Kung Fu: (1972) (TV)
Young Caine: You cannot see.
Master Po: You think I cannot see?
Young Caine: Of all things, to live in darkness must be worst.
Master Po: Fear is the only darkness.
Had a chance a week or so back to join up with some Thai guys and a longtime expat to hit the Resort. One of the Member Clubs on Ratchada. I had never been and figured it was time to try a new one. The other bennie would be that I was going with people who were well known at the Resort and I figured not only would we get good service but I would probably learn a thing or two. I was immediately reminded of how much I have to learn for I truly am the young grasshopper.
It is strange for me. I have lived in a few cities around Asia and for some reason after a few years I felt like I know the places or at least I knew as much as I wanted to know. Or maybe it was the feeling that I did not have the desire to keep searching but for some reason Thailand keeps drawing me in more. I still have the desire to be here, to keep searching, to keep learning the language and to somehow find or experience things I have not before. Sure - I am no explorer and yes - everything has been done before but that does not mean I have experienced everything. I was out cruising the other day and found Chavala. What is it? I guess it is a Thai massage joint but since I have never been I think I need to go. The more I cruise around, the more I find things and well - people I want to know.
Over time I find myself growing up a bit and learning from the experts. I also find that I tend to lose interest in the first couple of layers of Bangkok that I first experienced when I came to Thailand. Namely beer bars, go-go bars and the lower Sukhumvit scene. I don’t hate it. I still check it out but I don’t really desire it. Don’t get me wrong - I still remember how it feels to walk into a go-go bar or my first freelancer joint - Angel’s Disco but it just does not feel the same as it used to. Taking a newbie out for the first time is still fun since you relive the experiences and get some of the exhilaration back. So instead I tend to try new things, find new places to pick up and learn from the masters. I think the masters are the business professional Thai guys and long-term expats who also play it like the Thai guys.
Quick segway since I am sure it will come up. I am in Thailand. I am learning the Thai ways. What does this mean? Married Thai guys or Thai guys with girlfriends go to massage parlors, hit the member clubs and take advantage of places like the Peep Inn. I am not saying they all do but my guess is a big portion of them do. BTW - these are not the motorcycle taxi drivers or taxi drivers. I have always felt - the Farangs are mere gnats when it comes to the scene here. I really don’t want to discuss the morality of it all or how this is different than the messed version of life that some people call the western world. If you have a problem with this then search your own soul for why you do but I am okay with it. I recently found out about a massage parlor that I did not know about previously. I have not located it yet but my girlfriend wrote the address down in Thai for me so I could try it. I had to promise to tell her what I thought of it though.
Resort. Loved it. I am still trying to figure out why I loved it but it probably is one of the best member clubs in Bangkok. I have had experience at the Pent, Forte, Sopranos, Orbit (old sopranos), and the Piano. So I think I can judge a good member club. I first joined the Forte a few years back. I still like it due to my history with it but I won’t say it is the best. Sopranos is okay but I think the live band takes too much of the focus and I get bored. The girls are hot and all but no different really than any of the other places. Same could be said for Forte. I dig the Pent but really only because of the disco room. Once it gets going it stays going and there is always eye candy. Both Forte and Sopranos suffer from the live band show syndrome - once the shows or lives bands get going there is no other form of entertainment and no one to perve at. The Pent solves this with their multi-room layout. Disco room - all coyote all the time. If you want live music go to the live music room. Works for me.
The Resort is mostly one big room with similar layouts to other member clubs but I think it is the way they manage the evening. Their is a live band but they never play more than 3-4 songs at a time and while they are singing there is still coyote dancer action. So eye candy happens even while they sing. Forte and Sopranos both have a stupid rule that there are no dancers while the band is on. They need to change the rule. It sucks.
The girls. There just seems to be more at the Resort than I recall at other places. Tons of hot dancers. Loads of PR girls who were really stunning. The Pent PR girls are okay. Sopranos probably has the best lot of the PR girls but still not as good as Resort. The outfits of the dancers were always small and tight and they kept moving. It was killing me.
The other thing I notice is I think the Resort gets less Farang than the similar places around suk. I think this is a good thing. My friend put it this way - chances are with the way they expect you to speak a little bit of Thai it tends to weed out the Farang who might get by at the Pent or Forte. I noticed the girls, whether they speak English or not, really only engaged when I spoke Thai. The other bennie to this is that they don’t pull the shit on you they are used to pulling on Farang guys since the normal customer at the Resort would never take it. Drink begging does not go over well. Bitching about buying drinks for many girls and so on just is not tolerated. I felt pretty liberated here.
