Rules for Barhopping

By Bangkok Byron

This book is the product of 19 years of visiting gogo bars in Thailand and the Philippines (on and off). I do not pretend to be an expert, especially as, over the years, I have made every mistake in the book – but that's where the rules came from. I started making them after my first trip as a way to keep myself on the straight and narrow – only to break them and have to learn the lessons all over again. Most rules are illustrated with an anecdote or two about something that happened to me, or sometimes to a friend. There is also the occasional poem (my pen name is not Bangkok Byron for nothing!). It is my belief that, if you follow the rules, you will be empowered to get the most out of your visit – if you can stick to them! That is the hard part, especially when you are high on Singha or San Mig Light and a cute young thing is dry humping on your lap!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bui Doi Books
• Release date: Jan 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224390120

Bangkok Byron

Bangkok Byron is famous (or should that be "infamous"?) for his numerous contributions to the Thailand forums. Bangkok Byron is, of course, a pen name (earned when he wrote his long narrative poem, Bangkok Don Juan, in the same verse form as Byron's Don Juan) to conceal his identity on account of his adventures (or should that be "misadventures"?) in the fleshpots of SE Asia.

Book preview

Rule 1

DON’T GO!

DO YOU REALLY WANT to be an exploiter of third-world womanhood? Do you really want to be complicit in the trafficking of underage girls? Do you really want to risk HIV or AIDS? Do you really want to suffer the stigma of having to pay for it? (the stereotypical attitudes of the wokerati towards sex tourists – of course you don’t! So DON’T GO!). However, since you are reading this book, you are probably planning to go or have been there already. If you are still at the planning stage, think again, because: TAKING THAT TRIP TO THAILAND WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE – for better or for worse. Which one is probably a 50/50 chance, though the odds of it being for better will be greatly increased if you follow THE RULES.

If you do decide to go, you will enjoy it so much that every other kind of holiday will seem tame, and you will find yourself travelling there several times a year. This won’t do much for any relationships you may have, because it only works if you go without a woman in tow (see Rule 35 DON’T BRING COAL TO NEWCASTLE) and will cost you an arm and a leg. As an example of the latter, I can remember a time, back in 2005, when I pondered whether I would spend my spare cash on a new car or a series of trips to Thailand. It was a no-brainer. I had a car already (if a bit of a jalopy), but I didn’t have a sex life (other than my subscription to Club Seventeen).

At worst, you will end up marrying a Thai girl and buying her a house in the back of beyond, after which, she will leave you for a Thai Tuk-Tuk driver, and, since the house has to be in her name, you will be destitute. This is, more or less, what happened to me, except that the Thai girl was a Filipina, whom I met through a website called Filipina Heart (now defunct). I broke all my rules, got involved, married her, bought her a house – and lost the lot! Luckily, I avoided the cardboard box on Mabini Street because I still had enough left to buy a one-bed flat in Doncaster. The whole sorry tale is told in my book, My Filipina Horror Story (now unpublished because it was too personal. However, there is a version in which the story is told in a more distanced way through a series of poems, so if you can stomach poetry, you might like to read Poems to My Pinay).

Would I do it again? Yes. Because it led me to many countries I may not otherwise have visited: Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Singapore, and gave me many wonderful experiences, of which the sex was only a part – but if I did do it again, I’d follow THE RULES and, instead of living alone in a one-bed flat in Donny, would now be living in a six bedroom mansion in Buriram with a devoted mia (wife) and a maebaan (maid) who would treat me like those maids in the Monger in Asia videos.

So, back to the point of this chapter: DON’T GO! If you want to travel, book a world cruise, if you want to experience different cultures, try Alaska or Mogadishu, if you want fantastic sex, find a real girlfriend (by which I mean a woman who is your equivalent in social milieu, education and age, and who is with you, not for lucre, but because she actually likes you). This especially applies if you are under 30. If you are under 30, you are still young. How do I know? – because, until 2018, there was an organisation called Club 18-30 which offered (and I quote): Package holidays targeted at young singles and couples to travel without families or children. Note the word young. According to Wikipedia, the average age of guests was 19. So, if you were 30, you could still be part of the young crowd. I was 25 when I went on my first Club 18-30 holiday with my best friend, Jim. The advertisement stated that the organisers would make every attempt to ensure that equal numbers of unattached young people of both sexes stayed in each hotel. Perfect! we thought, and booked.

