A Shy Thai Bar Girl and Unforgettable Stories

It seems like the majority of stories are about bar girls being bad and in it for as much money as they can pry off a foreigner only to jump to the next person who gives them attention. I never thought I would write about my experience with a bar girl as it’s very personal to me and sacred. My story is about a sweet and honest bar girl I met in Bangkok. Her name was Pom.

Halfway through my tour there was a week’s leave. I went to Bangkok with my best friend Willie. Willie had been to Bangkok previously and told me all about the amazing things to do there. Our first night in Bangkok we went to his previous hangout on Petchaburi Road. They had a live band which later became famous and about a dozen girls. I was nursing a Singha and checking out the girls. After about an hour I became disillusioned with the selection of girls, and I asked my buddy if he wanted to go to a different place.

Suddenly I noticed a shy girl standing in the back of the bar. I immediately decided that she was the one for me. Call me naive or love-struck but for me it was love at first sight. There was something distinctive about this girl that I found fascinating: her beautiful hair, her gorgeous eyes, and her beautiful smile.

When I went to Thailand I didn’t have a lot of money but my buddy assured me that he would take care of me as he had plenty of money. After about 3 days our money ran out and I asked my friend if he could finance the rest of our stay. Little did I know that his so-called wealth was in the form of a checkbook which was basically worthless in Thailand at the time.

Pom Offers a Home in Bangkok

I told Pom that my buddy and I were broke and would have to leave Thailand early. She shocked me by suggesting that Willie and I stay at her house. We eagerly accepted her kind offer and had the time of our lives staying at a Thai house off the beaten path, eating Thai food and drinking Thai beer.

Pom paid for everything and never asked for a penny in return.

Willie and I reluctantly left Thailand after our 7 days were up and returned to Japan. Toward the end of my tour I put in for Thailand to be my next duty station assignment. Luckily my choice was granted and I was assigned to Utapao near Pattaya which is fairly close to Bangkok. I left Japan on a C-130 and flew to Bangkok for an overnight stay before being bused to Utapao. I made a mad dash for the bar to see my sweetheart only to be told that she was off that night. And I never saw her again.

But that’s another story.

Story 2 Studying Mandarin in Southern China

I’m a bit of an old Asia hand kind of dude. I have been pickpocketed, scammed, robbed, beaten, arrested, and made a lot of stupid mistakes I never learned from, but I’m still alive. These mishaps represent only 5% of total travel experiences, while the rest have been very excellent, albeit remarkable.

I’ve had some great times in the mysterious land of China, but some scary experiences too. China is not a place you hear much about, which is not surprising.

Not many folk want to go there for fun or for their health. If you don’t first learn Mandarin, it’s a tough gig to negotiate your way around. Unless you’re in the few obvious tourist spots or a posh hotel, you won’t find many people who speak English, and the last thing you’ll get is a menu translated into English.

It can be a pain in the butt getting a visa to go there in the first place, unless you want to pay 10 times more to an agent.

Learning Mandarin in China

I studied Japanese at university because it appeared to be the language of the future. Unfortunately I graduated around the time the Japan bubble popped and the country went into a 30-year deflation spiral. That’s when people started telling me I should have studied Chinese. Thanks guys.

Besides having that as a regret, I was curious to find out firsthand which of the two languages was more difficult and started studying Mandarin while watching a weekly TV program. My friends thought I was mad. They should have known that already.

I ended up working in Japan for a foreign company at the start of the 1990s. This was before I could find Thailand on any map of the world. Anyway, come first vacation time, I took myself off to Southern China to study the language on a short course at a university.

It was an interesting trip. There was a small but fun group of foreign students and we hung out a lot together. In the evening we would go out as a large group to various restaurants nearby. Our favorite one we called “the zoo.” Outside, there were stacks of cages containing cats, dogs, rodents, and what have you.

Let’s just say these animals were not being reared as house pets.

Meeting a Shy Chinese Waitress

One evening there was a commotion. A waitress had taken a long snake out of a cage by the head, but it was thrashing its tail and knocked down a large tower of plates and cups on its way to the kitchen, which fell to the floor and smashed.

We were usually served by the same group of waitresses who were intrigued by us, an odd bunch of Europeans and Japanese. One of the quieter waitresses was a real beauty in a very shy unassuming way. Petite and with a very cute girly face, a fact not missed by the German girl I was always sat next to. She suggested one night I should ask that waitress out. I hadn’t intended to make my interest in her so obvious but women are perceptive creatures as we all know. Plus the fact the German girl was interested in her too because she batted for both sides.

