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.
Story Three: From Factory Worker to Go-Go Bar Manager
It was the time of the financial crisis, and as I’m a self-employed plasterer, there wasn’t a lot of work around due to the housing market slowing down with the banks not borrowing much money for mortgages at this time. I was working in Mansfield at the time in a fire door production factory. I’d recently broken up from a long-term relationship in 2007, feeling a little insecure and very bored with the factory job.
A few of my newfound friends at the factory were also wanting a little more from life other than making doors for a living in boring Mansfield. We all regularly chatted about getting a work visa for another country and leaving this dull factory life behind. All of us decided we wanted to go to Australia and work, so we applied for a working holiday visa and we all got accepted. I was very excited about the whole new experience I was going to have.
The First Thailand Stop Before Australia
I started doing some research about having a holiday stop on the way. One of the guys had already been to Thailand before not for too long a period and had told me stories about his experiences in the kingdom. Our departure date of November the 9th, 2009 had finally arrived. We flew Thai Airways three of us had never flown long haul before, so we made the most of it with all the free drinks and food on board. We met a guy on the aircraft also going to Thailand but with a lot more experience than us. He told us a lot of stories about Thailand, the bars, the girls, and how to treat the Thai people respectfully. To be honest, I did not find that until being in Thailand for several days but a lot of the guy’s advice was fantasy rather than fact.
We arrived in Bangkok and made our way to our hotel, which is located near to Khao San Road. I don’t think anybody will ever forget the first feeling of walking out of the heavily air-conditioned airport in Bangkok and into an almost furnace of heat, humidity, and pollution. Still, we had arrived. In Bangkok, like any other newbies, we made some mistakes: firstly, being talked into booking an expensive airport limo live and learn.
After reaching the hotel, we got showered, changed, and headed off to the famous Khao San Road. The feeling was like no other the sounds and the smells of the street food. Even though one of the group had been to Thailand before, as I mentioned earlier in the story, we fell for the old tuk tuk scam to the ping pong shows that was mistake number two. I’ve heard many nightmare stories about these venues, about people getting ripped off for thousands of baht, but we actually had a great time and never got bothered once while we were there.
Our first three days in Bangkok were really good both the daytime and, of course, the nights when we went out partying. In the day, we went out visiting the temples and doing all the touristy things you do in a new city.
Meeting the Restaurant Girl in Bangkok
On our last night in Bangkok, we decided to go for a nice meal in a restaurant near our hotel on Rambuttri. We sat down for dinner, where we were met by a beautiful Thai server girl who looked no older than 18 but I later found out she was 27. We continued to enjoy our evening with lots of food and lots of Chang beer. All four of us were flirting with the Thai girl that worked there and asked her to join us for the night when she had finished work. She accepted, and we hit Khao San Road for the third and final night in Bangkok.
It was a usual crazy night with lots of Chang and lots of Thai food. The night finally came to an end, and I found myself with the beautiful Thai girl in some random hotel lobby, drinking beer while she was eating Thai food. We ended up getting a room in the hotel as I was sharing a room back at my hotel and wanted some privacy for the upcoming gymnastics. We had a great evening. She never asked me for anything, which I thought was great. “If this is Thailand, I can live with it.” Not spending too much was not to last, however many thousands of baht have exchanged hands since then. I guess I got lucky, and being much younger than today, I probably looked a bit more appealing to the girls than I do currently.
We left for Koh Samui the following afternoon. But before we left, I popped into the restaurant and exchanged Facebook contact details with my new friend from last night. We visited Koh Samui, Phuket, Phi Phi Island. We joined in all of the Full Moon and Half Moon parties it was great fun back then. I wouldn’t dream of doing that stuff now, but being 11 years ago, it was all fun to me.
Australia and the Pearl Boat
After four weeks of what had been the absolute best time of my life meeting and making friends with lots of people, some who I still keep in contact with today it was time to fly out to Australia. We landed in Sydney, and I was feeling very sad at leaving Thailand. There I was in an amazing city like Sydney, and all I wanted to do was get back on a flight straight back to Bangkok. Nonetheless, I went with the flow of the group and continued to enjoy my time in Australia.
We spent three weeks in Sydney, enjoying Christmas and New Year on Darling Harbour. We then rented a camper van and drove to Melbourne, stopping off at a number of places to spend the night. We all enjoyed the beautiful southeast coastline of Australia. My funds were getting very low at this point, and after paying for a week’s rent in a hostel, my funds had finally run out. I went to an internet cafe across the road (as smartphones weren’t really around too much back then), searched online for a job, and luckily started work the next morning. The job scene was much better back then.
I was enjoying my time in Australia, but I could not get Thailand out of my mind. I just wanted to be back there. The Australian girls are stunning, but I am not the most handsome man on the planet, so I never really stood a chance of getting together with a beautiful Australian girl.
Around this time, most of our group of guys from Nottingham had agreed to split up and go on their separate ways. After a few months of installing loft insulation in Melbourne and earning a very good salary, I managed to save a little money, and I was planning another camping trip up to Darwin. It was a huge shock to the system coming from Thailand where £20 can go a long way if you’re careful, compared to Australia where it is very expensive for everything.
Me and another guy headed up to Darwin, again stopping off and camping along the way. We had another amazing time experiencing the Australian outback with all its wildlife totally different to England and all the time never forgetting about Thailand and constantly talking about Bangkok at every opportunity that I could. Again, I was getting very low on funds, so I started looking for another job. Someone mentioned a couple of pearl boat companies in Darwin but had said, “You don’t stand much chance of getting a job with them as every backpacker in town is after the same job.”
