In Thailand, a Ping Pong show means something quite different. I imagine this is a tradition which began in the seedier back streets of Bangkok, but it appears to have spread like a fungus to Southern Thailand, where a steady migration of pretty girls from rural villages, lacking other employment options, apparenlty heads to work in the burgeoning sex show industry in Patong, far enough away from the embarrassing scrutiny of family.
So, after a shopping reconnaissance trip into Patong , where I buy nothing more than some takeaway fruit and cheap pad thai from the supermarket deli counter (my sortie is mainly to check out the lay of the land and take notes for future purchases) and mooch around the night market drinking in its many mysterious food smells, I wander on down the infamous Bangla Rd.
After the tenth ping pong show invitation is thrust my way,
by a Thai guy or gal who leaps nimbly into my path and shoves a placard full of
naughty images in my face, I decide I might as well check out a show or two. So
I brace myself, voluntarily lowering my vibration from its exalted spiritual
state in an otherwise devoutly Buddhist enclave, and prepare to enter the
seedier underbelly of Patong. Typically, women are allowed into these venues
free of charge, the only proviso being that you must buy at least one rather
expensive drink.
The first show, in a place called The Secret, buried in the
darkened back rooms of an above-board bar that fronts it, is quite tasteful… at
first. Three young and indeed beautiful women dance and flash a bit of ‘tits
and twat’, their pert and obviously bald panty-less privates peeking naughtily
out of their costumes. The audience is small and tentative. Although I am sitting
centrally, in the front row, I use the excuse of my journal and pen to try and
appear distracted and to indicate my unwillingness to actively participate.
A jowly, paunchy Englishman in his mid-thirties, sitting next to me with his fellow beer-swilling pal, is chosen to go on stage. The most curvaceous and extrovert of the dancers sits on his lap and allows him to mock-rub her down the front of her panties. But then suddenly, in what strikes me as a gesture of vengeful come-uppance, she grabs him and has him sit on her lap. She makes a show of rubbing his balls, flips his tackle out of his jocks, then pulls his boxers down to his ankles on stage, much to his embarrassment and the amusement of his mate and the rest of the small audience who are delivered this full frontal reversal of the expected order of things!
After the three hotties have caused a genuine stir in
everyone present, the ‘ping pong’ act comes on as a kind of trump card finale.
A rather older, rather chubbier, rather shorter-of-limb woman lumbers
lethargically onstage and proceeds to pull a veritable umbilical cord of
flowers out of her whatsit. It is a real
“but wait, there’s more!” moment by a clearly jaded almost-has-been of the Thai
sex show world. She then sticks a whistle up it and blows us a merry tune.
Rather more bizarrely, she gives birth to five slippery, live fish. Finally,
she recruits the only others left in the room, the two Englishmen (after I have
declined), to hold up big yellow balloons while she lies on her back on the
stage, legs akimbo, and pops the balloons with darts, fired upwards from...you guessed it!A jowly, paunchy Englishman in his mid-thirties, sitting next to me with his fellow beer-swilling pal, is chosen to go on stage. The most curvaceous and extrovert of the dancers sits on his lap and allows him to mock-rub her down the front of her panties. But then suddenly, in what strikes me as a gesture of vengeful come-uppance, she grabs him and has him sit on her lap. She makes a show of rubbing his balls, flips his tackle out of his jocks, then pulls his boxers down to his ankles on stage, much to his embarrassment and the amusement of his mate and the rest of the small audience who are delivered this full frontal reversal of the expected order of things!
I leave via a visit to a beery-piss smelling loo, clearly designed for and mostly used by blokes, and am accosted once again in the street (“ you want go ping pong show Madam?”). I follow the poor soul, presumably earning commission from soliciting an audience in this way, into a second venue, Roxy Au Go go. This one is louder and younger and I can’t hear a thing, so it takes me a while to realize that the slim gay guy in the tight drainpipe pants is asking me to pay for my extortionate drink. The joint is less furtive, more modern, louder, younger and brasher, all sexy pole dancing and laughter and hoped-for extras in the form of personal encounters on the plush sofas in its more brightly-lit corners.