A few examples. I was chatting up on hottie but the unfortunate negative in that she had a not so hot friend. One of my Thai hosts quickly told her to lose the friend or we were not buying drinks. Friend quickly got lost. Nothing impolite was said. Just a request.
Probably the best line of the night soon followed with another girl and my friend. All this was in Thai.
dude: how old are u?
girl: 26
dude: your almost as pretty as my wife when I met her at the age of 26
girl: that is so sweet.
Phone numbers exchanged later. The girls at the Resort made me feel they were attainable. Much more so than at some of the other places. Sure it would take some work but it felt like the chase was on much quicker than it normally happens. They know they are not the only one you might be trying to connect with. They know you are either married or have a girlfriend but that did not matter. Anyway. It could be I just had too much fun on my first trip but I will be back to Resort and hopefully keep digging. What is also fun about places like this is you feel so far removed from Sukhumvit and so do the girls. We closed the place down and I asked a buddy to drop me off close to where I thought Renovate was. This is the after-hours club for the Ratchada area. I covered it all in the Guide.
there seems to be an inverse relationship between quality of gclub and number of farang punters. resort doesn’t have many farang at all (yet) which is why i love it - sopranos seems to be slowly going downhill IMHO while the number of farang visitors keeps growing.
resort is a bit of a mad house - i think it’s best to go with a group of some thais who are in the know - they can take control of the apparent chaos inside in a way a seasoned farang could only dream of doing. smitty, i know how much you miss “real” bikes - you might have noticed a row of harleys and others at the right of the front door before going in - these guys can hook you up if you’re interested and don’t yet have your own source.
View all comments by go go groupie
Smitty: “Married Thai guys or Thai guys with girlfriends go to massage parlors, hit the member clubs and take advantage of places like the Peep Inn.”
So true.
Given the choice declasse hotties prefer to get corrupted by affluent attractive men rather than affluent single Daddy’s boys or Mommy’s boys for that matter, who look like Banharn’s son.(little porker married a coyote dancer didn’t he?)
Everyone knows the play.
“Who’s up and who’s down” are beautifully locked in.
She knows she’s there to shake her ass and charm and he knows he’s there to pay for it all to be isolated from his marriage, “couplehood”.
This married/legit-girlfriended guy is already road tested as a payer.
The G-club girl’s mindset is, “Ok, he’s cute, he’s cool, he’s rich enough. And I work like this. So I’ll play with this woman’s husband.
Her husband will pay me. So he’s married. Big deal. I might wanna see a pictures of the wife, girlfriend to “metric” my own stock.”
But its done with impeccable manners.
With charm and aplomb.
That and your “pretty wife” comment pretty well nail the Thai scene.
Heard any stories about how many and how badly Thai guys on 50-60K a month blow it ALL on these girls? Apartments, cars, clothes, din-nerr How when the money runs out, or they get fired, or they lose it, what happens?
SAME SAME
View all comments by thongsuk
“The Pent PR girls are okay” ?!?!?!
- You are killing me.
View all comments by Daywalker
What’s the address of The Resort?
View all comments by Phoenix
go go- yeah. maybe I should not have said anything. god knows I made the pent and I did not get anything for it. still working my deal at resort. anyway - resort sucks. everyone stay away. thanks for the bike tidbit.
ts - i have not heard the stories but I cam imagine.
dw - okay but there is always better.
p - just head down ratchada. it is past most of the massage parlors on the left but before u get to Poseiden. U will see a sign with a big arrow - it sits back a bit off of ratchada.
View all comments by smitty
smitty- “resort sucks”? Tons of hot girls and with the right amount of Baht falling out of your pocket they can be had. Great places to get numbers and make calls at a later date and all of the girls I have met there have rich Thai guys funding them so the cash isn’t usually priority one after a time or two out.
If you do not like Resort, check out Caribbean as it is right around the corner and is a much bigger venue and has more girls and fewer farangs. If you can’t speak even basic Thai I would at least bring someone that does as the girls do not speak much English. There is a video of Caribbean here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuX3U9xh6u0
The bad thing about most of the members clubs is that once you have shagged a couple of the girls all the girls know it and it is a lot more work getting action.
View all comments by Billybobbkk
billy - I said that to turn people away. I wrote the column.