It was no easy task. I already knew that the waitress worked from 7:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. every day with just one day off a month. I started by asking her where she lived. She excitedly led me to a nearby cupboard, inside with sacks of rice, large cans and bottles, and a shelf with a pillow and a thin mattress rolled up.

I waited until it was time to pay and asked her in my best pigeon Chinese if she would like to join us at a nightclub in town the following Saturday night. She looked genuinely surprised, but then tears welled up in her eyes, and she scurried away into the kitchen. “I must have called her mother a horse,” I replied, a common mistake made by foreigners learning the treacherous tones that make Chinese so difficult to speak correctly. I grew concerned that I really had offended her until an older waitress came up to me and said, “She really wants to go with you but she’s got no shoes.”

That will teach me to wait until the end of a trip to make a move on an object of romantic interest. Life is just too short.

Fast forward 20 years. The development of China had proceeded at a staggering pace. Nobody rode bicycles anymore. Young Chinese women no longer looked like country bumpkins wearing crude knee-length stockings with raggedy skirts but were now confident elegant fashion icons. Chinese girls had learned how to present themselves to maximum advantage. What’s more girls like this were very accessible if you spoke Chinese. For the first time ever I realized that studying Chinese had not been a waste of time.

Finding Companions in Southern China

I knew exactly where to go and what time of the day and the prices I would be expected to pay. Unlike Thailand, which is so open, welcoming, easy, safe, and convenient for guys like myself, China has no go-go bars or beer bars with girls that will sit and drink with you. Things happen behind closed doors and you need to have your wits about you.

Around 1:00 p.m. I made my way to a small park off the main road. Sure enough, I was soon approached by a pleasant Chinese woman in her 30s who asked if I was looking for a girl as company. Yes was my eager reply. I followed her down an alleyway where she took out a key and unlocked a metal door to a room behind a liquor store.

Inside were 12 assorted girls, none older than about 25. I went inside and the woman locked the door behind us. It was a very uncomfortable feeling the first time but this was standard procedure. I was not rushed to make a choice and it was not an easy choice since there was not a single girl there that any sane man would want to kick out of bed.

I ended up taking two sisters who looked nothing like each other. My hotel was literally 1 minute away and we entered through the basement car park to take the elevator up to my room avoiding the walk of shame past reception. Not that anybody would have minded anyway they would probably have wondered what I was doing there if it wasn’t for aerobics practice.

A Risky Search for Companions

The older sister was very good at her job. The younger one looked on with curiosity. It was then that the older one told me that her sister was inexperienced. I thought “Not for long.” It was an unexpected little bonus for me I guess maybe not for the younger sister having to surrender herself to a white ghost (which is a derogatory Cantonese slang for a white foreigner).

The following day I decided to wait until early evening to do my shopping and visited a room in an old hotel I had read about on a Japanese mongers’ forum. This was something else. At least 20 girls and some absolute stunners. It was a tough choice again so I took two and they agreed to come to dinner with me in a prominent restaurant on the main street.

I was seated with my back to the large window and the girls alerted me to the presence of my friends. My friends? I thought I’d come here alone. I turned around to see two older Westerners looking in from the street. Their faces looking very happy and it wasn’t difficult to read their body language. They looked like they wanted to skin me alive.

I knew where they were coming from. There was a common problem in China if you don’t speak Cantonese or move in the company of a wingman that does it is not unusual for girls to refuse you. And I guess these guys had been turned down. There were a total of possibly five or six secret takeaways in this part of town and five or six in another. You hired girls for one time and the cost was typically 100 RMB plus another 50 RMB bar fine that was around $30 total at the time.

Discovering Chinese KTVs

By the third day I knew my way around and was roaming the back streets on another shopping spree when a white van pulled up alongside me. The windows were darkened out but an older woman poked her head out and asked the usual question. Out came five girls.

All were presentable but my standards had risen so high by this time that I politely refused. The woman was not impressed and grabbed my arm. To this day I can still feel the pain from her iron man grip. I tried every trick apart from kneeing her in the groin to shake myself free but to no avail.

To make matters worse a small crowd of onlookers had gathered. I was embarrassed and trapped. I had no choice but to pay her 50 RMB and take one of the girls back to my room.

She turned out to be prettier than I had first thought. A lovely evening was somewhat spoiled when she asked me for more cash afterwards. This is when I realized that “one time” does not mean “as long as I want.” It’s best to agree on an upper time limit at the point of sale if you want to take things at a leisurely pace and find out your new friend’s life story (typically she’s born in a small village, left school early, went to the big city to work in a factory, didn’t make enough money, so here I am with a white ghost three times my age).

