Having been in Thailand for a few years and before that having spent almost 5 years between Hong Kong and China - I continue to struggle with which road to take when it comes to relationships with women in my life while living in Asia. Since we started blogging we decided to talk about the bars, doing business in Thailand and the general nightlife that we all enjoy so much. From time to time though I tend to talk about my own life - basically airing my dirty laundry for all to read. Think of it as real-world Bangkok or Entourage Thailand. So yesterday afternoon I set out on foot to Foodland to get some supplies for making chocolate brownies, long story, but after reading BBK Gulliver’s post I decided I would drop in to Gulliver’s first to have a looksee.
After I had read this comment on BBK’s post I concurred that the the title might be somewhat deceiving in that the post talked more about the long ball play versus the short ball play more than it covered how to play Gulliver’s itself. No big deal but the comment did make me want to cruise into Gulliver’s to see what was happening.
I got into Gulliver’s around 5 pm and had a seat at the bar near the entrance. Not a great pulling position but allowed me a good vantage point and I wanted to see who was walking in. I estimated that there was around 15 girls in the bar who looked like they might be freelancers. Only about a 1/3 of them were attractive to me but this 1/3 was pretty damn cute. After hanging at the bar I surmised that the best place to sit for prime pulling would be nearer to the main pool area towards the back of the bar. Basically near the revolving car. It seems to me that the girls hanging around looking for potential customers tend to play pool. I put my name on the list and hung around with my drink.
One note on the drinks. I am sure they don’t do this often and the service girl admitted her mistake but she did make it twice. I had ordered a standard vodka coke which during happy hour is like 69 baht. Good deal if u ask me. However when I looked at my bill I noticed that my drink was 90 baht or something. Turned out the service girl was specifying the premium vodka which does not get happy hour pricing. I am not saying this is a regular scam there but it was slightly irritating.
A lot of people come to Gulliver’s to play pool so one can get some pretty good matches and some of the girls are quite good given they play everyday. So while I was sitting waiting for my turn I was sharing a table with 3 girls that I assumed were freelancers. They were talking in Thai trying to remember the name of the short time hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 11 other than the PB. I told them it was Penthouse. They all started laughing because they were talking about which one had better rooms and they assumed I had been listening in. Which of course I had been listening in.
I played a couple of rounds of pool, eventually lost to a cute girl and then returned to a different seat to chat up some other girls. I will admit that for a newbie Gulliver’s may be a little tough for a freelancer joint as compared to say the beergarden on Sukhumvit Soi 7. In the the beergarden all one has to do is walk around and pick a girl or sit down and let the girls walk past you. It is very obvious that the girls are freelancers and looking to hook up but at the same time I tend to never feel very attracted to the girls at the beergarden and I don’t like hanging out there. At least with Gulliver’s there is a nice atmosphere, pool and the ladies tend to be a little nicer. I am not at these places everyday though so I am sure this is somewhat of a generalization and I know many swear by the beergarden when it comes to daytime freelancer activity. Gulliver’s takes a bit more work and one has to be a little more patient.
They funny thing for me is one of my regular freelancer girls that I absolutely enjoy from time to time is a regular at Gulliver’s. She is great at playing the long ball and it makes sense she would headquarter out of Gulliver’s. I had just not been there for a long time to realize she hung out there. When I met her the first time it was at a go go bar. At this point, since I was spotted by my freelancer regular, she came over to join me with her friends which basically put a stop to my investigations. At this point it was around 7 pm I noticed that there we many more girls in the pub and that there was beginning to be a steady stream of girls coming through the front door. At this point I estimated that there were about 30-40 freelancers spread throughout the bar. Some pretty decent quality as well. At Gulliver’s my guess is one has to either sit next to some girls or go up to some girls in order to strike up a conversation. Hanging around the pool area seemed to be a good spot for the most part throughout the time I was there.
I will go back in a few weeks around 7 pm onward and try to dig a little deeper. I have also heard that the Gulliver’s on Khao San road is also another good option but I have not been. Anyone else?
After Gulliver’s I went home to bake some brownies and then went back out to meet up with some friends at the Mango. From there they headed to cowboy and I headed to Glow. Why?It is ladies night and I wanted to see if it brought many people to the bar and I was continuing my quest to get a date with one of the bartenders. BTW - the place was mostly dead. Which brings me back to the crux of this post.
