considering the answer but she does not know that it’s her choice of shoes and whether or not she painted her toenails that will decide if my response is negative or positive. In this case, Dar got the job. Ever since, whenever I have been undecided I employ the Union Hill Fit For Purpose Sex Test.

Dar was a cracker. I think I fell in love with her. We used to talk on the phone, send each other daft text messages and she was wild in the sack. She particularly liked sex on the living room floor with Santana blasting out of the stereo.

Dar had a plan however and I, was definitely not part of it. I didn’t mind really. On her twenty seventh birthday, Dar quit her bar job. She had always planned to get out of the bar girl business by the time she was twenty seven. She wanted a husband and a family. She had an Australian boyfriend too. I kind of knew this but I don’t think he knew about me. Anyway, Dar knew exactly what she wanted and that was a new life in Australia. I hope that’s what she got. Before she went though, we sure had a blast.

There were others. Heaps of ‘em actually.

Noi, On and Phai come readily to mind. On and Phai, at the same time funnily enough.

Noi toyed with me like a cat playing with a mouse. I got away relatively unscathed though. I think some of these girls really liked me but I can put on heirs of superiority like any other farang when needs must. That usually stopped things getting out of hand.

The last ten years in Thailand have been a blast. I’ll let you know when I’ve had enough. But for now, bring on the next ten!

Union Hill

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