The Drunk Jerk in the Go Go Bar

I was once in Rainbow is it Rainbow Three or Rainbow Four? As you go into the plaza right to the end, the one in the corner full of Japanese these days that kind of took over that bar. But I was in there anyway. There was a guy who came in. I don’t know where he was from, but he was a Western guy. I was sat at the back with a friend. We were having a drink and just looking at the stage.

This guy came in. He had a couple of drinks. He was absolutely I mean, he was really drunk. He went up to the side of the stage and he started making fun of the girls. He was kind of saying, “Oh, you know, you’ve got a big backside” and “you’re this and you’re that.” And he thought it was really funny. The girls didn’t do anything when he was doing that.

But what did happen as he was walking out, one of the girls ran up behind him and just whacked him so hard on the back of his head with a Heineken bottle that it smashed, and she disappeared. And that’s what they’ll do. They won’t let you get away with it. You might think at the time you’re getting away with it, but they’ll get their revenge and they’ll have you.

So that was one of the smaller things. And thinking about it, I have seen a few beer bottles get broken on a few heads over the years. That’s one that stands out because it was quite shocking, actually. Because we were sat there and the girl just came out of nowhere, and we just happened to be looking at the guy walking out as she cracked him on the back with the beer bottle. It could have been a Chang, I don’t know.

Story Two The Drug Setup Scam

This one was quite serious. This was something that happened to a guy because he made a bad decision. It wasn’t really his fault. He just made a bad decision, a bad choice, and he really came unstuck.

So, what happened to this guy? He was a tourist. He went out. He was there for a couple of weeks. He went to Nana Plaza. He had a good night there. And I’m talking late ’90s. There used to be a disco in the Nana Hotel. The Nana Hotel is opposite Nana Plaza. And as you walked into the Nana Hotel so you walked through the doors, the reception desk was on your right, toilets on your left you walk all the way through to the end. That stayed open near enough all night, till at least sort of 5:00, 6:00 in the morning.

And what had happened you’d come out of Nana Plaza. I think the bars in those days closed at sort of 4:00. A lot of people tended to head over there about sort of 2:30, 3:00. A lot of the freelancers headed over there as well. It was quite a good place, actually. It closed down. It’s not there anymore.

This guy, he was a tourist. He came out of the plaza, and as he was coming out, a Thai man approached him and said, “Do you want some cocaine? I’ve got some cocaine.” And the guy was on holiday. He’d had a few drinks. He wasn’t thinking straight. He thought, “Yeah, why not?” So he bought a little bit of cocaine, a little bit. Stuffed it in his pocket, and he thought, “I’ll have that later, either in the disco or at home.” I don’t know what his intentions were. But he bought this little bit of cocaine. Put it in his pocket.

He went over to the disco. Upon entering the disco, he was searched by the police coincidentally. They found the cocaine, and he was arrested.

Now just to let you know what actually happened there: they were all working as a team. Obviously, there was some kind of police. They had mobile phones with them. They sold this guy. They knew where he was going. They could see him. They sold him this bit of cocaine. They’d called their friends who were on the door at the disco, searched him. They knew he was going to have it on him. And it’s all an excuse just to extract money.

Story Two The Drug Setup Scam and the 400,000 Baht Demand

But the conclusion to that story is what happened. He was taken into custody. And now, obviously, drugs, even if you have a small package, are really serious in Thailand. It’s serious everywhere, but in Thailand it’s really you just don’t go near drugs. If you take drugs in your own country, just do not go near drugs in Thailand. You’re really asking for it.

So what happened? This guy, they arrest him. They found the drugs. They knew they had a payday coming. He couldn’t get out of it. They wanted 400,000 baht. Just to give you an example how much 400,000 baht is at today’s rate it’s around £10,000, which I believe is about $12,000 US.

Now, luckily for him, he did know somebody another Western guy who was actually living in Bangkok at the time and who was married to a Thai. He called him. He came down with his Thai wife. A lot of talking, a lot of negotiating, a lot of pleading. And in the end, they let him go for 200,000 baht. So he had to pay the equivalent to £5,000, $6,000 US. As you can imagine, it wiped out his holiday budget. He owed his friend money. He had to borrow money. And it was a bad decision, and he paid dearly for it. Absolutely dearly.

Story Three The Glasgow Hard Man (The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Seen)

Now, I’m going back to about 1995. I witnessed this. It sounds far-fetched, but I witnessed this with a friend. I’d actually not forgotten about it, but I’d never really sort of given it much thought because it was a long time ago. It was 25 years ago. This is an absolute true story.

