It is too easy to pick the wrong girl. in Thailand.  So it's better to be a butterfly and have many girlfriends.  By this I mean one winds up a prisoner in a place one does not want to be–duped, whether by a girl or by oneself, one’s options freely given away and a target instead of the man in charge of his own actions. The butterfly is free in Thailand until he decides he is no longer free to fly about in the air with a few view of so many places to look or to land. But the difference is there are so few choices in the U.S. whereas in Thailand, at least in Pattaya, there are 10,000 times as many. Mind-boggling. Take last night, a night of celebration because yesterday afternoon I signed the contract to purchase a condo in Pattaya, which only means that starting in August my home will no longer be in the U.S. but in Thailand where I know nothing of the language and even less of the culture. Last night’s quest started with my search for a tall long legged girl from a go-go bar–which would cost me more than double the price of a girl from a beer bar.

In a few months I’d have a permanent home in Pattaya just two hundred yards from the ocean, a beautiful two bedroom, two bathroom condo. I’d soon find myself a target of many girls here wanting a better life style with a spacious place to live, and not just for herself, but for her family and even possibly her friends. All the options would be mine. I could run along the beach everyday. I could meditate out on the deck or down by the pool upon the meaningless of life or what I should do next. I could have a different girl each night in my bed or the same one. My phone might even be ringing off the hook. It would be a good life but I wouldn’t begin to level out until a few months after I had moved in around the 1st of November. In the meantime I’d stay here at the Skytop Guesthouse until May 7th before going back to the U.S. where I’d soon find many things to do before making the huge move to an exotic Asian land half way around the world. I would have to sell my car, then my pickup. I’d have to get my finances in order, decide what to do about my bicycle, and what to do about my cat–how to move her here or whether to leave her behind. There would be the exercise machine, the guns, the furniture, the antique Sioux Indian bow, the 1865 Union Cavalry Civil War sword. There would be what is left of my book collection. Matters of insurance, a will, communications with the outside world once I found myself again in Thailand. And lastly my gun collection which I surely could not bring with me. But move I would. Most likely on August 2nd which would give me not much more than 2 ½ months to get everything settled.

But I would find myself a girl. Som from over on Soi 8 I’d want to see soon and then there was the new girl, the cashier from the beer bar near Soi II I had just had for an overnighter several nights ago. I had been tipsy when I left the bar with me. I remember liking her breasts and her figure in general and how much I had enjoyed her stroking my back while I was deep inside her. But she had seemed a little bewildered as if she had not gone with very many guys. I had already been up and down Sois 7 and 8 a few times recently and had found no one to my liking. I could check out Sois 12 and 13 for someone new but decided I didn’t want more of the same that I didn’t find from Sois 7 and 8. What the hell! I would celebrate and give up a five or six hundred bar fine plus another 2,000 bahts ($50.00) for a prettier girl from a go-go bar.

First stop was the new go-go bar just off Walking Street where they had the 45 baht per glass happy hour prices on Tiger beer. There were two girls there I wanted to check on. First, the girl who was slightly taller than average, who had a good figure and a way of cutting up every now and then with her fellow dancers while up on stage. Second, would be the tall girl with the great breasts. She must be a good five foot eight. But the last time I had been there neither had made eye contact with me, and after hitting two more go-go bars, I had given up on them and headed to Soi 2 where I wound up taking out the cashier.

You would think a girl would make eye contact from the stage with anyone who seemed to want her. Tonight one of the girls kept trying to get my attention from up on the stage and I kept averting my eyes. It had happened the last time I had been in this club. The girl although she wasn’t bad looking, had a large tattoo on her back. And she wasn’t bad looking meaning she wasn’t great looking either. At go-go bar girl prices when it would cost me 50 bucks to have them stay the whole night with me, I would go for the best–I would home in on someone sensational.

The girl with the large breasts was there but I only saw her for a minute or two and then she disappeared. No matter. I thought I got a better look at her face, a fleeting look, but enough to cast doubt on just how appealing she might be. And once again, the other girl seemed oblivious of my interest in her.

A much shorter girl soon joined her on the stage. Although short she seemed to have a fine figure and by short I mean she was just average for a Thai. She was wearing these long white boots which accentuated her legs. Right off she got my attention and that of the Englishman sitting next to me. She was animated and a bit of a show off prancing around next to the girl who had so far managed to ignore me.

By this time the Englishman and I were discussing nearly anything and everything with each other. He had already introduced me to his friend sitting off to his right and his buddy’s father. Then he bought me a beer. Fully expecting to repay him I never expected all three men to leave just a few minutes after he got the last round.

“Where you going next?” I asked him.

“We will be heading to Happy Happy Go-Go they told me.”

“I’ll join you there as soon as I finish this beer. I know exactly where it is,” I replied.

But I never expected to bar fine anyone in the last five minutes I’d spend finishing that beer. I’d wind up not meeting them and unable to buy the Englishman a beer because right after they left the short girl I had been watching came over and took a seat next to me. That is, at the table next to mine so she didn’t exactly come over to fawn all over me. Instead she sat several feet away, alone and smoking a cigarette as she watched the other go-go dancers performing before her.

But I took it as a “I want you to make a move on me” gesture. She had done what none of the other girls had done with the exception of the ones I didn’t want. Several nights before the girl with the ugly tattoo had walked by and playfully slapped me on my thigh. Although I had planned on a tall girl, this one was slender and had showed she had a lot of personality. So I asked her if I could buy her a drink.

After saying “Yes, she’d like that,” she slithered over to sit next to me at my table. I soon bar fined her. Within minutes we were walking out together after discussing briefly what I should pay her, whether it should be 1,000 baht for short time or 2000 baht for long time. Undecided we walked together up to Second Road where we immediately jumped into a baht bus.

She sat close to me, close enough that I could feel her body touching mine. Which was a good sign, I decided. In bed she would not be a cold fish. We got off at the guest house, I paid the driver, then we crossed the street hand in hand. I took her inside and said hi to Nune, the girl working the night shift desk. I offered to buy her whatever drink she wanted downstairs, but all she wanted was bottled water. After paying for that and a Heineken for myself, I took her upstairs where we immediately sat close together on the couch in front of my laptop computer.

Using Skype I immediately called Baron from the laptop. Our voice reception was perfect. I asked the girl to say hello to Baron. Although she spoke little English she was game and cheerfully engaged Baron in conversation with a “Hello. How are you. My name is Tae.”

Have to give it to the girl. Attitude is one thing she had in spades. A wallflower she would never be. I then told her I wanted her for long time. “After all, why rush good things?” I asked myself. So we looked at slide shows of pictures after having a brief conversation with Baron, and then I suggested that we take a shower together.

When you hear that Thai girls are “little brown fucking machines” you’ve heard it all correctly because that is precisely what many of them are and this girl was no exception. One cannot begin to compare them to Western women. It would be like comparing a high rpm Honda motorcycle engine to a large stroke six cylinder Ford pickup truck.

But that’s only in the middle of the sex act itself. There was something about this girl I especially liked. Hard to put my finger on it. I even liked the way she looked in her sleep.

The next morning I got up an hour before her and started doing some things on the laptop while drinking a cup of instant coffee I had made on the microwave. After she woke up I took her down to breakfast at Greg’s restaurant a few doors down from Skytop. I got a dish of steamed rice with seasoned pork on top of it which I spiced up even more with small spoon fulls of fish sauce which I carefully ladled out onto my pork and rice. The whole thing along with my cup of coffee cost only about three bucks.