When I lived in Hong Kong I was not attracted to the Hong Kong local girls. I would met some international girls and apart from the first part of my time in Hong Kong living with my Ukrainian girlfriend - I never really focused on dating in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a base for me to work nonstop hours and fly around the Asian region. I did not go out a lot in Hong Kong and would save my partying for the road trips - which were frequent. Since I knew I was going to be in some part of SE Asia almost every month I took to having a “girlfriend” in Thailand that I would stay with while in Thailand and who would come to stay with me in Hong Kong from time to time. She was former bargirl so I continued to fool around so to speak while on the road. It was just too easy.
Then when I moved to Thailand I was with another girl, also a bargirl, for a year or so. That eventually fell apart because she turned out to be an overly jealous physcho Thai girl and I had to move out of my own apartment just to get rid of her. Plenty to write about on this subject but it is just too complicated. After this I went back to my single life and started to fall for a girl who was not a bargirl but turned out to have a boyfriend and whose tactics were somewhat worse than a bargirl. Nice. On Nutter shared a similar story.
So then I went back to the bar scene and met a younger, not yet spoiled girl, who would stay with me from time to time but spent most of her time at school. It was looking like things were working quite well. I would see her regularly but still have nights out often enough to continue meeting other girls and party with my core group of friends. Before everyone piles in and say something about having a girlfriend and still looking around I will be clear and state that she knew about this. She likes girls and we had a deal that she could see other women and that I could look for other girls to join us. Think Hugh Hefner folks. I want multiple girlfriends and I think living in Thailand makes this possible but takes some work.
I had always told my girl though that I would not tolerate lying. Thai girls have a tendency to think that getting away with some basic white lies from time to time is par for the course. So the first time she lied to me about something fairly substantial I told her I was invoking the 3 strikes rule. That no matter what the lie - once she had lied to me 3 times I would break up with her. No discussion, no second chances and no tears. She understood and promised not to lie.
Well. She managed to collect her 3rd strike this past week and I asked her to move her stuff out of my apartment. She did not live in my apartment but would stay often, had keys and would come and go freely. She did nor argue with me. She grabbed her stuff and left quietly. I am still talking to her and I honestly can’t decide what to do next. I mean I still want to be Hugh. I won’t lie.
So that brings me to the conclusion. I realize that I like the chase. I like going to the mall and when I happen to see a cute single girl I am not shy in trying to chat her up and get a number. I won’t die over rejection. Gaming is fun. However the hunger for gaming seems to never go away. I can’t say I have been that successful to date but I enjoy the hunt. Since this is Thailand it is easy to constantly be on the hunt but still have a fallback position. Either a gik or a P4p option is almost always available. Sometimes I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing but for now I tend to think it is good. I can spend 80% of my time on the hunt and leave the 20% to satisfy my needs in the case of the fallback. This is my current strategy. It may change tomorrow depending on how I feel. I may have met someone last night who changes my view on this. Or maybe not. The beauty of Thailand is the overwhelming array of options.
Spicy was on fire last night. I tried to chat up this Uzbekistan P4P girl but she was a total bitch. Go figure. Then we ran into some other girls and well - one thing led to another. God I love this country. Need to re-evaluate my strategy now. Seems to be in constant need of re visioning.
I think your ‘current strategy’ is great. I agree 100%. The P4P is always there, and if push comes to shove, I can try and talk my wife into a quick roll. It’s the Nisit Girl from the magazine I’m looking for, the MTV VJ on TV, the California WOW Girls…….In other words, I can have sex anytime I want it, but it’s like looking at a Playboy Centerfold when I was 15 and dreaming. I’m 50 now, but I can still dream.
View all comments by bo
It was good to see the article above which provided some answers to my comment on the first Gulliver article.
It seems sad to be asking questions about the best strategy to pick up freelancers (i.e. prostitutes) in a bar however having only gone to beer bars or go go bars in LOS it seems a bit strange to have to try and chat up women in the P4P scene. In the Beer Garden you can be sure that every woman there is a FL (as one of the girls there said to me ‘You come to this bar, I think you sex tourist.This bar all over internet’). However you get the impression that Gullivers would be a nice bar for a group of non P4P girls to go to for a game of pool, a meal and a drink after work. You don’t want to embarrass yourself chatting up women who may not be FL’s.
