“Want to feel like a king?” says Pauli, my new expat friend from Amsterdam. Pauli has been living in Pattaya, the red light city of Thailand for over 5 months now. On first hearing that he was residing in Pattaya I feigned interest, and rapidly searched for a reason that anyone would be in the “red-light” city of Thailand that long…aside from the obvious.
Despite his propensity for prostitutes, I gave him a chance, because he was friends with a Thai friend of mine. She lives in a town called Siracha about 40 minutes north of Pattaya and met Pauli teaching Thai language classes. She thought that while I was visiting her, It’d be fun for me to see the red light capital with my own eyes. So, here we were, walking down the appropriately named “walking street” and stopping outside “Don’t Tell Mama,” a pick-up bar where morally shallow farang (tourists) pick from dozens of girls that crowd the bar and take them to any number of places including the “short term rooms: 300 baht” venue across the street.
“Want to feel like a king?” Pauli says to me as we’re on the street looking in amazement at the prostitution spectacle. I had a feeling I knew what he meant and as much as I had no desire to talk to or even be near one of these scantily clad, and frighteningly young looking ladies, I said “sure.” I figured that I would only be in the hooker epicenter of possibly the largest sex tourism city in the world just this once so I might as well be open to odd experiences (minus the prostitution). As Pauli and I started to take a stroll down to the end of the bar and back, the cat calls began and women clamored for our attention. Left and right, front and back, it was a wall of sound. Phil Spector would have been proud of the chorus that started.
To be completely honest, it was a terrifically awkward experience. With three dozen Thai women yelling for you to have sex with them, you might think it’d be fun or even amusing. I assure you though, actually living it is eerie and uncomfortable.