I don’t know what it was that Tae ordered but the size of the helping was huge. Like many Tae girls preceding her, Tae would wind up eating less than a third of what she had ordered. The rest she instructed our waitress to put into a doggy bag. “A doggy bag for who?” I asked myself.

After seeing her off in search of a motor bike taxi I kept asking myself, “Who was the doggy bag meant for?” That was one helluva lot of food she had ordered. The whole meal for both of us was over six hundred baht or $15.00 and she was responsible for most of that. Was it just for herself? Well, don’t bet on it. Her kids? A roommate or two? Or how about a boyfiend?

I liked Tae, but she had nevertheless taken advantage of the situation. Which she had milked for all its worth. Would Lee have done this to me? I thought about Lee and how she had pulled a couple fast ones on me.

Not long ago Lee had convinced me at 1:30 a.m. that we should both jump on the back of a motorbike taxi to go to a special Thai restaurant she knew about. There we were joined by two of her roommates. I ordered a Heineken for myself while she ordered both for herself and her two girlfriends.

The waiters came back with some type of a wok which one used to cook food right at the table. Underneath was a blue flame. All of us started putting small strips of raw meat alone the sides of the cooking implement. The food was delicious and there was a whole lot of it–enough to easily feed all three of us. And all of that with the Heineken came out to just over three hundred baht.

Tae had managed with a bit of help from me to just spend over six hundred baht. So between the two I will say that Lee clearly understands better the value of money. She’s thirty. Just a few days ago we had celebrated her birthday and right before that PlOne, Ae and the two of us had eaten a fairly expensive buffet dinner at the Long Beach Hotel. It seems that Lee’s English is getting a little better. Either that or she’s smart enough through the use of hand signals and facial expressions to let me know what she’s thinking. Although I’m sure Lee appreciated the great meal and the great view of the ocean from the restaurant, she sure let me know that she felt we had paid too much and that perhaps we should have gone somewhere else she knew about which offered just as good a meal at substantially reduced prices.

And now that I think about it, Lee’s gotten a lot better at asking me to buy her friends drinks. Sure, this new girl, Tae, hadn’t had much time with me in her bar or any bar for that matter, so she didn’t really have much chance to get me to drink much or to buy drinks for her friends. Only 24, this makes her a great deal younger than Lee, and no doubt not nearly as wise. A really wise bar girl would know just how far she could push you. A wise bar girl would decide that I wouldn’t put up with simply throwing away money and that her time with me would be very fleeting if she expected me to put up with a girl who simply wasted my money.

And how about so many Thai girls who are not bar girls? For instance, Dr. Lew who gives me a massage practically every other day?

Dr. Loom

I had put in for a two oil fully nude oil massage with Dr. Loom at 5:00 p.m., an event which had become a ritual I looked forward to once every two days. After showering in my hotel room, I heard my mobile phone ring just as I was about to head out the door on my way to the combination laundry and massage business one block from Skytop Guest House. It was Doctor Loom, calling me to ask me if I could come in at eight instead of at five, since she already had a customer.

Which was great news. Too many times Dr. Loom had told me I was her only customer of the day, which made me feel badly for her. In fact, I felt just as badly for the three massage girls working for Pete at Skytop. Five months ago I had gotten a foot massage from one of them, a cute girl, who never seemed to quit smiling. Most of the time I went in or out of the guest house in my comings and goings I would encounter at least one of the girls and often all three of them sitting outside at a small outdoor bar. Most of the time not one of them would be giving a massage to a single customer. I was beginning to feel so badly for them that I started to feel like a traitor for giving Dr. Loom all my business.

Keep in mind that there are basically two types of massages offered in Thailand. There’s the infamous soapie massage, which is geared entirely around sex and there’s the therapeutic massage places offering both foot massages and fully nude oil massages. Both Bangkok and Pattaya were full of the latter type of establishments whose attendants were typically attired in ubiquitous orange smocks. The massage attendant typically spent a single hour administering the foot massage which focused upon the foot and went all the way up the leg but no further than the thigh. I had found out in first and last trips to Pattaya that investing just 200 baht ($5.00) a week for a single foot massage would keep my back problems in check. The whole thing worked a bit like acupuncture because I was amazed to find how all the digging into the soles of my feet, rubbing of my calves, stretching of my toes, etc seemed to have a profound effect on my lower back as if the masseuse was hitting all kinds of little switches on my lower extremities which turned off the pain centers of my back.

For a little more–300 baht, one could get a fully nude one hour long massage during which one stretched out on towels placed on a padded bench like they have for patients in doctor’s offices. One typically lay on his stomach as the masseuse rubbed the whole body down before having her customer turn over to have her rub oils all over the upper side of his body. For some reason I never felt the oil massages were as effective as the foot massages in relieving back pain, but they felt so exquisite that I kept going back for more of them. And it was so nice to be able to just lie there for so little and to have someone attractive devote her entire attention to every part of one’s body for an hour or two.

Five months ago, during my last trip to Pattaya I latched onto a pretty masseuse named Mott who I hit it off with. Mott and I would keep each other laughing as she massaged my whole body. I would kid her about having boyfriends and children to which she would reply that she was too ugly to have a boyfriend. Sometimes Mott would sing in my ear while giving me a massage.

During my last visit to the establishment Mott worked for, Mott became enraged when I told her I had two names, my real name and my pseudonym, Jack Corbett. She turned sullen on me while her massaging of my body turned mechanical and her face turned somber. “You lied to me,” she said. “Sooner or later most men lie.”

Somehow I was able to convince her that I had not lied and that I actually did have two names. Or at least I thought I had and her mood changed for the better well before she finished the massage.

Five months later I went back to where she worked and was told that she had left the place for good. She was with a farang, the woman in charge told me and he whisked her off to his homeland where he is looking after her. This was the same woman I had been paying for my massages with Mott five months before. The woman continued to tell me about how upset Mott had gotten with somebody she had liked but who had lied to her.

“Was this woman referring to me?” I asked myself. “Was I the man Mott had gotten so upset with for lying to her?” That could very well be, I decided, since I had gone to her a half dozen or more times and she had given me extras–for certain services they normally don’t give in these massages.

Mott had been one of the high points of my last visit for whom I had vowed to spend a great deal more time around while trying to convince her that she should go out with me.

And then I found Dr. Loom while attending to my laundry. During my last visit both PlOne and I had been taking our laundry to a place over on Soi Six, about four blocks from Skytop. One of the girls working the desk at Skytop told me about a new place that was about one block away. Upon taking my laundry over I immediately found out there was a massage place there as well. Of the three girls giving massages there I felt Dr. Loom was the prettiest one so I made an appointment for a foot massage for that afternoon. But when I showed up for my massage, another woman directed me to a comfortable reclining chair and started working on my feet.

But Dr. Loom sat close by. I immediately found that of the three Dr. Loom spoke by far the best English so it wasn’t very long before we were engaged in animated discussion with each other.

My next massage at the place was a one hour long oil massage, and this time I made sure that Dr. Loom was the one giving it. Although she wasn’t nearly the cutup Mott had been, Loom and I kept kidding each other during the massage about how pretty she was or wasn’t or about my age and other things.