It is so much easier at the Beer Garden. There if you walk around women will motion for you to sit next to them, or if you are sitting down they will frantically try to catch your eye from many tables away or they will tour the room working the tables. I get the impression that women won’t chat men up at Gulliver’s.However, at BG, although it is flattering at first,you get a bit tired of the many desperate, old, and unattractive women being so pushy.
I think there are a few pitfalls to Gullivers
1) Not all of the women there are going to be highly attractive. G is very close to BG and there is nothing to stop BG quality women from coming to G. It’s fairly dark in there and you could end up making mistakes which will only come to ‘light’ when you get back to your room
2) Girls tend to hang round in groups at tables. So if you find a girl you like then you may have to end up buying drinks for her and her mates
3) The girls tend not to chat you up so you can’t know for sure whether they are genuinely interested in you. If you approach a girl you like you can’t just chat to her without offer to buy her a drink. Girls may accept drinks off you (perhaps out of politeness) even though they have no intention of going with you.
4)It is a pool based bar. Girls who hang around there are likely to be good at pool. It won’t be enjoyable for them to play someone who’s game is crap.
4) And of course there is alwyays the fear that you could walk over to approach girls at tables who are not interested or are not FL’s and feel embarrassed having to walk back to your seat.
Maybe all this is worth it to get the young, attractive, arm candy who you can have great conversations and genuine GFE with - the stuff you won’t get with NEP bar girls or the short time specialists at BG. With a few of these girl’s numbers in your possession then you could always rotate them and call a different one up on different nights.
View all comments by Mike Phillips
It can be confusing in there since some of the girls are not on the make, just there for some pool and drinks.
The hookers should wear nametags or numbers,.. at least dress real sleazy. A little help please.
I remember the story in the Bangkok Post several years ago about college students selling their pussy. They would have a pack of cigarettes sitting on the table. If there was a cigarette sticking out, it was a signal they were doing business.
1 cigarrete meant 1,000bt, 2 cigarettes = 2,000bt.
View all comments by Khun J
If there are a group of girls sitting without men at Gulliver’s a good working assumption is they are working.
If you see girls alone or in small groups obviously nursing a single drink they are definitely working.
If you see a group of girls with a single guy, another good working assumption is that the unattached girls are working.
Standard protocol at Gullivers is to just walk up, introduce yourself, and strike up a conversation.
This is even true when you see a guy with two girls or a guy with a group of girls. It is OK to walk up, say hello to the obviously unattached girl, and attempt to transact.
You do not have to buy a round of drinks and are not expected to. 99% of the girls are super friendly and, frankly, are happy anyone has come over to talk to them.
Sit around and watch for awhile and you will see most of the girls sit for hours and never even get approached.
If you pay attention to the girls conversation and body language, you will know within a couple of minutes whether the girl is working and interested in transacting.
If you are completely clueless in this area a good working assumption is that if they make direct eye contact and smile frequently they are interested–only the price, terms, and services need to be negotiated and agreed upon.
Even working TG’s are very polite and attuned to saving face so if for some reason they are not interested they won’t just stone face or tell you to get lost like they would back in The World.
This is one of the great features of Thai society-basic respect for the feelings of others and it permeates even the farang girl venues.
When you approach a group of girls and decide which one you are interested in just ignore the others or make a small compliment about her. The other girls will quickly clue in, shut up, and let you and your choice explore possibilities.
If you are not interested after talking to them for a couple of minutes or you find they are not interested be polite, say it was nice to meet them, and move on. No harm. No foul. No reason to be embarrassed.
Feel free to butterfly over to the next group of prospectives and try again.
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
hahahaah…2 cigarettes = 2000 baht……what if they are smoking cigars ?
View all comments by bo
Thanks for the original post and yes, if you live in Thailand long-term it is good to re-evaluate your position from time-to-time. I lived in Bangkok about a year and eventually my re-evaluation led to my relocation, but, given the rise in the baht and the current surreality in government/visa/foreign-investment rules, I consider myself fortunate.
Re: Gulliver’s, the place always put me off a bit. It was too big and too much like a regular bar. I don’t drink alcohol or play pool, so I don’t go to regular bars to hang out or chat. Some people are into that, but when I was cruising Lower Suk I was looking for poussoir.