SIX WEEKS LATER, WE packed our suitcases – not forgetting essentials such as sunglasses, swimming costumes and condoms (we were optimistic), and set off for San Antonio in Ibiza. The Club 18-30 reps organised a welcome party with free food and drink, and, to our delight, we found that there was indeed an equal balance of the sexes. Both Jim and I cracked it in no time, the girls being as eager as we were to hook up. My girl was called Carol – a typical Essex girl – blonde hair, blue eyes, big tits and lots of fun – especially between the sheets. Her bootylicious body looked great in a bikini and even better out of one! Jim’s girl was a Mancunian, not fat, exactly, but chunky – but that was how Jim liked them. He got on so well with her that she became his regular girlfriend for a while. I was lucky, because, sucker as I was in those days, I could easily have got involved, but Carol warned me not to – Because I’m taking a break from my boyfriend. He thinks I’m at a health farm! (followed by a bout of Essex-girl giggling).

THE SPANISH COSTAS were notorious at that time for the beach, booze and birds thing, so much so that they became the subject of numerous TV documentaries and reality shows, Club Reps in Ibiza being just one example. That scene is still going strong and is wilder than ever. You can have a girl for the week, or a one night stand every night – and not a penny to pay, because they’re up for it just as much as you are. So if you’re under 30, DON’T GO to Thailand, go there! I even wrote a poem about that idea (shamelessly cloned from a poem by Yeats). In the unlikely event that you enjoy it, most of my Thailand oeuvre can be found in Jasmine Kisses.

That is no country for young men. The old

Wrapped in the hot embrace of young bargirls;

Those dying generations making bold

With Filipinas, Thai and Mayanmar girls.

The young should be in Spain all summer long,

In Magaluf where there are better far girls

For them, looking for the same thing:

Romance, perhaps, or just a crazy fling.

If you’re under 40 and single, try online dating. 30-40 is a good age for this because you’ve probably got a lot to offer: you are likely to be well established in a job, will already have acquired some assets (the 5 C’s as they call it in Singapore: car, condo, credit card, cash, country club), and you still have plenty of years left for a long-term relationship, even marriage.

If you are married with children and have a good job, you are in the danger zone, and this rule, DON’T GO! applies more to you than anyone else – because YOU HAVE THE MOST TO LOSE! And, let’s be clear about this! It is easy to lose it all. OK, you can fake a business trip for your first visit (as I did), but when those business trips become frequent, it arouses suspicion, and you could lose your wife (as I did). If you get carried away with your Thai teerak or Filipina honey ko, you could lose your savings (as I did). You could even lose your job. This is what happened to my friend, Ron, who had a good package as a Biology teacher in a Doncaster comprehensive school, but who gave it all up for his almond-eyed sweetheart. He left his job for a teaching job in Thailand teaching English for a fraction of the pay. He’s retired now, with no pension. The only saving grace is that his Thai wife stayed faithful and has inherited a rice paddy which gives them a modest income.

Of course, if your life is at ground zero, for example, you have been made redundant, your wife has left you or you’re some kind of addict, you have nothing to lose, and taking that trip might be just be the pickup you need.

If you are over 60, things are different again. You only have a decade or so left (of active life) and probably have a long bucket list to get through before you kick that bucket. If sex is on that list, you need to get cracking before your testosterone levels drop. If you are retired, or soon to retire, you have no job to lose, your kids, if any, have their own lives and don’t care what their old man gets up to, your wife probably lost interest decades ago and is willing to turn a blind eye in return for a bit of peace to read Mills and Boon in bed. The only thing you have to lose is – your life savings! So if you follow THE RULES you should be OK.

In summary, if you are under 60 and your life is not a disaster zone, don’t turn it into one: DON’T GO!

Rule 2

COVER YOUR BACK

IF YOU ARE READING this, you have decided (for good reasons or bad) to break Rule 1. That being the case, you need to pay very special attention to Rule 2: COVER YOUR BACK. Of course, if you are unattached or divorced you can ignore this rule and move straight onto Rule 3, but most of us need some kind of cover story. This was mine in May 2005 (later adapted for my novel/treatise, Philosophy in the Gogo Bar:

I FAKED PAPERWORK FOR a meeting in the most boring overseas venue I could think of (to deflect any suspicion) and came up with Mumbai – not that Mumbai is boring in a general sense, you understand, but that it tends to be associated more with needy beggars than with nubile bargirls. The next step was to leave the paperwork lying around so my wife would find it. As she was always prying into my private papers, that was not long.

