Lust Or Gluttony: Which Sin Brought You To Bangkok?

Does anybody look good in camouflage pants? My seatmate doesn’t. He’s a great big dude from Manchester, England, with the kind of mug that can win fights just by staring.

We’re on a Philippine Airlines flight. He’s on his way to go diving. Look out, plankton.

He’s an amiable sort, though, and pretty soon he’s showing me digital photos of his 10-year-old son. But before we get to those pictures, there are others on the camera to get through; more recent shots showing his buddies biting the nipples of a ladyboy in a Bangkok bar. But how about that good-looking sonny boy, huh?

By Steve Burgess

I admit I was impressed by my new friend’s complete willingness to show me the ladyboy pictures. You could spin it several ways: The man is either so crude he doesn’t know when to be embarrassed, or so supremely self-assured that he simply doesn’t care what I think.

Or maybe he just assumes that if I’m a veteran Bangkok tourist, I’m out there every night biting ladyboy nipples, too. Let me just say here that, unlike my Mancunian acquaintance, I do not have the kind of self-assurance that would allow me to admit to such a thing — even if I was doing it.

Lord knows I’ve had opportunities — at least similar ones. As mentioned in last week’s column, the hotel I was staying at in Manila turned out to be located on a rather fancy street of ill repute. Coming up the front steps, the hotel door was to the left, while a turn to the right would take you through the door of a dance bar.

One night, the doorman seemed briefly confused, making a move to open the right-hand door, which I then noticed was already open just wide enough to allow room for the heads of two bar girls, who smiled out at me. I grinned weakly, pointing left. “I’ll take this door, thanks,” I said.

I’d have been a guaranteed loser on any game show.

Sex is an inescapable part of the economy in cities like Manila and Bangkok. A study a couple of years ago suggested that poor farm girls who go to work in Bangkok bars and send their wages home constitute the main form of agricultural subsidy in Thailand.

And while most young women in Bangkok are deeply conservative, there are more than enough poor working girls to meet the needs of the jetloads of men who fly in from all over the world.

It’s a shame that Bangkok’s reputation is often framed by the prominence of its notorious clubs and bars. In a perfect world, Bangkok would be most famous for something else you can pick up on the street — the best variety of wonderful, cheap food anywhere in the world. It’s almost miraculous.

Today, for instance, I had a lunch date in a neighbourhood I’d never visited before, out towards the edge of the rapid-transit line. I had no reason to believe there was anything special about it, but this is Bangkok. Any day, in almost any neighborhood, you can stumble upon a street cart dispensing delicacies you’ve never seen before that quickly turn into your new absolute favorite.

Before I had completed the four-block walk back to the train after lunch, I had loaded up with four different coconut confections, including a truly sublime bite called parinya: a little fried saucer that seemed to consist of rice and coconut pastes with sweet corn added, served slightly gooey and piping hot. I’m going back for more tomorrow.

Visitors to Bangkok are well advised to immediately overcome their squeamishness about eating from street vendors. As someone who has developed a hair trigger for food poisoning (I’ve been walloped in many of the great cities of the world, Vancouver included), I can tell you I have never once gotten sick in Bangkok, despite eating at street stalls and kitchens every day.

Different neighborhoods have different specialties. Last night I headed to a wide boulevard between the Siam and Pratunam districts, where a series of vendors had set up sidewalk tables offering huge, perfectly grilled fish for 120 baht (about five bucks). That’s a fortune by street-food standards but these are some big fish. For an extra 10 baht (30 cents), a big skewer of fresh pineapple from a nearby vendor tops off the meal.

Of course, there will always be tourists who come to dine on ladyboy parts as well, and far be it from me to look askance at those pretty young men who earn a living via meticulous hair and make-up work in areas like Patpong and Nana Plaza. But I do prefer to avoid their clientele.

The sex-tourist crowd tends to be an abrasive bunch, barking and bullying its way around town. Frankly, these guys give white folks a very bad name — even my giant seatmate from Manchester. He seemed to be a perfectly reasonable kind of chap for awhile.

Then, having just explained to me that he is a professional builder who cheats the British government by paying absolutely no taxes, he explained to me the trouble with Britain: “Too many foreigners.”

Maybe he really doesn’t know when to be embarrassed.

Via Vancouver’s WestEnder