I guess I should mention that I had three regular galpals when I lived there, all pros of course (try having even one “normal” Thai girl for a girlfriend and see how she reacts to even the delusion that you might be carnally involved elsewhere–working girls are more pragmatic IMO). None of them knew each other but of course they all knew I was a butterfly. Because I told them so. Up front. When I was in the mood I would phone or SMS and they would reply if they were free or not (for the record, one I met at a go-go, and the other two on the street).
Every once in a while I would get the urge for something different and would cruise. I had a game I called the “BG7G” for Beer Garden (soi) 7 Game. The objective was to walk to the BG7 and pull someone strolling by WITHOUT going into the BG7. This is not as difficult as it sounds, as some of you already know. Once I chatted up a gal buy some grilled skewers of meat on Soi 5, she brought them back to my place. Of course some were winners and some less so. I got the phone numbers of the winners and sometimes would invite them back. One, a delightful mix of central Thai and hilltribe, a 37 kg spinner had this catchphrase “hey man.” It sounds dumb but I would laugh every time I got an SMS that started “HEY MAN…” and naturally there were times when she’d be knocking at my door just as the Vitamin V was kicking in. Yeah, some aspects of BKK life I miss.
I’m late 40s, not thin, not Quasimodo but no hunk. I believe that how you ACT is more important to the girls than how you look. Yes, the joking about being “pumpui” is absurd, but lots of Thai life and humor is absurd. If you laugh, joke, speak a little Thai and make the girls laugh, you will be MUCH more popular than some buffed 20-something whelp who’s barking orders down at the strip-club. Knowledge of local culture helps: it’s largely disappeared in Bangkok, but upcountry there’s a tradition that anyone is entitled to water, preferably cold. I’ve seen businesses that have water coolers on the sidewalk for passersby to help themselves. Supermarkets sell individual sealed cups of water with straws: I would keep them in the fridge. When a girl came over to my flat I would immediately offer her some cold water. Snacks are also a good idea.
Then you start joking. One thing I liked to do is talk about Japanese men (they will ALWAYS say they don’t like Js, probably tell the Japanese they never go with farang), because I spent a year in Tokyo. I sometimes do my imitation of a Japanese punter, which would send them into hysterics. Do whatever you know. Things like magic tricks/sleight-of-hand are a riot. I know a guy who used to carry children’s books in Thai (comics/text balloons) and would pretend to read out absurd interpretations of the text. There are a million variations. Have fun, interact, joke. Imagine how much more fun this is than sitting listening to some farang complain about his bitch ex-wife or the heat or the icestorms back home or how Thai girls compare to Filipinas or whatEVER. Can that noise. Put a smile on yr face and be silly. They don’t care about your worries. Make ‘em laugh, put ‘em at ease, and you’ll have better sex.
Having multiple girlfriends: yeah it sounds like Hugh Hefner but the reality is that these gals are banging other guys too, if they’re not doing it professionally they will likely have a Thai boyfriend or husband. If you can’t deal with that then maybe Thailand is not the place for you, not that you can’t find a faithful partner but that, as a farang, you are limited and the situation is pressurized. One thing I found is that women over 24-25 are generally more level-headed than the 18-19 year-olds. And they’re more willing to discuss sex openly. Yeah, talk about sex with a Thai gal. Why not?
And one thing about Thai working girls is that you make it clear from the get-go that you will not tolerate any *major* shit. The “3-strikes” rule is a good one, and that’s one example. One thing I would not stand for is any guilt-trips, bullshit excuses for out-of-line payments, or any other standard-bar-girl shit. You just smile and say no, sometimes…you need to say no a little creatively. Some guys get indignant, but try to accept that they are ALLOWED to try to rip you off. It’s part of the game. I have never ever had a bargirl try to steal from me. I have had more than a few try to get me to give them money for no-value. But once they get to know me, they realize that what I represent is good value and no-bullshit. We’d have meals together, watch movies and have a lot of sex, and once Thai women are warmed up, as many of you know, they like sex. A LOT.
But, what specifically turns them on? Do you take the time to learn? I found out that one of these gals liked to watch porn, but not just any porn: she liked watching two western guys with one Asian dame sportfuck on the TV. The other two didn’t like porn. Well, not much anyway.