So you’re off to Mumbai? she said over dinner.

I had my response ready – including a good old moan. Yes, more’s the pity. You know I hate flying. But it’s the way things are going now – you know, outsourcing...

What’s that?

Well, there are lots of well-educated programmers out there who will work for a fraction of what they pay me.

They don’t pay you very much.

That’s true, I thought, and most of it is spent on rubbish, but with a smile of satisfaction, I thought of the little nest egg I had accumulated to fund my trip.

Will you be gone long?

Er, seven days, I said as casually as possible.

Seven days!

Well it’s hardly worth going for less, I said, wishing it were seven weeks, or seven months, or even seven years.

I suppose so, said Jenny. Well, I’ll ask mother to come round.

I could hardly restrain my sigh of relief. It was fixed!

GENERALLY SPEAKING, you can get away with almost anything – once! – but I got carried away and used that cover story too often with the result that my wife became suspicious and her prying went up to the next level. One day, I came home from the office and was met with a face that looked like thunder.

WHO’S THE GIRL? JENNY stormed.

I was taken aback, but recovered quickly. What girl?

This girl! and with these words she flung a photograph at me. The photograph fluttered to the floor, but I knew, even without seeing it, that it was the polaroid of me with my arm around Wan and the snake around both of us.

Now I know what you’ve been up to over there – and it’s not India, it’s Thailand. I looked in your passport and saw the stamp!

I did my best to get out of it.

I can explain... I insisted. She’s a clerk, an office girl. She... and the outsourcing is to Thailand, only I thought you’d misunderstand if I told you, so I said Mumbai... and its quite innocent. The snake is... going to be the company’s new logo... and she’s only a clerk...

Jenny burst into tears. You wanted to have your cake and eat it! she sobbed.

I wanted to say that I wasn’t getting any cake, but realised that it would only make matters worse. My wife ranted on for a very long time during which she listed every sin I had committed from the first time I forget our wedding anniversary 19 years ago to that time I left her box of chocolates on the sideboard and the dog got them. The items went from bad to worse, with the picture of Wan being Exhibit A – the damning piece of evidence. Finally, she screamed, I want a divorce!

I was gutted, even though our relationship had not been that great for the last five years or so, we had jogged along comfortably enough, and now that the kids were off our hands, had money to spare – but this would mean ruin! My kids would blame me, of course, and I would lose at least half my assets, including the house. I had visions of living in a cardboard box – well, a crummy one-bed flat in Doncaster – and, worse of all, not enough money to keep up my visits to Thailand.

I’m off to mother’s! said Jenny. The next time you’ll see me will be in court!

THE BUSINESS TRIP EXCUSE can work well, depending on your profession and on how well you plan it. Ron’s cover story was another good one. He was a keen biker, and often went on biking holidays with his fellow bikers. It was a guy thing, and his wife understood that, and was quite happy about it, as long as she could go to a health farm in St Ives with her bestie for a week. All he had to do was ride his bike over to my place, then take the plane to Thailand. Any guy thing holiday will work just as well, whatever it is: fishing, football, scuba diving. The idea is to establish it: do it for real a few times, then abscond to Thailand.

The main problem with all these ideas is keeping in touch with your wife while you’re away. It was no problem for me in 2005, because my wife had no online social media, and a phone call twice a week was enough. By the way, you need to train your wife not to want to hear from you every day that you are away. That was easy for me, because I’ve never been a mobile phone fan, and only acquired one in 2018 when the one time pass code made mobile phone possession obligatory (and we call it The Free World!), so my wife never expected regular calls when I was away. It’s much harder now. When my current Filipina wife was with me, she expected Yahoo Messenger, and, later, Facebook Messenger calls every night – with video! That’s hard! Granted, you can add a fake background, but the shimmer round the edge of your body reveals straight away that it is a fake. Luckily, the interior of a hotel in one country looks exactly the same as in any other country (provided you remember the time zone difference and keep your teerak out of sight!).

Another idea is to arrange a stopover in one of the fleshpots on your way to somewhere else. Of course, you need to be travelling by yourself on a business trip, or for some other reason, spurious or otherwise. For example, if flying from London to Madrid, arrange a stopover in Bangkok – just joking about that! But I sometimes arranged a stopover in Bangkok when flying from Brussels to Cebu, and, as a night in Manila was almost always necessary before flying on to the province, I would arrange to stay in AC rather than the (overpriced and run down) Airport Hotel in Manila. Keeping in touch with the other half is not such an issue here, because a long haul flight, with necessary stopovers, can take a few days, and communications can’t be guaranteed.