Love the resort but don’t want it that popular for farang. For the reasons mentioned in the comments. Have to check out Caribbean soon. So much to do. I will need to mind the Resort better before I move on though.
View all comments by smitty
I’m not sure that I’d think of these well off Thai businessmen as ‘masters’, any more than I would any other repressed, socially inept Asian businessman who frequents a karaoke lounge. Same meat, different gravy.
View all comments by Combover
co - I was not generalizing but speaking of the people I went with. None are inept and I doubt any of them would step foot in a Karaoke joint. I used to work with guys similar to this when I came here from HK on business. I am not talking about the general masses. I am talking about the younger, well dressed, and fun Thai guys who know the game. To me they are pretty impressive and I learned a few things.
View all comments by smitty
smitty: there seems to be increasing confusion among site visitors when you comment on your own posts. Perhaps you and pmmp should also include the author name in the blog title (”…I remain the grasshopper by smitty”) to reduce confusion for people who don’t know who the administrators are. Just a thought.
View all comments by werewolf
Smitty, next time you see a farang in the Resort with short pants, a Hard Rock Cafe Bangkok shirt and smilingly telling a girl in broken English that she has got great boobs and asking her about the barfine… thats me
View all comments by Phoenix
ww - I don’t think it is increasing confusion - I think it is mostly new people. Which I understand but what can I say. I have my reasons for doing it this way - none of which will make much sense to people. Sorry to billy but hopefully it will make sense. It used to be easy. pmmp with the weeklies and pretty much everything else is me. All reader submissions are labeled.
P - I will see if I can get u thrown out. No offense taken I hope. If u do ask though - let me know what the barfine is.
View all comments by smitty
Smitty- The only reason I posted about The Resort and Caribbean is that it is now somewhat common to see Farangs at both places and as I mentioned in the earlier post, it has gotten a little tougher to pull girls at both places due to my past experiences there. Thankfully both places are pretty pricey so it keep my visits to a minimum and there are still some nice places where my friends and I are the only white guys in the place.
It is funny because I see the guys posting here following the same nightlife path that I took. We almost all start on lower Sukhumvit then on to the soapy and message places and then at some level, we delve into the truer Thai nightlife. I am going to be pissed when everyone finds all the places I go to find girls. I will post them when my friends and I have burnt ourselves up at all those places.
BTW- your traffic must be pretty good on this site as almost 100 people have viewed the Caribbean video since I posted it and between the time I book marked a few weeks ago and when I posted, only 40 or so new people had viewed it.
View all comments by Billybob
“The girls at the Resort made me feel they were attainable.”
Sounds like they were doing their job well.
BTW how much did it cost you to obtain that feeling?
Inquiring minds here at “thefarangspends2much . com” need to know.
View all comments by Jack Dawson
ww: fyi, every post not marked is smitty’s. I put a sig on all the Weeklies and the couple of Posts I made over the past few months are always marked with pmmp.
View all comments by pmmp
billy - I understand what u were saying. I was not trying to pump resort to much since, as u have noticed, we do have a fair bit of traffic and people will go. Which is all good. I think u need to be nice and share some venues bro. Do it for the team.
jd - I personally spent about 2300 for my share of the booze and ladydrinks. I was there for about 4.5 hours. Well worth it in my book. Yes - I could have picked up a nana parking lot ho for less than that but frankly that has no appeal to me whatsoever.
View all comments by smitty
I don’t think it is increasing confusion - I think it is mostly new people. Yeah, actually, that’s what I meant, I was just trying to phrase it tactfully.
“…but what can I say. I have my reasons for doing it this way” You always do. BTW, is that a tactful way of telling me to keep my bright ideas to myself?!
View all comments by werewolf
ww - not at all. just saying it is what it is. smitty has been my nickname for a long, long time and reaches past these naughty nightlife circles. google is very powerful these days. hopefully that sums it all up. I think pmmp outlined how to decipher who is writing. hope that works.
View all comments by smitty
Billybob: Well said. Even I as a regular tourist start to find Nana, Cowboy and similar places less and less attracting, I prefer the Freelancer bars, after-hour clubs, etc. The Pent was great on my only visit so far. As a tourist it’s probably not easy to enjoy a member club to it’s fullest, but I will surely check out more of them on my next visits. And they keep the always-bitching Cheap Charlies like Jack Dawson out, another great advantage.