I’d only been in Thailand for about 2 years. In those days, when you walked into some of the smaller bars, it’s not like now where they’ve spent millions of baht on sound and lighting systems. They’re almost like sophisticated nightclubs. Lots and lots of money gone into them. In them days, a lot of the clubs you’d walk in, it took you 10 seconds before you could see anything. There was a little bit of let’s be polite as you walked in, you’d have Christmas tree lights strung around the bar. That was about as much as you could hope for in some of the smaller bars. And they’re the sort of places we’d sort of hang out either earlier in the night or we’d want to finish off after coming out of Patpong. And we’d go to one of them types of bars.

So, the guy I’m talking about the dick, as we mentioned in the beginning let me tell you a little bit about him. He was from Glasgow. And in his city, Glasgow, he was a hard, hard man. You wouldn’t cross him. He was feared. Scars on his face, tattoos down his arms. I believe he was a loan shark. He was one of these guys who’d go around council estates (to anybody who’s not English government housing). He’d offer to lend somebody £50, and you paid him back £75. If you missed it or you were late, that went up more and more and more.

He was one of those types of people. If you seen him walking down the street with some of his goons, you’d cross the road to get away from him. He was a nasty, nasty piece of work. He was a local hard man. He was vicious. He’d been in and out of jail and approved school, borstal, all them sort of places all his life. And this guy ended up in Bangkok. Probably just went on holiday like anybody else.

So where he came unstuck is he tried to act like the hard man. He was a hard man, but he tried it on in Bangkok.

So, back to our man. He’s in Patpong. Hard man, Glasgow man in his own town, he was feared. So he goes into this smallish bar in Patpong. Not the main run where the night bazaar is. It was one of the side streets. I think it’s a gay soi now. It wasn’t back then. He went into one of the smaller bars. Christmas lights around the bar, run by a very nice Thai woman, and she had maybe three or four girls in there.

Story Three The Glasgow Hard Man in Patpong

We’d go there as regulars just for a drink. So he goes into this bar, and you don’t pay for each drink individually in Thailand. They’ll put a wooden kind of like a wooden pot on the table, and every time you have a drink, they’ll bring a bill and they put it into that pot. And at the end of the night or whenever you want to leave, you just tell them “check bin,” and they’ll total it up and give it to you.

What happens especially in the go go bars sometimes is they’ll stick one or two extra bills in there if you’re a bit drunk. But this bar I knew very well. I knew the Thai lady who run it, and she wasn’t like that. She didn’t stick extra bills in people’s bill pot. It was quite an honest bar because it was small. They relied on regulars going in there, so they’re not going to rip people off.

But for whatever reason, this guy, the Glaswegian guy he was convinced that he was short changed. I don’t know exactly if they put another bill in his pot or they didn’t give him back the right change. But he pretty much imagined it. He made a mistake. We know this for sure. And he started flapping his hands around. He was getting louder and louder.

He got louder and louder. And to cut a long story short, it ended with him picking up a big glass ashtray because you could smoke in the bars back then a real heavy, heavy glass ashtray. He picked this ashtray up. He threw it at the optics, smashed about three bottles whiskey, vodka, whatever it was. Okay. He went along the bar like you see in the movies, all the glasses. He started kicking off. He was swearing and screaming.

By this time, one of the girls had slipped out. The police are in Patpong. They’re everywhere. A couple of police came. They came in. He saw them coming in. He thought he was going to be arrested. He thought he was in Glasgow. He thought he could state his case and, you know, he’d pay a small fine. That would be the end of it.

That’s not what happened. I’ve witnessed this with my own eyes. It’s a true story.

Story Three The Concrete Post and the Bar Owner’s Revenge

So, the two police came in, asked him at first what happened. They took him outside, put one handcuff on one arm and led him outside by the other handcuff. So in other words, he had one handcuff round his wrist and the other cuff hanging loose. They took him outside. In Thailand, all the electricity power cables are above ground. They’re not buried in the ground. And you’ll see these concrete posts that support all these cables. So they handcuffed him to one of these concrete posts in Patpong.

And then they went in to speak to the bar owner, got her story, found out what happened. The next thing that happened, the bar owner came out with a wicker basket chair one of these tall bar chairs smashed it over the guy’s back in front of the police, then went back into the bar, came out with a cane, hammered him with the cane. A couple of girls came out of the bar, started kicking him, scratching him, spitting at him, all sorts. He was crying like a baby. He was begging. He was pleading.

Now eventually they let him go. He had to take all the money he had in his wallet and pay it to the bar owner. And I think he had something like 8, 9,000 baht on him. And this was 20 years ago.

And as far-fetched as this all seems, I witnessed this.