Dr. Loom was probably about average height for a Thai woman, being five foot or five one or so. She wore her hair short and had these very noticeable braces on which seriously detracted from her looks. Still, she was pleasing to look at, and in two years when the braces would come off she would no doubt be more than passably good looking. But as I watched her while lying naked outstretched before her, I noticed a certain sensuality in her face that made one thing perfectly clear—this one was all woman.
For some reason I kept going back to her. Probably a good part of it was her being well above average in her command of the English language making it easy to converse with her. Another reason is because I respected her for having to work so hard. She’d show up for work at 3 p.m. where she’d work until as late as 11 p.m., but she’d also get up at 8 in the mornings in order to go to school to learn how to be a hairdresser.

One night we had supper together at a little Thai restaurant serving food that was both good and cheap right next to the laundry massage place. On another night on her single day off I took her out to dinner to a restaurant with a view of the ocean along beach road. After that we walked together to Soi 8 to watch Lee perform at Sexy Go-Go. Dr. Loom never asked to get on a baht bus and gave no signs of frustration over having to walk over half a mile.

No matter how active most Thai girls are in the bedroom, and trust me, they have more than earned being called “Little brown fucking machines”, most of them do not enjoy walking. Even if it’s for no more than a quarter of a mile, more than half the Thai girls I’ve been with will hop on the first passing baht bus. It only costs a quarter for each person to ride. Nevertheless, I was left wondering on many occasions how these girls can stay so trim when they want to ride everywhere.

We would often talk about balloons during my massage sessions during which Dr. Loom would burst out laughing. I had told her about how I had gone out with Lee during my last trip to Pattaya and how I had found out about a mysterious talent of Lee’s after we had already slept with each other several times.

Lee was the star of her go-go bar. At eleven each night she would be called upon to do a special show. At first she’d dance on the stage with around fifteen other girls. After a few minutes the other girls would climb off the stage leaving Lee up there alone. Then she’d sit or half lie down on the stage and insert a small plastic tube up her vagina which she’d then use to propel steel tipped darts at balloons held by male spectators. After breaking nearly a dozen balloons with her improvised blow gun, Lee would then perform other neat tricks such as smoking a cigarette held between the lips of her vagina or empty the contents of a beer bottle into her privates from which she’d pour them back into the bottle which she would then offer to men sitting around her stage as she goaded them to drink from the bottle.

All of which Dr. Loom found to be pretty hilarious when I told her about Lee’s antics, while telling me, “I want to see balloons.” Until I took her that is.

I had been there only once on this trip. Lee had come up to me smiling. “I have long time with falang,” she told me. “I call you when finished. Take other girl,” she told me in broken English.

Which was fine with me. After all, I’d be here for two months. And it took 2,000 baht to have Lee for the whole night, not to mention a 500 baht bar fine which I’d find out later on could go to as high as 1000 baht. Sure, I liked Lee. She was probably the best girl I had been with out of the ten or more girls I had been with while staying in Pattaya that month back in October and November. But I had also decided to concentrate more on the beer bar girls since it took just 200 baht to bar fine them and only 500 baht short time or 1000 to have them spend the night with a falang. So although for many guys this would have been a setback to have their number one girl tell them they’d have to wait until another guy got done with her before they’d get their chance, for me it was the perfect excuse to go after new blood while conserving funds.

Still, Lee had e-mailed me three times, telling me how she couldn’t wait to be in my arms again, but I had just laughed since I knew the game and how it was played.

This time as soon as I brought Dr. Loom into her go-go bar, Lee descended upon us in a flash. No sooner than I had been seated facing the stage at a small table next to Dr. Loom Lee took a seat on the other side of me. I then heard the two women talking quickly in Thai with each other after which Lee enscrounched herself on my lap, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I had another woman with me.

The two girls had seemed to get along well together. Not once had either seemed angry. Upon twenty minutes of our arrival, Lee was called upon to do her thing with the balloons and even managed to break one held in one of Doctor Loom’s hands with one of her darts. But aside from her having to go up on the stage, there seemed to be only one thing of interest to her, and that was me.

She’d sit on my lap or snuggle next to me while pressing her tight little body into mine completely ignoring the other girl. Lee even managed the nerve to hold her hand up against my groin while grabbing my penis through my shorts.

Dr. Loom and I agreed that she’d have to call it an early night. I had planned on walking her up to the nearest baht bus on 2nd road and put her on it. Instead I walked her up to Central Road just several blocks down from Soi Eight where she turned right to walk the rest of the way home. I kept walking back to Skytop Guest House. I was angry at Lee for disrespecting Dr. Loom and yet I felt like going back for her. But I had promised Loom I’d go on home even though she told me it would be alright if I went back for my old girl friend.

Two of the massage girls sat in front of Skytop at the small bar just behind the sidewalk. I said hello to them, then went inside where I bought a beer from Nunn working night shift and took it back outside to talk with the massage girls. I really needed that beer to keep my mind off Lee because no matter how much I despised her for disrespecting Dr. Loom, I had gotten hard just thinking of her boldness. Tonight for the first time after my arrival in Pattaya I wanted her. I needed a second Heineken after the first one.

If you really think about it, a nude oil massage invites the masseuse to become familiar with your body. It is a full body massage. That means the feet, lower legs, thighs, shoulders, head, neck and abdomen are all stroked and kneaded by the masseuse. Do the cheeks of your ass get massaged as well? And how about the inside of your thighs? And just how close is your penis to either? At one point or another you might even become erect as the pretty masseuse’s finger’s get a little to close to that second head of yours.

I had become a steady customer of Dr. Loom who kept getting more playful each time I came in for my massage. At first it was a quick flick of her fingertips against my scrotum as she commented: “I like it.” Or made some other comment referring to its size, color, or erect or not so erect condition. Once she warmed up to the idea that her hand was welcome in such private regions, she’d let it linger there, as she stroked my inner thighs or touched tender parts of my manhood.

She became more and more encourage by the way I responded and finally dropped all pretense aside. The full body massages became in every sense of the word full and complete. The massages invariably ended with her putting my head in her lap as she sat upright with her back against the wall as I looked up into her face. The final treatment was my getting my eyelids rubbed, my temples, forehead and ears as I peered upward into her face.

Often, I’d lie there with my head in her lap, peering up into her face and she’d either lower her head to kiss me on my lips or I’d stretch my neck upwards to reach her mouth with my tongue.

She’d often laugh and joke about the state of the member between my legs, commenting: “I like it” when it became fully erect or “It’s really big”, and “It’s asleep” on those occasions my mind was elsewhere leaving my second head unimpressively limp.

And she’d ask me questions such as “What did you do last night?” And “did you sleep with anyone afterwards or the night before?” At other times she’d offer me advice such as: “You must be careful. You are in Thailand.” Or scold me by reminding me: “You must always use protection,” or “When did you have doctor look at you?” Once or twice she’d say, “I want the same thing you want.”

She wasn’t a bar girl, and she worked hard for whatever she got. Just giving me a two hour massage must have been exhausting for her without counting the hours she had already spent cutting hair or giving massages to others. She also made it clear that whatever degree of intimacy we were having she shared with no other customer. Somehow I believed her.

As I didn’t believe the bar girls.

The Girl Who didn’t speak English

I found her at the Princess Bar on one of my first nights on this third visit to Pattaya. This was just fifty feet from the boxing ring where they did Thai boxing exhibitions throughout the evenings. Here there were over a dozen bars each of them no more than twenty feet long at the most and only half as wide. But they managed to have a half dozen or so young girls serving as bartenders at each bar, each one of them available upon payment of a five dollar bar fine. Unless the girl didn’t want to go with you, which sometimes happened and for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes they would have young kids in the ring squared off against each other, but usually it was the grownups. The largest Thai boxer was around five ten and weighed around one sixty-five. The man was well proportioned and had a good reach which would give him a huge advantage over the others. But most of the men were shorter, running five-six or so and probably weighed no more than one-thirty-five, tops.

