The FARANG Speaks 2 Much (tfs2m)

I had been slowly covering the lesser bars of Patpong recently, and make a slight return to them today. Last time round, in the comments on the review of The Rock karaoke bar, regular poster (and blogger) Werewolf said:

My upstairs experiences are limited to the bar called “Sideline” above Chicken Devine. I’ll be interested to read what you have to say about it after you’ve been there.

Modus Operandi

I was in Patpong with a friend recently (who was experiencing his first ever visit to Patpong), and thought I’d check it out. In my book, if a Patpong gogo bar is upstairs, and doesn’t have “Queen’s Castle” in the name, it’s probably a clip-joint show-bar. Common tricks are for the tout(s) to show you one pricelist for drinks, and insist that there’s no “cover charge” (a fee to watch the “show”), before you’re later presented with a vastly inflated bill after you’ve had a few beers and seen the horrors that lurk inside.

The Super Pussy review is a good example of this.

That’s the main reason I haven’t covered a lot of the upstairs bars in Patpong yet. If I suspect I’m going to have a bad time, probably ending in a heated argument, I tend not to be too enthusiastic about visiting a bar, even if it is for the overall good of the website.

I have visited most of the ground floor bars, but the ones I haven’t yet covered have been so mediocre that it’s difficult to write more than a paragraph or so, which I don’t think really constitutes a review!

Still, if Patpong’s going to be the next ex-pat bar area of choice (and I can’t believe more people haven’t called me on this!) then I need to get it covered, not least because nobody else is doing it.

So. Sideline. It’s upstairs on Patpong 2, just next to the little strip of Thai-style karaoke bars that nobody ever visits. Look for the almost-hidden staircase across from the inaccurately-named “Topless Beer Bar”, or enter by other stairs outside the Trade Winds bar.

We were told by the enthusiastic touts that a Tiger beer would cost us a bargain ฿100 each, and that there was definitely, absolutely, positively no cover charge!

Of course I knew what to expect. But part of my motivation for entering was that I was curious as to how easily I’d be able to talk my way out of the inevitable attempts at ripping me off.

Come Inside, Handsum Man

We wandered inside and sat down. The grinning mamasan, with a glint in her eye, swooped on us immediately, and tried to encourage us to sit near the stage. Given that the aging vixen sat between the chrome poles was clearly about to launch a banana from her vagina, I opted to sit a little further back. Beers were ordered. So far, so good.

As the banana arced into the air, skidding to a half by my pal’s feet, a couple of “dancers” came over and joined us. Getting rid of unwanted attention in amusing ways is one of my favourite parts of the gogo experience, but I thought I’d let my pal stew for a while as they clamoured for drinks. They weren’t going to get any, but I figured he could do with some practise in the thousand-ways-of-saying-no.

And then, from over my shoulder, an older Thai guy placed a small laminated card in front of me. “Cover Charge ฿300″, it said. I laughed, and told him we’d be happier to leave immediately. He quickly backed down, and said “okay, free for you!”.

By now, an even rougher old girl was doing the cigarette-smoking trick, as we wondered just how quickly we could finish our beers and go somewhere else. Around about this time, I discreetly checked the total on our bill. It said ฿800. I guess that was ฿100 each for the beer, and ฿300 each for the show. I’d deal with that later. At least they hadn’t try to rip us off for drinks. Yet.

We were chatting away to the dancers, but I had no intention of finding out the price of lady-drinks. They were made aware of this, but still seemed happy to talk to us. So a few plus points there, I guess.

Drink For Me?

The mamasan wasn’t quite so easily dissuaded though. “Mama thirsty!”, she begged, clawing at her throat the way that they do. Smiling, I encouraged her to take a drink from the toilet, but she didn’t seem too keen.

Her next gambit was to tell me that I simply must buy her a drink, as it was her birthday! What are the chances? Gritting my teeth but still keeping that grin fixed, I congratulated her, and told her I’d be delighted to buy her a drink once I’d verified her date of birth on her ID card.

To be fair, her comeback was pretty good. “Oh no, I too shy!”, she said. “Because I only look 22, but really I am 36!”. Add those numbers together and you’re probably closer to the truth, but I liked her style.

Anyway, since we’d finished our drinks and there was nothing at all of any interest to either of us in the bar, I figured we’d try to pay the bill. “Two hundred baht, okay?”, I said to the mamasan, as I plucked the ฿800 bill from its bin. “Okay, sure”, she said.

So pretty painless, really. Of all the upstairs “pussy show” bars, the Queen’s Castle bars are the only ones where I haven’t even been asked for an imaginary “cover charge”, or had the price of beer suddenly increase by an order of magnitude. But it seems that if you know the score and are confident enough with your Thai, you can survive a trip to Sideline without too much unpleasantness. Why on earth you’d want to though, is quite another matter…