Don’t worry Smitty, I know how to dress nice and will share my whiskey with you if we should meet, after doing you the favor and asking for the barfine
View all comments by Phoenix
I find that 20k usually secures a bar-fine / 30 mins of passion?!
View all comments by Daywalker
JD- In my experience there is no set cost for the girls at the members clubs as they don’t want cash but rather someone to take them out and show them a good time away from work. This means getting phone numbers and making contact at a later date, and of course spending money on them. It is not always a done deal even once you have done that and sometimes it takes quite a bit of effort. The girls I see on a regular basis have told me they want guys that can speak some Thai so they don’t get bored, guys that don’t stay in hotels as if they would be seen going into hotels they are labeled working girls, and guys that understand that they have other guys that they go with because in the long run most of these girls are at university, or just out of, and they took the job at the club to find someone to bankroll them.
The Thai guys I know that frequent the members club have real girlfriends or wives and they go to the clubs to show their buddies they have money to burn. I met a girl at Caribbean a couple of years ago and still see here a few times a month. She lives in a very nice condo in Lad Phrao and has 2 cars, all provided by her Thai sponsor. She is his “gik” and is expected to be available when he calls, which is not all that often as he is married and she is sure she is just one of many girls he has on the side.
If you make it to Caribbean some time look at the kind of cars parked outside and you will see what kind of cash some of these guys have. Almost every time I go there I see a number of Ferrari’s, Porsche’s and the standard Benz’s and BMW’s.
These places can be great but as Farangs we are initially at at a disadvantage as the rich Thai guys will spend way more on average and we are seen as tourists trying to score. I had to put in some time talking with the girls and it took a few visits for the girls to recognize that I wasn’t there for a quick piece of a**. If you want to score with a girl 3 minutes after you’ve see her and a quick chat with the mama-san, the members club would not be for you. If you have no problem working for it and spending a little money in the meantime, you can find girls that are way better looking than the go-go girls and way more in to calling you up when they just want a bite to eat and an afternoon shag.
View all comments by Billybob
b - u pretty much sum up how I feel about the member clubs. If u go in expecting a tx - u will never get one. But if u bag numbers, have fun and be cool - over time things happen. Random shags, fun nights out and decent dates with good looking girls. Works for me. I am glad it does not work for many people - keeps the bar higher.
View all comments by smitty
Caribbean has lots of girls that speak English. Ask the table manager and they will line up a gaggle in front of you to pick from, all speaking good English.
View all comments by bkk22
Just curious - how fit are the girls at these clubs relative to a your bog standard TG found in ‘classier’ establishments (Spasso’s) or after hours venue (Tunnel / Spicy)? Case of same, same maybe?
Am down to check out the Pent with a buddy next time am in town to see for myself.
But am wondering if the appeal is more to do with the fact that these girls are not so easily obtainable via B 600 barfine? I’ve met some stunning girls in the Bed Club and Tunnel from some of the clubs mentioned and they do pass for BKK Hiso - more Bangkok ’suay’ than exotic Issan…
They are noticeably better groomed and more restrained (read: lady-like) in comparison.
View all comments by kalon man
km,
The g-club girls are much more fit than most Freelancers at the after hours venues. The girls are on their feet for many hours every night - dancers and hostesses. They usually are Uni-girls or have day jobs.
I’ve been with and chatted with FLs who don’t do anything but sleep all day. They usually wake eat dinner then prepare for the night out. My experience is the after hours girls are a bit older than the g-club girls. Some have a kid. Some have been married.
How can I get some pics from the Pent on this site?
View all comments by Pablo
bkk22- a lot of girls do speak English but not like the girls of the farang only venues. Like Smitty said, we do not want the place full of farangs next time we go in there. Some places are best kept somewhat secret.
View all comments by Billybob
“and guys that understand that they have other guys that they go with”
Find one that doesn’t keetung call you every 5 minutes and you have a perfect girlfriend
View all comments by Orion
Ok guys… all the g-clubs are closed tonight!
Call that super hot coyote dancer you’ve been wanting to bang and take her to the movies and then take her home, they’re all free tonight.
I love dry nights
View all comments by Orion
o - so true. was getting texts this morning and last night alerting me and asking if I was free. I am not free though - I charge a 100 baht but will write that up later.
View all comments by smitty
I’m not free either but I’m available
I’m taking mine to see Alvin and the Chipmunks…
Don’t want to be distracted by a good movie
View all comments by Orion