There seems to be a recurring theme, at both venues, of lit candles dripping wax on the dancers’ legs, and their suggestion of scorched flesh. I shudder slightly. Is it sexy to some, the suggestion of pain and torture linked with nudity? I mean really? Whatever rocks your boat I guess.
Again, there are only one or two others in the audience. Across the room, between the two gargantuan birdcages in which the scantily clad Thai nympettes wiggle and strut, a tanned, European-looking middle aged guy has his hands all over a young woman dressed as a school girl. There seem to be some ”look but don’t touch rules” about this more private transaction. He’s visibly drooling and gagging to get his hands and lips on her small, pert bra-less puffball titties, exposed to all of us through her unbuttoned blouse, but she will only let him caress her bare waist, and fondle her bum though her skirt. Perhaps there is a price attached to more erogenous gropings?
A pretty, petitely slim Thai dancer takes a break from her exhibitionist writhing in the central cage, sidles up to me when she sees me writing, and initiates a flirtatious conversation, asking me where I’m from and what I’m doing. Perhaps her ‘Lesbian antennae’ are fully extended during such low season doldrums, when fraternizing with anyone foreign-looking might potentially remunerate. I read somewhere that 40% of Thai dancers like it both ways, perhaps turning to their girlfriends when tired of the unimaginative gropings of self-serving, objectifying, foreign and local men.
Indeed, just as there is a visible community of Ladyboys, there is a visible population of Toms around Patong- short-haired, butch-looking lesbians who dress in the loafers, jeans and t shirts uniform of local guys, and who couple with more feminine girls. I’ve seen them working as bouncers, spruikers, security guards in supermarkets and even in the café up the hill today. They all seem to speak good English for some reason, perhaps because they are intimately involved with ‘show girls’.
The friendly dancer’s name, very aptly, is Fah. After some
conversational probing on my part, it turns out she is one of the country
girls, originating from and homesick for, her village in the north. Her English
is quite good, so I explain that I am keeping a journal of my holiday to
Thailand, and that as it is my first time here, I am curious about these shows.
She nods and wonders off, no hard feelings. Beautiful, bubbly Fah, seemingly cheerful, apparently really
enjoying herself…or at least making the most of a difficult situation. Now
living “in a galaxy fah, fah away” from her financially-dependent,
unsuspecting, Northern Thai family.
I admit, the Mother in me is tempted to pay to take her by
the hand, out of that place, offer her a hearty home-cooked meal and a bed for
the night (there is a second king single lying empty in my hotel room) and talk
to her about what she really thinks, what it’s really like for her, this life
of bolstering the egos of the horny and the lonely, and all the loveless sex
games required just to earn a
living. Before dismissing the option, I attempt to make contact with my Inner Lesbian (such as she is) in a bid to understand what the attraction is. What is it like when someone hires an escort, aiming to get skin-to-skin with a pocket-sized nymphette strangerwho barely speaks your language, and have her lick away the cobwebs? Anyhows, my ego is not easily duped, and there is only so much disingenuous “you very beautiful lady” a switched on 40-something single woman from Perth can take from a teeny tiny Thai. Kowtowing to the Farangs, especially the revolting blokes, truly makes my eyes roll in my head, and I wish I knew how to cry out exasperatedly in Thai “cut the crap won'tchya?!”
I walk through the door of my hotel room at approximately 2:30am, after a near-death experience, hurtling recklessly hotel-wards in a gaudy tuktuk, along the cliff back to Nakalay Beach. I sprawl for a while in the quiet breezy humidity of my porch, wondering what drives the horny Farangs to Patong, their sole quest being to ogle and copulate with grown women resembling school girls. Are they The Desperately Hard-up, The Adventurous, The Curious, The Unfaithful or The Insatiable? Perhaps they are a little of each.
Bright, busy, brash & bawdy- Bangla Road, Patong (if you like that sort of thing)
The gaudy purple interior of the tuk tuk, complete with a TV screening loud music videos. I travelled back to my hotel in it, at breakneck speed, around a cliff full of bends! It reminded me of a Mister Whippy ice cream van.
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