Understanding the KTV System

Nighttime action in China in general is for groups and not for the lone traveler. Most nightclubs have a system where every table comes with a minimum charge. That charge includes drinks. I enjoy a wee dram but a full bottle of Scotch and 10 large bottles of beer is a bit too much even for me. The alternative is to spend all night getting down on the dance floor clutching a bottle of alcohol. Listening to Chinese techno is not my thing either. Fortunately I had researched this and put Plan B into action the following night which happened to be a Saturday.

A KTV is a lounge as most of us know. In China it has become an art form. Not a pokey bar with a large screen and a bunch of drunken Thai guys singing out of tune like you find in Phuket. We’re talking buildings the size of a castle or even the Sydney Opera House and this is no exaggeration. In the big KTVs, the lounges typically see groups of 20 or more and are found on the upper floors. Each individual lounge will have a door opening out onto a stage below, where you can sit on a small balcony and watch performing artists live, typically aerobics, which Chinese are skilled at.

All KTVs have a three number system. The most common is 25 and 8. The first number is a seating charge multiplied by 100 RMB, which you pay your companion directly. The second number is for aerobics until the following morning if you wish. The third number is a minimum amount you must spend on alcohol. In a large group you get there pretty fast.

The largest KTV in town has 1000 girl hostesses. It’s insane and you have to fight your way through them to get to the safety of a bar counter on the other side. I had jotted down the phone number of a Chinese American called Dave from an English language forum. He lived in a town and arranged weekend KTV joints for foreign visitors. He gave me the name of a KTV venue and room number to meet him at 6:30 p.m.

Joining a Chaotic KTV Night

There were nine of us in total. Half were overseas Chinese businessmen; the rest were foreigners. One was a high-ranking embassy official from Europe. Another was a roadie for a once great rock band who complained they don’t get roadies like back in the days.

The most insane thing of all took place at 7:00 p.m. Hordes of gorgeous girls suddenly appeared and stood in lines on the staircase or in other appointed spots. There was one mad rugby scrum as we competed with customers from Hong Kong rushing up and down all over the shop to grab the best looking partner for the evening. Girls were dressed in sexy spaceship captain uniforms corresponding to the theme of this particular KTV.

I grabbed a cute girl who had a badge pinned to her shirt. Dave had neglected to tell us that girls wearing these badges were not available for aerobics activity due to it being the time of the month. To be honest I wasn’t at all bothered because I needed a day off. I’m closer to 80 than 18 these days. She was a delightful companion. The odd thing is that Chinese girls seem to enjoy this form of intimacy because they’ve seen it in our movies, although Chinese guys are not into it, probably because they’re germaphobic.

We were there around 5 hours, I guess. Lots of snacks and alcoholic beverages were delivered to our room during that time. Some of the guys got really wasted; the rest could have drunk a Nana Plaza dancer under the table. When the check arrived we divided it up eight ways, excluding Dave. I can’t remember the amount but it wasn’t extortionate and fully worth it for the amount of fun we’d all had.

Dave announced there would be a special event tomorrow at a KTV in a nearby town called Changan. I wasn’t going to miss it. I had to check out of my hotel and get a bus to Changan where Dave and a visiting group of guys from Singapore were staying. Things started off in much the same way as in the KTV the night before.

Around 9:00 p.m. a waitress came in dimmed the lights and KTV music was replaced by techno. What happened next left me gasping for breath. All the girls began taking their clothes off and started removing their clothes. It was a bit harrowing at first and I was worried in case I unintentionally stood for an erection things could have got out of hand but didn’t. 30 minutes later it was back to KTV with clothes on as if nothing had happened.

Hearing a Dangerous Changping Story

Back in Changping and it was my last night. Before getting into the final two incidents, I thought I’d tell you what a typical day in Changping involved for me. Before doing my shopping, I’d start with a large hotel buffet breakfast. Mid-morning, I went to a gym to pump weights.

Afternoon I’d go for a 2-hour foot and leg massage at the hotel. I mention this because the massages are not only very good and professional but the girls are young and pretty. If you find there is chemistry between the two of you, you can pay in advance for another 2 hour session with the same girl then go out on a date with her.

I heard of one foreigner who paid for 8 hours, but the girls have to be returned to their workplace because they live there too. Fortunately not inside cupboards.

Instead of finding a new companion on my last day, I went against my own custom and took a girl from a room from before who had provided exceptionally good service. She wanted me to buy her some Adidas gear. I quite enjoyed taking girls shopping not in a dour and dour Dave way but just buying a little memento to remember me by. I bought her a tracksuit top and suggested she could pay for the bottoms herself later. We went to a nice restaurant for dinner and then we returned to my hotel room for aerobics.