Sometimes things come up which you can take advantage of. In 2006, my employer sent me to Montpellier to improve my French at a two-week summer school. My wife came for the first week, after which I was free to pop over to Thailand. I resolved to learn some French during the flight, but ended up listening to my MP3s of Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsan Becker (highly recommended).

My friend, Ron had a brilliant cover story – because it was genuine. He used to go to Amsterdam and buy vast quantities of cigarettes tax free, which he would resell at a profit in the UK. (This was legal at the time because of an anomaly in UK/EU import regulations). While he was there, he availed himself of the services of the window ladies. His wife approved of the extra cash he made, so he could go whenever he was free, in other words, in every school holiday. When he discovered Thailand, he made the excuse that marijuana would give him a greater profit than cigarettes – though he was never foolish enough to deal in marijuana in Thailand because, in those days, you could get the death penalty, even though, at the time of writing, it has been legalised for so-called medicinal use (you couldn’t make it up!).

Barry wouldn’t understand the concept of a cover story. The Neanderthal just does what he likes, and anybody who doesn’t like it can get lost. As it happens, his wife developed Alzheimer’s, so she had no idea what he was getting up to. But, credit where credit is due, he continued to look after her. In the later stages of her illness, he would put her in a home for a few weeks while he was away.

Dennis didn’t need a cover story. His Vietnam War experiences had made him dysfunctional and everybody in his life, including his wife, had to live with that. He is now divorced and living with Muk, his Thai girlfriend, in Pattaya.

So work out your cover story, and while you’re at it, work out what you’ll do when you get found out, because, no matter how good your cover story is your wife or girlfriend will see through it sooner or later (so perhaps you need to revisit Rule 1).

Rule 3

GET YOUR HEAD ROUND IT

IF YOU’RE A WING IT and see type, like my friend, Ron, you’ll just go, do it, and feel the guilt later. If you’re a Neanderthal type, like my friend, Barry, there’s nothing to get your head round, and if you’re an Old Asia Hand, like my friend, Dennis, it’s western values you can’t get your head round. But many of us will worry about being labelled by the wokerati (and perhaps by our own consciences) as:

A paedophile. There is a lot of hype about underage girls in Thailand and The Philippines and even those who are not under age look it, due to their petite bodies (though perhaps, now that their bodies are less petite, that misunderstanding is less common than it was).

A sex trafficker. They believe that bargirls have been trafficked and that, by participating, you are supporting sex trafficking.

A John – a man who pays for sex. Even your mates down at the Old Bull and Bush will tell you that paying for it means you are a loser.

An exploiter of third-world womanhood, which they will exacerbate with the term: colonialist.

Someone who is likely to catch HIV, AIDS or another STD and pass it on.

A despoiler of the environment – two many long-haul flights each year.

Unethical – cheating on your wife or girlfriend.

I had known about what goes on in Thai gogo bars since a Hong Kong business trip in 1992, when a Hong Kong client, who was giving me a tour of Hong Kong’s bars (just looking, because the prices were sky high), recommended Bangkok as a cheaper and better alternative. He and his colleagues, he told me, often went for a golfing weekend there. Some even took a bag of golf clubs (another idea for Rule 2: COVER YOUR BACK).

By about 2002, my marriage had started to deteriorate and I seriously considered a visit to Thailand, but couldn’t get my head round it for the reasons listed above. By 2005, after a year of drought in the bedroom, my id finally overcame my superego (to put it in Jungian terms) and I decided to go for it. I booked a flight for the summer, booked a course of injections at my doctor’s, and started doing research online.

When I got there in May 2005, my fears melted away one by one. The girls were so sweet that most of them were nicer than the real girlfriends I had had – and, guess what? – I didn’t meet a single one who was under 18 or who had been trafficked! Nor did I feel I was exploiting them. Rather, it felt like a fair transaction between consenting adults, and, to balance things out, there are plenty of stories about bargirls who exploit farangs (just read Stickman – see Rule 7).

In any case, it is not us mongers who are the real exploiters of third-world womanhood, but western capitalists using globalisation to reduce salaries and increase profits, as I try to explain in this poem (the you, is Wan, my former Pattaya TG GF):

After ten years

In a sweatshop making