The THAILAND Massage Shop Panic on a First Trip
I was naive, 28 years old, traveling around Asia with my then fiancée Lisa, who was 21. It was our first trip ever to the Land of Smiles, the first of many for me. There are no words to describe that feeling you get as soon as you step off the aircraft in Bangkok. After a long, slow process through customs, passport control, luggage collection, and a rush-hour taxi to the Bangkok hotel, that rush of cold blood suddenly becomes a distant memory. The jet lag kicks in, and you want nothing more than to fall into a deep sleep in your hotel room but you know you can’t, as it’s only 6:00 p.m. and if you sleep now, you’ll probably wake up about 2:00 in the morning, everything will be closed, and that’s no way to start a holiday.
Lisa suggested we go for a walk, and I agreed. This was probably the best way to deal with the tiredness. Maybe we could get some food and have a drink on the river not far from our hotel.
We were approached by a lady in her 50s. “Massage for you?” she inquired. I was shy and politely declined, but Lisa thought it would be a great way to relax without actually going to sleep, and at 300 baht it sounded like a bargain. So she said yes. I really didn’t fancy being rubbed with oil by a lady in her 50s for two hours, so I told Lisa that I would have a drink and wait for her. I went to a bar opposite near the location, and Lisa agreed to meet me there after her massage.
The Bar Across the Street
I don’t remember the name of the bar, but it was one of those bars I soon learned was a typical Thai beer bar, full of beautiful girls looking for men to buy them lady drinks and everything else that is provided for a fee. Being inexperienced and generally not interested in additional female company, I must say that the girls in the bar were incredibly warm and very friendly. I told them about Lisa and explained that she was having a massage across the street and would meet me here when she’s done.
Over the next two hours, I had a few drinks and was joking with the girls. I even bought several lady drinks for two of the ladies who decided to join me at my table perhaps out of boredom. The jet lag had passed, and I was high in spirits and now in a great holiday mood. After a while, one of the girls joked, “Your girlfriend not come you take me home instead?” I laughed, but then I looked at my watch and it had been well past two hours, maybe close to two and a half hours and I thought that was strange.
I paid my bill, waved the girls goodbye, and made my way to the massage shop. It was dark now, but the lights of Bangkok made the streets look brighter than ever. I looked through the window of the massage shop but couldn’t see Lisa inside.
The Massage Shop Misunderstanding
I decided to go inside and take a look for her. “Take off shoe, take off shoe,” said an old lady, pointing to my feet. “No, I don’t want a massage I’m looking for my girlfriend.” “Take off shoe,” she replied. “Then you come in.” “I’m looking for my girlfriend.” “Yes, you have to take shoe off take your shoes off before come in.”
I took off my shoes and socks and placed them by a pile of sandals at the door. “You need girlfriend?” the lady asked. “Yes, ka,” my reply. “You wait here I bring you.” Finally, I thought. Maybe Lisa fell asleep after the massage and they didn’t want to wake her.
Five minutes later, the lady came back with five other ladies from upstairs. “We have nice girlfriends for you,” as she introduces me to the girls. “No, no you don’t understand. I’m looking for my girlfriend. She was here earlier. She’s much younger than these ladies,” I joked.
The lady dismissed the five women, who went back upstairs, and started shouting in Thai. Then about a minute later, a younger girl came downstairs maybe 24 years old. “You can take this lady with you for looking Bangkok and up to you everything.” I felt my face being red with embarrassment, and I genuinely started to worry about what had happened to Lisa.
I looked over at the shoes and picked up Lisa’s trainers. “These girlfriend shoes. She came here for a massage over two hours ago. Where has she gone?” “Oh, she’s upstairs. You say girlfriend I think you wanted new ladies,” she laughed. “You go up you will see her at end of corridor.”
Searching the Upstairs Rooms
I walked up the staircase. The nice and clean interior of the welcoming downstairs reception didn’t extend past this point. The walls were damp and sodden, the staircase was rotten, and I was too nervous to use the handrail for fear of it falling off in my hand and getting the bill to repair it. This place wasn’t nice. The first room I walked past had a dirty mattress on the floor and a shower. The girls that visited me downstairs were all in the adjacent room, eating food from bags with plastic cutlery. Where was Lisa?
I made my way down the long corridor. I saw a syringe on the floor. “I hope that’s for insulin,” I thought. Then I saw Lisa face down on the mattress, half naked and not moving. A second rush of cold blood on my first day in Thailand, but this time it was not excitement; it was fear. I tapped Lisa lightly still nothing. I sat her up and said her name again. “Lisa, wake up!” She woke up. “Wow, that was amazing,” she said. “What time is it?” Late, I replied, relieved.