The Changping Hotel Dispute

To this day I cannot recall what happened or why but we got into an argument. It must have been about money but any road, the result was I pushed her out of the door onto the landing and closed the door. This is something you should never do and was honestly out of character for me.

I decided to have an early night. About an hour later I heard a loud knock on the door. I ignored it but the knocking continued. I had no option but to open it. In walked the girl with two young guys. They were trying their best to look tough though I doubt if they really wanted to be there.

I knew exactly what to do in this situation even though it was a first of its kind for me.

I asked how much she wanted. The two guys seemed to be as relieved as I was when I got dressed and went to the ATM outside the hotel. I was super surprised at the amount they were asking for; it was hardly anything. In fact I gave both guys extra for the trouble she had caused them because of my foolish action. The moral of the story is always pay your way out of trouble. An old friend of mine used to say that you are not fluent in a foreign language until you can use it to talk your way out of trouble.

The Changping Robbery

I will tell you the true tale of what happened to a guy I met. I had kept in contact with the guys from Singapore I met at the outrageous KTV in Changan. It was at least my fifth junket to Changping, and we all hooked up early at Starbucks in town one evening. My buddies were a bit concerned because an American friend of one of them was known to have arrived and had suddenly stopped texting. He was apparently an experienced aerobics instructor and lived and worked in China. He arrived 2 hours late, pale-faced and trembling.

This is his true story. He had gotten into town ahead of schedule, checked into his hotel, and gone out to do some shopping. An older woman had approached him on the street, asked the usual question, and he had followed her to an old apartment block. They entered an empty room.

The woman suddenly darted out slamming the door shut and three burly men emerged from another room, carrying a knife and wooden sticks. He was imprisoned for about 5 hours, during which time he was joined by two more victims from Hong Kong. They all had their hands tied behind their backs.

They were made to surrender their credit cards and hotel room cards, give all PIN numbers, and an accomplice went off to remove all their belongings of value and max out their credit cards.

Lessons From China and Japan

To show the American they really meant business, they had pulled down his underpants and placed a cigarette lighter very close to his pride and joy.

His mistake, which was unfortunate because he had no way of knowing, was to go to the area on the wrong side of the main road. All the Chinese takeaways are located on the other side but he had no reason to be suspicious.

This brings me to the real moral of the stories, which by now should be obvious: always do your research if you are going to a place for the first time. Know which hotels to stay at and where the action takes place. Even better go with an experienced wingman so that you don’t have to do any research. Try to learn a bit of the language before you go and don’t assume that other Asian countries are as relaxed as Thailand.

Finally I’ll answer my own question as to which of Japanese and Mandarin Chinese is more difficult. Chinese is more difficult to speak because of the four tones (Cantonese has even more tones). Japanese is more difficult to read and write because it has four alphabets including our own.

But it was really interesting. I don’t know; this sounds like it’s a bit of a dated story. I don’t know if it’s like that now.

Story 3 Finding Noi on a Dating App

I’m an early-30s Australian guy, an engineer. Pre-COVID I spent a few years in Northern Thailand Isan region and Laos working in the hydropower industry.

I was 26 at the time and had just relocated to Laos from a regional town in the middle of Australia. Needless to say my dating options in the Australian countryside were limited. I had close to zero female prospects with the local women not being my type and let’s just leave it at that. After months of planning and being completely naive about the Eastern world I landed in Laos without even having been to Asia.

The first thing that hit me was the heat walking out of the international airport and a feeling that I had gone back in time. Looking around at the buildings, the lack of development, the smells, and organized chaos, I was taken aback. Despite there being poverty everywhere, all the local people seemed to be very happy and were smiling and having a good time with each other and foreigners alike.

As a single man, it didn’t take me long to notice the women were very attractive feminine slim and had a humble nature unlike the girls I was used to back home. Now I’m not a bad-looking guy; I’m athletic and in good shape. But despite this I didn’t have a whole lot of success with women back home and was rarely noticed unless I really made the effort with a girl. Contrast that to Laos and I felt almost like a celebrity. On my first day, walking around the city center it was as though all the young women were eyeballing me.

Later that evening I went for a walk along the Mekong River night market and tried striking up a few conversations with some local women. However I quickly learned that very few local people speak English and I would have to learn Lao or Thai if I truly wanted to experience the local culture or meet a nice lady.