When I had first watched the larger Thai boxer show off his stuff in the ring, I had bet privately on him, remarking to the girls around me at the bar, “He will win. He’s good.” But most of the time he’d wind up getting knocked down towards the end of the match. But although he had still lost he’d still keep coming up to me to ask for a tip.

The more often I’d come to these matches the more I’d realize that all the boxers were buddies and that they all had decided beforehand who would lose and who would win. Sometimes there was someone walking about close to the ring taking bets from the spectators.

From the first time I went to this particular Thai boxing arena I had favored the same bar. The same mamas an worked here, a woman in her forties or fifties who’d aggressively invite me to join her ladies at her bar. It was my second time to Pattaya that I met the Princess at this bar. I wound up spending the better part of my first week in Pattaya with the Princess and took her to Phukett with me for a two day side trip during which we ventured out on a boat to go snorkeling among other things. But the Princess had asked me to buy her too many things and I had given her up for other girls.

Out in the ring it was the same as it had always been. I recognized the same guys slugging and kicking each other in the face. I had always been amazed on how the wiry Thais could take a hard kick to the face and just shake it off with a smile. And then just a minute later go down after taking a kick or punch that had not hit solidly a few moments after impact. Obviously it had all been planned for the boxer to take a dive on cue since his fall to the canvas had taken place too late to have been caused by any blow that I’d seen, not to mention the fact that this particular blow had not been nearly as fierce as some the fighter had easily taken earlier in the fight.

Mamas an recognized me from before, and when I had asked her about Princess she shrugged and said: “She left bar. Gone home.” Mamas an then introduced me to a new girl, a girl who seemed fresh off the boat, who smiled at me, but had little to say and seemed very bashful about her inability to reply to my questions. But she was cute. More than cute enough for me to want to take her home with me. But for some reason I didn’t. Not this time.

Songkran

Day before yesterday I went through the last day of the Thai New Year's celebration known as Songkram. All week long they had been celebrating this which is devoted to getting everyone within range as wet as possible. The wheels of the local economy with the exception of bars and go go establishments had ground nearly to a hault with everyone running about worried quite justifiably about getting soaked. Banks closed for around four days for instance. The restaurants up and down street owned by Greg had closed because Greg didn't want his guests coming in dripping water all throughout his place.

But i have to admit that last day...the worse day.....was great fun. I had stocked up on food which I intended to microwave while staying in my guest house room reading good books and doing things online. Around 11 a.m. the girl who gives me massages called. She had taken (finally) a day off from her busy schedule and wanted to know if I would join her on Soi 8, a place thickly populated with bars and night clubs. I told her..."No way. I'm staying dry in my room but thank you." Then I said.."But maybe later."

By 2:30 I had gotten my nerve up. Earlier I had nearly ventured outside. There is a tourist police station next door and one of the guys now in his street clothes half heartedly tried to pull me outside so that someone could soak me. The main street the guest house is on is 2nd road. Traffic had nearly ground to a halt. there were motorbikes all up and down this street (and practically every other street too), baht bus taxis and pedestrians. The girls working for Pete giving foot and oil massages were just outside the guest house door with the tourist police nipping away at bourbon and other drinks. There were all sorts of people just thirty feet away on the sidewalk and it was like that all the way up and down 2nd road. Just incredible. It was the last day for Songkran in Thailand and many thousands of people had zoned in on Pattaya who lived outside this city all eager to join in on the festivities.

I wouldn't have gotten twenty feet before someone would have thrown water on me. But by this time I thought to myself...."I think I'll experience this holiday in the full and with some luck I'll run into the girl who gives me massages who I now call Dr. Loom." Or who knows but I'll have one helluva time. So I put on my swim trunks, grabbed a beach towel and took off outdoors. I didn't get 2o feet and then I looked at the first people who looked like they wanted to squirt me held my towel out while spreading my arms and said..."Okay...who's to the be the first?"

They have these huge squirt guns. Many people don't even bother with them instead using plastic jars and tubs of all sizes to dump large quantities of water on someone all at once. Then they have this kind of mud they use to smear all over the faces and bodies of passerby's which is a symbol of good luck.

By the time I got to Soi 8 I'll bet I got smeared in the face at least a half dozen times and by this time I was completely soaked. I went to one of my favorite watering holes, The Foxy Lady. There are a good half a dozen bars adjoining it on both sides with even more across the street. I think the immediate area surrounding Foxy Lady was the exact center of the storm. Pretty girls were dancing out in the street with more pretty girls dancing inside the Foxy Lady. And there was water everywhere. There were re-supply tanks in various forms all over the place where one could refill his squirt gun or plastic tub. But inside Foxy Lady one could stay fairly dry if one sat on a bar stool. One could sit there with a beer filling relatively unmolested while observing the carnage just outside. From inside the bar I was able to get some video footage without taking too much of a risk of getting my camcorder wet. But while I was shooting video one of the Thai women tried her damnest to depants me. I didn't even know the woman but she failed miserably because I had pulled the drawstring up tightly on my swim trunks and no matter how hard she tried she was unable to slip them down over my hips.

I then went up the street to another bar hoping to still hit another small complex a little further on. There were five or six older falangs there going absolutely ape shit either pouring water or squirting it at each other or their favorite girls who were dancing all about the place. I knew immediately that these guys all had to be a bunch of mad Englishmen. They all had the basic same demented and deranged looks on their faces as they set about getting everything and everybody around them soaking wet. One of them introduced himself as the owner and I had been right---they were all a bunch of deranged Englishmen.

For awhile I gave one of the girls behind the bar my video camera which I had wrapped in a plastic bag which I had then wrapped in yet a second plastic bag feeling it would be much safer to keep it behind the bar. But after awhile I decided to get more video footage. But I still encased the camera in one plastic bag to keep it dry. And I pressed the plastic up against the lense to get the clearest picture possible. Had I not kept the video camera wrapped in plastic it would have suffered a rapid death from drowning. Inside this particular bar it was complete madness with water being thrown about everywhere. But it was an Englishman who ran the place and his taste in music was along English rather than Thai lines. The music was far better practically everywhere else. So I decided to head over to Soi 7 which runs parallel to Soi 8 a long block North.

I only made it half way down this cross street heading North when I saw a pretty woman standing out in front of me with her little bucket of mud paste and her had full of good. I stooped slightly to accept the inevitable as the woman smiled at me and smeared mud onto my cheek.

When someone whether it is a man or a woman smears that goo on your face during Songkram it really is a gesture wishing the recipient good luck. One is truly not a victim while getting smeared with the stuff because the giver usually has a benevolent smile on his/her face. It is hard to describe but there really is a feeling of giving involved here. The culture here is so different than it is in the West with the people for the most part being so accepting of their fate or karma of life. I've seen both motor bike taxi drivers and bar girls sitting outside for hours without having a single customer with none of them scowling or seeming to be angry over having a low pay day. And with a price of just forty baht which is $1.00 for a taxi ride. or 50 baht from a foreigner and all the motor bike taxi drivers around as the competition it is hard to see how any of them make any kind of living at this at all. And a bar girl makes just $25.00 for spending the while night with a guy, but there are many thousands of bar girls. I'll bet some of them go as long as two weeks before they get a single customer. And it's not just the lack of income one would think should get to them, it's also the absolute boredom of it all, of having to stand around doing essentially nothing except socializing with the same people whose lot in life it is to have to stand next to you. And yet everyone seems to be so happy and content with just being able to stay alive. There really has to be something to Buddhism after all with its tolerance for other human beings and creatures and emphasis on karma. We in the West think we offer unto others the promised land whereas actually here it's the other way around.