Lisa’s jet lag had caught up with her she had fallen asleep during the massage, and they decided to let her rest. She had no idea so much time had passed. We paid the 300 baht and left.
Story Two: A Traveler’s Tales from the 80s and 90s
“I first visited Bangkok in the 1980s on a visit to Indonesia and Burma, but Bangkok is where I transferred and I had a few days there and I was hooked on Thailand.”
The following year, I took a longer trip to Thailand and I visited a lot of the ancient cities, as my interest back then was history rather than beer and bars. I have never been to Pattaya, and I was only a poor young backpacker at the time. I treated myself to just one soapy massage before flying home.
On the next trip, I stayed in a very cheap hotel in Chinatown, where I have to say I first experienced a stuffed omelet for breakfast, which was very strange. Anyway, I visited a souvenir shop run by a girl I later found out was called Na to buy postcards and mementos, and I got on friendly terms with Na and would visit her fairly often. I was very surprised when Na turned up at my hotel and invited me to stay with her family. Of course, that sounded a wonderful idea.
In fact, I saw little of Na as she was working very long hours, and it was her brother I was mostly with when they took me to the rice farm in Isan. I got to see a lot of places, and I was also introduced to Isan food sticky rice balls and raw cow stomach. Sometimes I would eat at a local Thai eating place on the grass verge which made the best pad Thai that I had ever had. Unfortunately, on the second visit, we had a plague of flying ants that shed lots of ant wings all over the food. I learned a very important Thai custom on that day: say nothing pretend it isn’t happening.
I fixed the house lights once when the fuse blew for some reason they didn’t know about fuses and then I was off to the airport. Na asked if I was going back to London. I said, “No, Burma.” “You got friend there?” “Yes.” “Boy or girl?” “Girl.” And then it came out. I had to use a quote from Lord of the Rings: “There is nothing that hurts a man more than having to reject the love of a fine woman that can’t be returned.”
Bangkok’s 1990s Changes
So I will jump ahead now from the 1980s to the 1990s, when Thailand was coming out of third-world insurgency (when it was rather like Cambodia in the 90s) and becoming an Asian tiger with a metro system. Bangkok had changed. The souvenir shop where I had met Na had gone. Patpong was no longer as exciting as it had been in the past. Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy were now the more popular areas to spend an evening for single guys out to have fun.
I still visited a Kobe steakhouse that I had always liked, and when I was passing through Patpong, I would pop into some of the bars for a drink although I’m not a big drinker it was more for old time’s sake before going back to my favorite bars in Nana and Soi Cowboy. In Soi 8 Nana, I can recommend the Bamboo Bar. I went once and was hooked. The girl behind the desk explained, “You can have any of the girls you can have me. Up to you.” In the end, I hooked up with a nice girl called Ging (which means “branch” in Thai). It was more of a girlfriend experience than most massage or bar girl encounters I’ve had in the past. Some girls give fake smiles, but I’d rather have a nice smile than a miserable looking girl with me.
The Twin Sisters in Soi Cowboy
I was at my favorite bar in Soi Cowboy which was really fun before it all declined in quality with more covering up, deafening music, the young dudes with their baseball caps on back to front telling me “if it’s too loud for you, you’re too old,” and of course higher prices. You had to watch these bars for scams back then in fact, some bars were closed down by the police for a while for scamming foreigners. I could maybe give you that story but maybe another day. But it was good for entertaining a girl before showing her the contents of your hotel minibar.
It flatters the ego of an old man to have a very pretty girl fling herself at him as soon as he finds his way through the door. Back at the bar, I sat and looked over a few rotations of the stage while sipping Chang beer and watching a pretty girl that had been pulled off stage by an old guy. She was wriggling to free herself from his clutches and seemed not at all happy about his freebie groping so she waved goodbye to him with a smile so as not to cause a fuss.
I saw that the pretty girl had escaped her molester, had left, and was now back on stage doing the bar girl shuffle. She was talking to another girl on stage that looked similar to her. Well, that was too good to miss. So I waved them over to join me first having them sit together as they were still wary after “Jabba the Hutt” had been manhandling one of them and sat with them without bothering them, getting them drinks so they loosened up and relaxed. And they revealed they were twin sisters. I have come across surprising numbers of those in my time visiting Bangkok obviously it attracts certain customers. After their shift, they sat side by side, and I ended up bar fining both of them.
The moral of the story being: if two girls is too much, you’re too young.