Since I knew no one and the bar girls were not really my thing back then, I thought I would try my luck on the dating apps. I had a go at swiping away on Tinder. Shockingly within a few hours I had over 100 matches which blew my mind as when I would log into Tinder back home I’d be lucky to get a single match in a day. I matched with some cute feminine women and ended up matching a very attractive, slightly older woman who was not Lao but Thai. Her name is Noi.

A Night Out in Nong Khai

After messaging back and forth for a while I discovered Noi lived in Bangkok but was currently just over the border in Nong Khai, Thailand visiting family. I mentioned I had just moved to Laos from Australia and didn’t know anyone, so I asked her to come and meet me in Vientiane which she agreed. She was a little older than me but looked to be in great shape from her photos and spoke perfect English on chat so I was more than happy to meet her and just see what happens.

My first night was relatively quiet and I simply had a few beers at a bar overlooking the Mekong before I called it a night. The next day, which was my second in Asia, she was in town and I met her outside a Lao restaurant. My first impression was she was stunning.

Short and slender, with an amazing figure and no tattoos, which I liked. Despite the 8 year age difference I certainly felt I was punching above my weight. We went inside and grabbed a little feast of hot pot, spicy salad, som tam, and uncooked prawns, which she seemed to love and, reluctantly, I gave them a try, knowing my sensitive stomach would not be pleased.

But “bor pen yang” as they say in Lao or “no worries.”

Noi Heads Back to Nong Khai

We chatted about life and our past and it turned out she had lived in Europe previously for work which is why she spoke such good English. For a naive young traveler this made a whole bunch of sense. But a few more years in Thailand I realized a common explanation for excellent English is that they have had English speaking boyfriends.

After the dinner the prawns hadn’t yet killed me we had a couple more drinks then went back to her hotel which was one of the classiest in Laos. And I had a good introduction to Asia if you know what I mean. We decided to keep drinking and headed to a nightclub as she was in the mood for dancing. I was surprised how packed it was for a Tuesday night. However the music was all Thai and the noise was deafening. But I kept drinking beer towers and ended up having a great night meeting some more locals and partying until the early hours of the morning. I couldn’t believe how a girl that small could outdrink a seasoned Australian beer drinker.

After the nightclub closed we followed what would soon become my local routine and grabbed some noodle soup on the side of the road. Roadside noodles are a great drunken meal and a hangover cure which should be adopted in the West as a far better option than a greasy kebab. We found a tuk tuk and headed back to her hotel again and the aerobics were repeated. Meanwhile I was battling my stomach which was being tested by the uncooked prawns which were a long way from the coast inland in Laos.

I woke up the next morning having had one of the best nights of my life in an amazing country with a gorgeous girl. Shortly after Noi had to head back to Nong Khai. To my naivety and Western arrogance, I assumed Thai girls don’t have much money so I gave her taxi fare back to her home, which she was thankful for, and hugged me. I had a great time with her but it was only my second day in Asia by this point and I had much more to explore so wasn’t looking for anything serious. I put her in a cab and went on my merry way but hoped we could meet again soon.

Discovering Noi Was Married

The following days we chatted a bit on WhatsApp. She flew back to Bangkok and I continued to explore Vientiane and all it had to offer. One night soon after being slightly bored and thinking about our night together I decided to jump onto Facebook and stalk her as they say. What I found shocked me dearly.

I found her Facebook profile and browsed her photos, at which point I realized she was married to an older European guy and had three kids. I couldn’t believe it. Growing up in a conservative family, I always respected marriage, so I couldn’t believe someone would cheat like this. And I asked myself why she would do this to her husband. From the photos, it was evident her husband was old, overweight, and unattractive, but appeared to be incredibly wealthy. This made me think less of her and wonder why such an attractive girl would marry a guy like that. Could it all be about money? Most likely, yes.

Shockingly I had inadvertently gone against my moral code and spent the night with a married woman. I thought about my next move for a while and decided to just leave it at that and not confront her or say anything about my findings. I was just having fun exploring a new continent and did not want to cause any issues with her or her family. I didn’t think there was anything to be gained by arguing with her about it and it would be best for me to just move on which is what I did.

From my experience, Thai women are often given a lot of freedom by their Western boyfriends and husbands to head to their hometowns and visit their families. If I ever do get into a serious relationship with a Thai girl I will make sure to keep an eye on what is going on when they go on their so-called family trips back to their village. I’m sure this is a frequently used alibi to get up to any activities they desire and was used by Noi to come across the border to meet me.

Anyway, this was not the most interesting story; however, it was a wake-up call for me and goes to show that putting a ring on a girl doesn’t guarantee she will remain faithful especially if she is a young Thai girl and you are a gentleman past your peak.