The girl smearing me on the face is attractive in a somewhat odd way. For one thing she has an exceedingly nice figure and is a bit tall for a Thai. She looks a bit old in the face to be actually enjoying all this madness of Songkram but she doesn't seem old at all. I pause to give her a second look over obviously pleased by what I see, and she catches it instantly and asks, "Come to my bar?"

Why not, I decide. It's gotta be a lot dryer over here than out in the bedlam of Soi 8 or what is virtually guaranteed to be just as bad, out on its sister street Soi 7. And the girl looks interesting.

All it takes is one moments eye contact at either the right or the wrong time to get a Thai woman to instantly latch onto you. Which is terrific if you are really interested in the girl, but for an American who is used to engaging most of his neighbors with eye contact out of common courtesy this can be an open inviitation to disaster. Its outcome often means a girl coming over to you who you are not attracted to at all.

This girl unlike most was not interested in having ladys drinks. She asked me what I wanted and when I said Heineken, she ordered the same thing for herself. In this bar I stayed dry for once yet there was still the same spirit of festivity and letting it all loose that infected practically everywhere else. One of the other girls working there took the bar stool next to mine while the girl I was now with came over and stood up close to me between my legs. The moment she would back away or run off to use the toilet, one of the other girls would descend upon me. One of them asked me to barfine both her and her friend. The girl I was with immediately backup he r body right up against mine while telling her friend..."Oh no. He is with me only." Or something to that effect. It didn't take long before the girl I was with to notice that a certain part of me had been called to attention, a condition she wanted to share with her friends. One by one she'd call them over to me to have them hand inspect my now erect member.

At one point I started to feel pain throughout my groin. The pain took the form of extreme coldness accompanied by numbness surrounding my penis and scrotum. I reached into my swim trunks to find out what was wrong when I discovered that someone had filled my trunks up with ice.

About this time the sky started to darken as a storm started to move in. The temperature suddenly dropped and it became cold within minutes---too cold for this to happen here in the tropics. I was wet and I had a well iced down penis and balls by this time. But I didn't get cold to the point of shivering. But the girl next to me did. Neatly folding the towel over us she embraced me tightly while pointing out to me the goose bumps she had gotten all over her arms from the cold. Although the towel was completely wet, our two bodies pressed up tightly against each other enabled the towel to provide us with a great deal more warmth than we would have had without it.

The girl had put my arm up against hers and then commented..."See me. I'm chococate. You lighter than me." Some Thais are in fact chocolate colored. Although she was much darker than me her skin color had the color more of a very light chocolate or more like the inside of a Reese's peanut butter bar. Her skin color was gorgeous---its texture nearly perfect. Moreover by now I had a pretty good idea of what her body would be like with her now pressed up tightly against me, her having sat in my lap earlier and our being in each other's arms throughout the course of what must have been three or four Heinekens. Her buttocks were very firm as if she got a lot of exercise or like someone who does a lot of running or bicycling. She had a trim little waist with the curve beween it and her hips perfectly curved so as to make a perfect fit to the front of my body everytime I'd press myself up against her.

When she mentioned my barfining her as she motioned at her wet clothes and said something about returning to the bar at 9 p.m. I decided to pay the bar fine instantly. I had planned to stay in all day. I was dead tired when I started and now I had already had a few beers, having resolved that it wouldn't really matter anyway. I would save the money and just go wherever the flow took me, but not take any girl home with me. The night before I had taken Pen to the movies and she had spent the entire night with me. We had made love twice and then once again in the morning during which she had treated me very well. This was not the time to be bringing a girl back home again, but I could not pass this one up. As I paid my bar tab and handed over the 200 baht barfine I told Nook: "8 o'clock. I will be here to see you at 8. Then I pointed to my watch to make sure she understood.


You really amaze me, Nate. A wood working job? Hardly something one would expect with your background and education. But who would have expected me to be a farmer?

Latest update. Hawkeye is in town now, going every day to scuba dive. It was Hawkeye, Big Daddy and I who took classes together to get our scuba certification. I would drive 145 miles one way to Fort Leonard Wood Missouri to take the classes with these two guys driving topless in the Miata. This is a beautiful area in Missouri...close to what must be the highest point on route 44 all the way to Texas with a very unique ambience where everything is alright with the world.

Hawkeye is going for his Diving Master certification which will allow him to teach scuba whether this is in Thailand or elsewhere. His girlfriend arrives on May 2nd....http://www.alphapro.com (that's her on the front end of my web site). She paid me $250 to shoot those pictures of her.

All three...Hawkeye, Big Daddy and Butterfly (Angelica Knight) have backgrounds atypical of what one would expect from the evil world of adult entertainment. Butterfly has 3 years of millitary before becoming a stripper. She was at Westpoint's prep school when another female got raped. There was a cover up and Butterfly came afoul of the powers that be who insisted on the coverup...which is the reason she left (with an honorable discharge) the military early. Needless to say, Butterfly has personal habits and an outlook that is not typical of most strippers such as punctuality, a sense of fairness, etc. Also exceedingly friendly.

Big Daddy was a criminal justice major who moon lighted as a D.J. to later become a strip club D.J. where the money was better in order to put himself through school. At that time he became a professional wrestler who appeared on television wrestling a few times, as part of a duo ...I think their name was the assassins. He was a terrific D.J. and as he put it made more money than God. Would never have quit DJing and never been a club manager except throat problems forced him to quit full time. At this time he thought he had throat cancer. But before that he was goofing off too much with women and booze and didn't finish college. He was injured in the ring that forced him to quit that and this injury discouraged him from continuing with his education. Certainly a cop with severe knee problems would have been relegated to anciliary duties.

Before Big Daddy got involved in club management or ownership he met Hawkeye who was also DJing while both men were in Texas. Both are Southerners, Big Daddy being from Mississippi and Hawkeye being from Louisiana. Hawkeye nearly has a masters degree in Anthropology. He has completed all his course work but never did his thesis. As he put it last night..."Sheep skins do not impress me. I know what I know and could care less what others think." Hawkeye is exceedingly bright by the way.

So it's an interesting mix. What the general public is unaware of is that many people in the adult entertainment industry did not start out in life as John Dillinger or Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde fame. They were just normal people.......well not quite normal as the "normal person" would only do boring normal things. Many are very educated. Anyway...we are all destined to have a blast. As for Hawkeye and Big Daddy, both have a home in my new condo while visiting Thailand. Hawkeye can get a job teaching scuba here at very low wages.....wages are low here in Thailand, but it all helps.

Last night I took him to show him the condo and then we had dinner at a restaurant one block away. Cost around 300 baht.....$7.50...for both of us. Then we met Dr. Loom at Topps which is a large supermarket that even has a bookstore upstairs and a bowling alley not to mention four or five inexpensive restaurants downstairs. (Yes....supermarkets here in Pattaya are not as primitive as the American media would have you believe). Dr. Loom is the girl who gives me massages every second or third day. Being the hedonist that I am I've opted for the fully nude 2 hour oil massages. Loom is a pretty gregarious Thai girl of 27 who speaks fairly good English so we communicate well together. She has braces which makes her mouth look horrific but has a nice figure and good sense of humor. She gets up to go to school at 8 a.m. to learn to be a hairdresser and at 3 p.m. she starts work giving massages and does not normally quit until 11 p.m. Needless to say she works her little ass off and has very little free time. Of great important is she is not a bar girl.