Nonetheless, me and one of the other guys tried our luck and headed off to the office of the pearl boat company. We walked in, and the guy at the desk asked us what we wanted. “A job,” we replied. He was there. It was then that the phone rang, and the guy at the desk answered. He continued to have a conversation with a man on the other end of the phone, and just before he hung up, asked if they were going to replace the two backpackers that had been recently sacked for stealing pearls. He put the phone down and said, “This is your lucky day, boys. When can you start?”
The Pearl Boat Job in Darwin
The job was just what I was looking for six weeks on, three weeks off and on my three weeks off, I was going to fly back to Thailand. It was not only ideal to get back to Thailand, but it was one of the best experiences of my life working in the Northern Territory on a boat in shark infested waters. The wildlife was unbelievable.
So the first break I got, I sailed back to Darwin and booked a flight to Phuket via Singapore. I had to spend the night in Singapore, which I didn’t mind at all as it’s a beautiful city with also lots of fun things to do. Whilst working on the boat, I made friends with a really cool German guy named Marcel. I introduced him to Thailand for the first time, and we returned on every break we had.
Back to Thailand: The Travel Shop and Poverty
After a year of being away, I returned to the UK. I started back at work in the UK and saved up to go back and travel some more. I was always interested in going back to tour Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. So after a few months saving up, I flew back to Bangkok and had some more trips planned in Southeast Asia. Vietnam and Laos were great fun, but I couldn’t wait to get back to Thailand.
The Thai girl I told you about earlier in the story who we had met in the restaurant had now moved to Phuket and opened her own little travel shop. You know the type of thing you see all over Thailand for booking your trips to the islands, boat and bus and train tickets, and so on. We’ve kept in touch all this time on Messenger, and she offered me a job working in the travel shop. I was interested in staying in Thailand for a longer period of time and thought this could be a good opportunity to do that.
I made my way to Phuket by bus. As I was again running low on funds after finding an apartment and paying a month’s rent near the travel shop, I was literally broke. I wasn’t really worried about this as I was making a little bit of money at the travel shop just enough to eat and drink. It wasn’t about partying at this point; it was just about staying in Thailand and living the Thai lifestyle. I was probably the poorest farang in Thailand at this point but I didn’t care. It was just great to be there and wake up every morning in the country. I was also waiting for a tax return that was being processed from my time working in Australia, so I knew eventually I would receive around £1,500 transferred to my UK bank account. I was living on around 200 to 300 baht per day but having the best time of my life.
I didn’t really enjoy working in the travel shop, as the Thai girl I was working for didn’t really have the same happy go lucky attitude she had when we first met in Bangkok in fact, she had turned into a real misery and wasn’t pleasant to work for.
Becoming a Go-Go Bar Manager in Phuket
After finishing work one day, I decided to have a walk down to Bangla Road and see if I could find some kind of another job. Most of the bar owners laughed at me when I asked them for work, but I continued to try anyway. I decided to turn up a soi off Bangla Road called Soi Sea Dragon I walked slowly up the soi, just looking for a friendly faced bar owner to approach, when I came to a bar called Coney Bar. The bar was covered with balloons with food laid out as it was one of the bar girls‘ birthdays. The owner of the bar invited me to sit down and eat so I did and ordered up a drink.
The owner came and sat with me and asked the usual questions. “What is your name? What country you come from? What you plan to do for that night?” I replied, “I’m looking for a job.” Looking at me a little confused. “A job? But you’re a farang. Why you want job?” After explaining my situation to her, she said, “You’re serious, aren’t you? I try to help you. Wait one minute.”
I carried on drinking my beer, not expecting anything spectacular to develop, when the lady returned with an Asian guy. I first thought he was Thai, but after speaking with him, he told me he was from Malaysia and owned four go-go bars in Soi Sea Dragon and was looking for an English speaking manager. I told him I would be interested. So began to follow him inside one of his go-go bars. We walked inside, and as you would expect, around 20 scantily clad girls were dancing on stage. I thought all my Christmases had come at once.
He showed me around a little and said, “You can start tonight if you like.” I worked there for about three months all in all, and it was an awesome experience. I was still very new to Thailand at this point, but the job taught me a lot about what goes on with the girls and how they have numerous farangs sending their money. I literally witnessed every scenario with these girls in the time I spent there. But I had lots of fun, and all the girls made me feel very welcome. I actually still keep in touch with a couple of them to this day. My salary was laughable, to be honest, just 9,000 baht a month, but I wasn’t there for the money; it was all about the experience. (9,000 baht is about 300 US dollars at today’s rate.)
As soon as the tax rebate I spoke of earlier in this story was debited into my account, I finished the job and enjoyed around three weeks holiday and of course I went on to spend time with my favorite girl I had been watching for the last three months but had been off limits to me as I worked in the go-go bar.
Why Thailand Remained a Favourite After Years of Travel
Since 2009 and my first time leaving Europe, I have been all around the world and would say travel is by far my biggest passion. I have plans to go to many more countries and want to experience many more adventures, but Thailand will always be my go to place. After all the countries I have visited, Thailand by far is my favorite country no disrespect to any other country but Thailand is just something else.
I also introduced Thailand to my father at 60 years old, and let’s just say after endless amounts of advice I gave him before his first trip, he made every rookie mistake in the book but that’s another story.