Just one man’s opinion, but I had a lot of fun, didn’t go broke, left Bangkok with my sanity intact and may return some day. I guess if I could say one thing about Thai girls it’s this: they come from a different culture and no matter what they’ve learned about how to SEEM like they understand your culture, their own culture is what predominates. They will say you’re “jai dee” for the price of a Bacardi Breezer. But if you get to know them, they don’t say it any more, because you show you’re jai dee: make ‘em laugh, feed and water ‘em, learn to make ‘em cum. It’s a value-proposition like most things in life, so when preposterous requests for money are mentioned, that’s not good value for you, so laugh. And don’t come up with the cash. If the girl goes away irked, either find another, or send her an SMS a coupla days later saying you’ve got the new Scooby-Doo movie on DVD and you want her to come over and watch it. Now that’s something I’ve never had to resort to!
View all comments by Jack
It’s reassuring to know that the FL’s at Gulliver’s are so approachable and user friendly when it comes to picking them up.
One further question arises as to what do you do if you want to play the long ball game but be a ‘team player’ i.e.you want to play with a team of girls.
You will tend to find the same girls frequenting Gullivers I would expect.If you pick girls up here and let them know that you are playing the long ball game but then want to chop and change after say three days then you may experience difficulties I would have thought. You go back to find a new girl and there may be one or more girls there that you may have had as ‘girl friends’ in the past.
There might be a slight bit of uncomfortableness or embarrassment in trying to pick up new girls in those circumstances. These girls will of course talk to each other and you may find your butterfly wings being clipped.You have the same problems happening at beer bars/go go bars where girls go with a guy for one night only yet still they dislike guys who come back to the bar and go with another girl. The problem would probably be worst at Gulliver’s where you are hoping to keep going back to certain girls over time but may want a new girl on a particular night when one of your regulars is there. These girls know that it is only a game however they may not like it and could make things awkward.
The answer of course is to have many other places like Gulliver’s where you can butterfly. However are there many other bars that are the direct equivalents of Gulliver’s? i.e. good looking freelancers,good English, interested in the long term. There are freelancers at nightclubs however these clubs are generally expensive for drinks, entry, etc. The Beer Garden is not really an equivalent because of the lack of quality and the fact that the girls there are normally only interested in a couple of quick pops for no longer than a couple of hours to while away the afternoon.
View all comments by Mike Phillips
MP - Yup. This is always a problem really. I do not think there are a lot of good places anymore for daytime hook ups. Least not for quality. Arthur talked about this subject here:
http://www.tfs2m.com/?p=259
I also think the smarter girls have moved this chase to the online hookup sites which I plan on getting into a little bit more.
View all comments by smitty
Someone could do a lengthy article on BGs and honesty.
RE: Ladies whom I have more than just occasional ST liasons with, I also have low tolerance for dishonesty. I perceive it as a sign of disrespect and the lady thinking I am as stupid as a newbie tourist.
I much prefer the honest companion like the one who told me last week “I’ve had 18 barfines already this month and am tired; can I come sleep your room tonight, no sex?”
I also don’t mind if the lady tells you the small lie that she thinks you want to hear, such as “I like old man better than young boy.”
But I’ll pull out the Red Card for the lady who more than once feeds me bull$hit such as “Customer barfine me, but we don’t have sex.”, or “Customer always gives me 3000 baht LT”. I don’t care if they have sex with any customer as that is their business and I am not sponsoring them. It’s just that I prefer an honest relationship (even with a BG) with someone who I spend more than just an occasional ST with.
View all comments by DJ
Uzbeckis?
View all comments by Jack Dawson
DJ - u got it.
JD - it’s a country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbekistan
She was hot too.
I heard there is an interesting scene in both Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
if they are as good in bed as the Ukrainians - then sign me up.
View all comments by smitty
The advantage of playing pool with the girls is that you can make the deal/bet with the girl………’If I win you come to my room and fuck me for free….but If you win I must come to your room and fuck you for free’……….
View all comments by the sandman
Overheard leaving Gulliver’s the other night…
Him: “Can I come in your arse?”
Her: (Softly and sweetly) “Yes teerak, can”
Him: “And can my two friends as well?”
View all comments by Combover