I incurred a couple baht bus taxi fees on her account last night...which is 50 cents and the price of two drinks neither of which she finished so it was a dirt cheap date. First, the three of us hit a beer bar close to a go go club which was not opening for ten minutes. Then I took Hawkeye and Loom to a go go bar I had been to only one. It's called Jacuzzi A Go Go. It had great looking girls and not too many falangs (foreigners). I did not take them to Paris A Go Go where I've received several phone calls from in the past 36 hours from a girl named Awe. If I took them to this place, it would not be good considering my relationships with Loom and Awe. (you can find some of Awe's pictures at http://www.alphapro.com/showcase Awe's command of English is nowhere close to Loom's but she is tall for a Thai with silky skin and kindof cute. For some reason I get along with her rather well.

At Jacuzzi A Go Go a good looking tall gal with large boobs came over to Hawkeye and took him up on the stage where she and another looker tethered him between two poles. Hawkeye had told me he wanted to call it a night every night at 10 or so because of the extreme physical demands on him from his advanced diving classes. He wanted to watch some shows in the go go clubs never realizing that he would become the main show. After that among other things the pair or women put Hawkeye in the jacuzzi tub where they did all kinds of profound things to him. Several times they took a towel off him to display his manhood to the audience.

We then went to a place called the Polo Club where they also had shows. Needless to say there were more gorgeous women there than I saw among the several hundred adult entertainers at the adult convention in Las Vegas. There was a whole row of Japanese men and women in the front close to us. Across the large stage were two Indians wearing turbans. Some of the entertainers at one point grabbed one of the Japanese guys to take him up on the stage where they molested him. He started off accepting very graciously and gracefully even giving a little courteous bow. But at the end they displayed his manhood by whipping a towel off of him which embarrassed him to no end. Although this Japanese guy got the treatment at the Polo Club it was nowhere near the maratho of punishment Hawkeye had to endure at the other club.

Around eleven the three of us got in a baht taxi. Hawkeye was the first to get off since his hotel is more than a mile down 2nd Road from Skytop. When we got to Central Road Loom and I got off. She walked off to the right after asking the inevitable question of where I was going. Well...I was headed off for a couple of beers. So we departed after agreeing to a 2 hour long 5 o'clock massage today. I walked down a street bisecting Sois 7 and 8 each of which has numerous bars and hundreds of bar girls. On this street I spied my THai new year's eve girl waving at me.

This one has the most beautiful body. But my liasson with her had been up and down literally. I was overly tired......just about to the point of death warmed over. I was about to find out again why things did not end up the way they should have. I went into the outdoor bar and bought the two of us a Heineken. She was soon all over me and I simply could not resist. So I barfined her for 200 baht. That's five bucks. We walked down the street together where we soon came to a bar where she knew a couple of the girls. First, she had to go to the toilet. Then she had to stay there to socialize. I knew from my brief experiences with her that she would have me hanging around for fifteen minutes or perhaps as long as half an hour.

One thing...in Thailand it is entirely up to the guy. He's paying the bill. And so the saying goes..."Up to you." As soon as a man loses track of that he's in big trouble. Minutes earlier Awe had called me again from her go go club. I almost called her to tell her I would buy her out of her bar and take her home with me.

This girl kept jabbering away with her friends, obvivious I was her benefactor and was bored to death. I had met her the last day of Songkram, the height of the water festival. I had worn swimming trunks,. with no t shirt on, and carried a bath towel with me to Soi 8 where water wars made the street run liquid. One was not safe even in a bar. I had hit two bars, got totally soaked numerous times but had gotten some video footage when I decided to go down the street to check out Soi 7. Earlier Loom had called me to tell me she had the day off and asked if I would meet her on Soi 8. I had told her..."No way. I bought food which I will microwave in my room. I"m staying dry today." Then I added..."Well, maybe later in the day." So at 2:30 in the afternoon I decided I would not miss the chaos of the grand finale of Songkram which had lasted all week.

I walked down a street heading north a block down towards Soi 7 and encountered a fairly tallish Thai woman with a little jug of light brown pasty mud many men and women carry around during Songkram to smear on the faces of people around them to wish them good luck for the new year.

The girl stood in my way and smeared the stuff on my face. I took one look at her and decided to have a second look. She asked me to join her at her bar. We had several Heinekens together. By this time she was all over me. I had gotten a pretty good erection which she decided to show off to other girls in the bar. A couple of them pulled my swim trunks apart to get cheap feels. At one point I felt a dull pain in my groinal area. I put my hand down there only to find that one of the girls had stuff my swim trunks full of ice.

A storm came in around 4:30 p.m. or so and suddenly the temperature must have dropped around 20 degrees. The girl started to shiver. She pointed out she had goose bumps. I was cold but nowhere near as uncomfortably as her. My bath towel was completely soaked. Nevertheless she folded it around both of us and huddled in my arms. Believe it or not, the cold towel really helped.

So I barfined her. We agreed that she would go to her place to change clothes and she would meet me at her bar at 8. Close to 8 I started to walk over to her bar which was around 3/4ths of a mile from Skytop. I first had to cross 2nd road. Finding my opening I darted through the traffic to the other side of the street where I encountered a beautiful and slender Thai girl. She had two or three parcels which must have contained her belongings. She mentioned she had just come into town and needed a place to stay but hardly spoke English. She was very tempting. Had I not had a date I would have stayed around to see what would happen. Instead I broke away from her and went to the bar to find my date.

Who was not there. After a few minutes I told someone at the bar I had barfined her. This person who was either male or female, I'm not sure which, called her, then told me she was coming. She arrive half an hour late. I almost left then and there and would have for sure if the person had not reached her on the phone. She arrived with one of her girlfriends who I had met earlier with some food which she placed in front of her at the bar. And then she proceeded to take her own sweet time eating it. After about ten minutes of this I told her I would return but that I had to check up on something. So I walked down the street to Soi 8, took a right, and walked a few doors down to Sexy Go Go to pass the time since I knew a few girls there. Lee worked there but had told me she was returning home because of a death in the family.

Lee was the exact opposite of the girl I had just left. She was the star of her go go club...the one who shot darts at balloons held out by customers from her pussy, and who would place a bottle of beer inside draw its contents inside of her, then repour it into the bottle from which she would offer drinks to male customers on the stage. I had meet Lee months ago and she was my favorite of the girls I took out. Lee spoke little English but was full of piss and vinegar, always kidding around. She was also always on time. When she'd meet me at Skytop she would call me on her cell and if I did not come down within a couple of minutes she would be on the stairs on her way up to my room. And there she would come onto me to be sure I'd get down to business before we headed out to dinner or wherever else we were heading.

Anyway, she had two roommates at Sexy Go Go. I had a coke there and then returned to the bar where the girl I had barfined was still eating. I watched her continue to eat for five more minutes and then I simply told her we were leaving and that was all there was to it. She left with me. I will say one thing for her, when we got up to my room she went straight after me. The sex was great the first go around.

THe next morning I offered to take her to breakfast. I was going to take her to the Crown Victoria hotel which meant a right turn down 2nd road to Soi 6, but she walked off to the left either ignoring me or not understanding that I meant her to go in that direction. Nevertheless, she violated once again the cardinal rule, "It's all up to me." We ended up at a Thai restaurant in Topps Super Market where the meal ended up about half what it would have cost at the Crown Victoria.

Which brings us back again to last night. Once again the girl oblivious of what i wanted to do or that I was even there as she jabbered away at her friends. So I told her goodbye, that I was leaving, so I turned my back on her and started walking up the street. Amazingly she did not follow. Which I would assume was a huge mistake. Because I walked a block then reversed direction until I came to her bar. There I told the mamasan that the girl did not leave things up to me and that she did not come with me to my hotel. The mamason pointed at one of the other girls and said: "Take her or someone else." But I am particular and not prone to taking just anyone home with me. So I said, "It does not matter. Keep the barfine. I just want you to know that the girl did not leave things up to me and did not come with me.

So I just headed over to Soi 8 to Foxy Lady. One of my girlfriends was there. Som came up to me to apologise that she had another customer. Which was fine with me as I did not want to barfine her or anyone else. I spied a pretty girl at the end of the bar and took a bar stool next to her. She was the cashier. So I bought her a drink and had a couple of Heinekens. I wound up coming home alone for a good night's sleep---albeit with a hang over.

So there was one bad note to the evening. But bottom line is this girl was a bad apple and one is going to find bad apples everywhere. She's entirely selfish. I will soon head down to breakfast at Greg's a few doors down. I will do some computer work or reading, then walk north to Naklua to retrieve Hawkeye's hat at the Thai restaurant and also view the contruction of the condominium development. Then I have that 2 hour massage ahead of me. Afterwards who knows. A few hours from this moment is a long time here in Pattaya where anything can happen.

I've now been out practically every night for nearly fifty nights in a row. This pace cannot continue either financially or physically. But the condo will be a world apart from the non stop action of Central Pattaya, a place of refuge. Had I remained with Loom it would have been a cheap night. As it was I had saved myself a bar fine and having to pay a girl for all night action. One thing for sure and that's the girls here are infinitely more attractive than they are in the U.S. and a man can pick and choose from them. Nate.....You just won't believe it.....last night we ran into a group of young Marines who we got along with well. One of them said they are going to Iraq soon but this was their third time in Pattaya over the past few weeks. He said the same thing...."The people back home (in Indiana) would not believe how good it is here."

Lilly

The bar complex over near Soi II simply has just about the best ambience in Pattaya. Just across from Big C out on Second Road there’s an entire block of bars and still more down Soi 2 for another half block. On the South end of all this are six bars up one flight of steps. Here the air circulation is excellent and one can look across the street or down on the sidewalk. At more than half the bars you will find two or three girls dancing on or near a pole. There is also a wide screen television at the back of each bar and a pool table well towards the rear.

I had bar fined one of the girls from the second bar but just for one night. The first time I met her she had awkwardly tried to make conversation with me while she brought me drinks. Like many bar girls in Pattaya her English was decidedly lacking and the conversation was forced from both sides. Several times afterwards I had run into her either on the sidewalk below as I walked past the complex or near one of the other bars when she had asked me: “Where have you been? I not see you at bar.” However, she had never actually said: “Where have you been?” Intending “I now see you at bar” to be understood to mean: “Why have you not been around? I have not seen you in over a week.”

One night I had made the rounds up and down Soi 7 and Soi 8 and not found anyone among the hundreds of bar girls on these two Sois that I found attractive enough to bar fine. So I had decided to give the upstairs complex another try, at least for a drink or two, which eventually led to at least three. I started out at one of the bars on the South end. A girl asked me if I wanted a drink, and after I ordered a Heineken, she brought out one of the bar games that is a staple of very beer bar I’ve ever experienced. This was the four across–four down that resembles tic tac toe, in which one puts colored counters. But I didn’t find the girl to be attractive at all, so it had been a mistake to agree to play a game with her. Like most girls who seemed attracted to me so far, she was a bit on the heavy side. The only way I could get rid of her was to move to another bar, so I tried one two bars down. Here I found the girl I had kept running into who asked why I had not been around. Tonight she was the cashier. She sat at the rear of the bar keeping track of all the cheque bins and money. So I sat back there quietly with her as I drank one beer after the other without being hassled by the other girls to buy them drinks. And being cashier and responsible for the bar’s money meant the girl I was sitting with would not be drinking which meant I’d be keeping my bar tab low.

I bar fined her soon after one of the girls from the bar next door came over to do a recount of the money. I’m not sure why the bar did this but it would have made sense for two neighboring bars to conspire together to keep those they made responsible for their money to keep stealing from them.

In the room the girl was quiet, and you couldn’t blame her for that because she didn’t speak English very well. Her figure was nice. Like many Thai girls she was trim, with a flat belly, unlike most of our American girls many of whom have long passed the hog stage, resembling hairy mastodons such as early man hunted with stone tipped spears. She was lighter skinned than many Thais. But what really set her apart were her breasts. I had never noticed them before. This was because unlike breasts found on many American women they didn’t just jut out of her chest and clothes like overly ripe cow’s udders. But hers had some size to them whereas many Thai girls are pretty much flat chested, and they were firm with nice nipples on them. Definitely worth coming back to for another night.

I liked the way she pawed and rubbed my back while we were in bed doing the deed. She was just—plain nice. But I wouldn’t ever see her again until it was too late.

Songkran came and passed. I would keep going to her bar looking for her and never find her. There were the two bars, two bars out of six. I’d drink at both of them.

One night I asked the prettiest girl at the bar next door what she wanted for long time. 2,000 baht the girl told me. Which was unheard of from a beer bar girl, or at least it was in my experience. So I passed and wound up walking down to Soi 7 and 8. I think that night I went back to Sky Top alone, but maybe I didn’t because I’m getting the nights all mixed up now.

On still another night–this time again at the bar next door, I had a girl come over to me who immediately got me playing the inevitable bar games with her. She was short but she had a pretty–or shall I say, a very sexy face. My friend, PlOne, was there with me. An hour or two went by and I was still playing those bar games with her. And I was feeling bad for her since she was wasting so much time with me rather than someone else who could bar fine her. She was short as I just mentioned, but her body had a sort of abbreviated look to it, like the Japanese did around the time of World War II. Back then the Chinese used to call the Japanese, Short Stud, in derision of their short stature.

But times have changed and so have the Japanese. Due to a change in diet and lifestyle they have become much taller. Now the Thais come in all sorts of different colors, heights and body types. There are the usual water buffalo women which every country seems to have but which now dominate the American and European scenes. Then there are the short and petite girls Southeast Asia is so well known for. Many of these girls are under five feet tall but they are very slender with legs that are long enough to be in proportion to the rest of their bodies. There’s nothing abbreviated or stubby about them, they are simply scaled down versions of much taller women.

There are women here with ample breasts so if you are a breast man you can’t simply say Asian women don’t have what you want, because you really can find it here. You really can. And some of the women are tall, and here I’m thinking of the Thai woman working for the Thai Consulate in Chicago. She’s slender and willowy and every inch of being five feet-eight. And Rose who I was with a number of times in my first two weeks in Pattaya is probably around five foot seven. Some of the go go girls I had taken out recently have averaged around five foot five or six. But this girl although she was very attractive in the face didn’t have the kind of body that attracted me.

Nevertheless, I asked her what she wanted for long time. 1500 baht she told me. Which was way too much. “What’s with this bar?” I asked myself. So PlOne and I left. And Pete might have been with us then–I really can’t remember, nor can I remember who I took home with me that night, but it was somebody.

The girls were too greedy at this bar, I kept telling myself. “So I’ll just use it for a drinking bar.” The place did sit up high off the sidewalk across the street from Big C. The air was cooler up there and you could look all around you. But if the girls would be too greedy then I’d have no compunction about just sitting at the bar for a beer or two and leave without barfining anyone.

Until I met Lilly, that is.

I had met Ross in the Internet Café over at Skytop back six months ago. And when I flew into L.A. from St. Louis I was looking at an eight hour layover before flying out on Eva Airlines to Bangkok. But Ross had driven over to the airport to pick me up. We had a couple of beers together while eating at a Mexican restaurant then went over to Ross’s apartment where we showed each other videos we had both taken of Thai bar girls and at the Blues Factory from six months before. Ross had just gotten into Pattaya this time around and we had decided to hit a beer bar or two together.

I had found many of the girls to be very attractive at the bar I had recently favored even though they had asked too much for their company. And it was this bar where I thought I’d eventually find the girl I was looking for—who I had over in my room for only a single night and who I was anxious to have in my bed again. But Ross wanted to check out the bar next door, which was just a few feet away and in full view of the bar I’d have my first beer at. I had been drinking in that bar too although not as often. But even lately–say during the last week, I had been to neither one of them, hitting instead a couple of go-gos over on Walking Street. I had started taking out a dancer named Awe from Paris A-Go-Go whom I had already seen several times.

For several weeks I had been having trouble seeing. One night I must have passed out in my bed pretty drunk because the next morning my contact lense was nowhere to be found. I had started to wear only a single lense, in my right eye, for distance. My right eye was for reading and closeup work. For this it was just fine. This had all worked out pretty well although not perfectly since my vision was just fine for reading books but when I sat a little further back–for example while looking at a computer monitor, my vision got a little blurry. The right prescriptive lense in my left eye would have helped there but I had just learned to live with the problem.

Thinking the contact lense had just fallen out of my eye while I was sleeping being too intoxicated to take it out before falling asleep, the end result was that I simply couldn’t find the lense in either my eye or anywhere in the room. So I had walked down to Central Road where there were a number of places one could either get glasses or contact lenses. One of the girls working at Sky-Top had mentioned “Beautiful Optical”, so I chose it for my replacement lense. An attendant who spoke marginal English gave me my eye exam which was not even a quarter as thorough as what I had been getting over at Koetting Associates in St. Louis for big bucks I might add.

I couldn’t always make out what she was saying. Songkran was coming right up she told me, so it would take a few days for her to get a lense that matched my prescription. I had been wearing the kind of daily lense you took out every night which you then cleaned then wore again the next day. She didn’t have that lense in stock in my prescription. But she did have the daily lenses in stock, but here I didn’t understand exactly what she was trying to tell me. Anyway, I wound up paying her something like 12 bucks for a box of 30 individually packed contact lenses which would last me one month. But I didn’t know if even these were in my prescription and even then I’m not so sure the place had gotten my prescription quite right.

Those lenses only went about half way—that is, they got me a 50 % improvement over my not wearing lenses at all. From then on I had trouble making out from a distance whether a given bar had pretty girls working in them or not.

Several times I had eyeballed large numbers of beer bars as I hurried past, then stopped at a single one to order a beer in the mistaken belief that I had actually seen a good looking girl or two working there. But by this time I had already committed myself since I had already taken a seat at one of the bar stools in the establishment only to find that the girl or two I thought was attractive from a distance wasn’t what I thought she was and didn’t make the grade with me.

There are thousands of beer bars in Pattaya. But to be truthful there are a lot of bad looking women in them. A lot of guys will choose these women either because they don’t think they can do better or they are viewing them through different eye shades than mine.

Tonight I was having a particularly hard time out of making out what girls looked like what. I really wasn’t seeing worth a shit. ‘Ross and I had just had dinner together, then walked over to the little bar complex across 2nd Road from the Big C Shopping Center. But Ross wanted to check out the girls at the bar next to the one I wanted to go to. So what happened is the first strange event out of many that would occur that night. Ross went to the second bar while I went to the first. This placed us within forty feet and in full view of each other.

A slender girl of average height immediately came up to me to ask me what I wanted to drink. By average height I mean for a Thai, because she’s only five foot one and 96 pounds. I asked her what she wanted to have fully expecting her to get herself one of those worthless lady drinks.

A lady’s drink has little or no alcohol in them which means that a bar girl can go on drinking them indefinitely while sticking you with the tab. And say you are paying 60 baht or 70 baht for your beer or around $1.50 American–that’s for your drink not hers because her drink comes in a lady’s drink prices or around 110 baht which is around $2.75. So it’s really a screw job but it’s a screw job you learn to put up with considering that you are there to take a lady home with you.

I am surprised to find out that my new companion gets herself a bottle of beer, and not just any bottle of beer but a Chang beer. I’m drinking Heineken which is around 5 % alcohol but Chang is strong stuff. It’s made in Thailand and its cheaper than most competing brands, but it’s also 6.5 % alcohol. One thing’s for sure, this girl is not going to be able to put them away as girls who drink lady’s drinks. So she’s not after nailing me for as much as she can for drinks. And even more important, I’ve got me a drinking companion.

It was half way through that first beer when I noticed the girl I had been looking for was working at the bar next door. Somehow I had gotten the two bars mixed up. And then I remembered that night I had barfined her. She had been the cashier, but for some reason Morgan, one of the girls at the bar I was now sitting in, had come over to count the money. So I had associated Morgan with the bar I had hoped to find the girl.

My beer was half empty so I went over to talk to the girl at the bar next door. I explained to her that I couldn’t see very well and had thought I’d find her at the bar I was presently drinking in. “No matter then,” I assured her. “I’ll be right over as soon as I finish this beer.” Then I went back to my bar stool to rejoin the girl who was still on her first Chang.

For some reason I ordered us another beer thinking I’d join the girl I had been looking for twenty or thirty minutes later. But by the time I was close to finishing my second beer Ross had come over to join us. He was about to bar fine a girl over at the other bar, he told us. By this time Lilly was on her second Chang. I had taken an instant liking to her. For one thing I had asked what she charged for long time and she had told me: “Why long time is 1000 baht, 500 baht for short time.” Her English was much better than the other girl’s. And better than most bar girls for that matter. She had a confidant and brassy way of speaking. But it was even more than all of that. I reasoned with myself that I could actually get something going with this girl whereas the other girl’s lack of English not to mention my complete inability to speak Thai would doom any chance of getting anything going with the other girl over the long haul.

But there was even more to it than that and even now I’m still scratching my head wondering what it is. I decided right then and there that I was going to have this girl go out with me tonight and that was all that there was to it.

So I explained the situation to both her and Ross and then I came up with one of the stupidest, hair brained ideas I had ever come up with since coming to Pattaya.

“Here’s your bar fine,” I told her as I passed her three hundred baht. ‘But I don’t want anybody seeing us leaving this bar together. I want you to wait 15 minutes—no more than that and meet us at Ross’s hotel room. We then wrote the room number down for her. I paid the bill and then Ross and I walked out of the place together.

Sky-Top was about half a mile down the street but Ross’s hotel was just half that distance. No more than 15 minutes went by as Ross and I sat in his room talking when we heard a knock on the door. She was here, and on time—something exceedingly rare in a woman, any woman.