Welcome to my website

A friend told me the other day that my website sucks. He wasn't referring to content, rather, to design. I keep saying I'll improve it; especially as I use Front Page I could improve it without too much effort I suppose. The thing is though I firmly believe that if a person has been involved in the design of his website then that website accurately reflects his personality; as I think it should. Take other writers, for example. If you go to Jake Needham's site, you will find Jake in coat and tie with white handkerchief in the pocket of his expensive dark blue suit (although he doesn't seem to have his cigar anymore - maybe the healthnazis got to him). It is a very well done site and portrays Jake as quite the man and the writer. Then go to Christopher Moore's site and Chris is dressed more casually in long-sleeved white shirt, open collar, slacks and hands in pockets. He is standing by a window looking out or rather gazing out, very writerly, almost poetly. Jake portrays a stern image, Chris a more approachable image. Both sites are very well done.

Next try Jerry Hopkins site. There is Jerry with beard and glasses and a smile (but without his trademark hat). And there is a gallery where you can click thumbnails and see Jerry with

his family, etc. His site is not bad but it is not quite on the level of the other two; interesting but not quite as well organized which, if you know Jerry, accurately reflects the man. I am not certain if other writers on Thailand such as David Young and Colin Piprell have websites. Of course, Steve Leather does, but he is both in England and in Thailand so I am not certain if that counts. In any case, his splash page shows two of his titles and if you want to see him you have to click on The Author. And there you will find him with some funny doctored photographs including one with George Bush (can you spot Stephen Leather in the photo?) and one in which he is wearing wings (and if he isn't more careful in Nana Plaza he may soon be). Steve also has the good sense to recommend two of my titles on his site - may the saints bless and preserve him.

But then, alas, we come to Dean Barrett's site. In which just to get into the damnable thing you have to click on a Thai dominatrix, a friendly dom, to be sure, but nonetheless suggestive of a bit of kinkyness or at the very least an unstable eccentricity off-putting to a certain percentage of surfers. And then to get here you have to click on her again although she is wearing the NYPD cap I gave her (which photo I sent to the New York Police Dept. and is probably now up on some detective's bulletin board at Manhattan's One Police Plaza). So, anyway, as I say, so long as the website accurately reflects a writer's personality and titles, then I say it is a good website. And hats off to all those who write novels set in Thailand, with or without wings, cigars, hats or hands in pocket - may you sell a million.

I only went for one drink, I've never paid five thousand Baht to a lady, and I wouldn't dream of messing around with another guy's girlfriend. But it's morning, and she's now downstairs making me coffee. How the hell did that happen?

Note: What I wonder about this story is how he can afford a place with a "downstairs?"

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Special report from inside soggy go go bars

In England every year, the favourite topic of conversation for about three months is whether the summer will be good, whether summers are getting longer and better, or whether in fact the hot summers one remembers of childhood are still unbeaten.

Here, everyone talks about the rainy season. How long will it last, is the worst over, is there more rain this year than last, etc.

Even the King publicly questioned this year why there has been no more rain than last year, but still there has been so much more flooding.

A friend of mine's house was flooded. He thought he could pull a few strings and call up a high ranking contact within the Bangkok Administration, and get the emergency services out to clear the water. But the official couldn't help. His own house was under water.

Anyway, this is all my rather long defence of why on one day last week I was to be found on the stage at a Soi Cowboy gogo bar.

I know that rule 28 of the Dean Barrett guide to Bar Etiquette is that one must under no circumstances get so drunk that you decide you can dance more sexily than the ladies and climb onto the stage to demonstrate. (This comes right between rule 27 about tattoos, and 29 on showing favouritism during a threesome.)

However, I must plead that I was only on the stage because there was at least six inches of water on the floor, and it was the only place to keep my feet dry.

There were indeed two days last week when Cowboy was flooded, and believe it or not, this apparently puts off some customers. It seems hard to comprehend, but I was one of only a few stalwarts who hitched up his trousers and waded towards the neon lights.

You see, I had also read Dean Barrett's Guide to Gogo Success, and I knew from page 42 that any disaster from floods to powercuts to coups should be seen not as a calamity but as an opportunity. Because the fewer customers there are, of course the better the pickings!

On Friday, Nana Plaza was also looking very quiet, with the usual exceptions. And again, I think the rain was the cause.

Erotica is an odd bar. It was one bar, then upstairs was split off and run separately. Then they joined up again. For a while they didn't use upstairs at all, which seemed rather a waste of a perfectly good glass floor. On Friday, they had put all the cute girls up on the glass floor, but left a few not at all cute girls downstairs, so that customers poking their heads in saw little of interest and moved on.

Erotica has some very cute girls, but they don't seem to be able to get the formula right. And why do all the girls finish their set and go and sit together in a huddle, leaving what few customers there are sitting alone around the dance floor. In some bars, the mere sight of a customer sitting on his own would cause the mamasan to have a fit.

A bar with a very similar theme is of course Baccara on Soi Cowboy, which is constantly popular. One night last week, I went in late at night, and there were only about eight girls left. The others had all been bought out. Again, this was on a night when other bars were looking distinctly empty.

Well... as some might know, the theme of both Erotica and Baccara is that the girls wear university uniform - the traditional black skirt and white blouse.

Rawhide clearly decided to go one better. They now have a show where about ten girls tie their hair back, wear spectacles and dress up as teachers. Of course this gives them a lot of opportunity to spank any bad customers.

It seems to me that a lot of girls have been paying visits back home, and a few bars have been missing a lot of their star ladies. I don't know whether this was because of the recent religious holiday, because this is a crucial time for the rice crop, or whether it's just because when there are few customers around, it's a good time to get back home.

One girl announced that she was going back home, but in fact headed off to Pattaya to see if there was more money to be made there. I suspect that at the moment there might be. But girls from the Bangkok scene often don't adjust well to Pattaya. For one reason, the prices paid by customers are less. It seems to me that girls develop a sense of their own financial value, and the more attractive ones are often very reluctant to lower their rates. Also many girls have told me that the customers in Pattaya are different from the customers in Bangkok.

One of Bangkok's most successful mamasans was telling me the other day that she was doing quite well. The owner of her bar understands her value to the bar, and he is quite right to do so, in my opinion. That is reflected in her earnings - 100,000 Baht per month.

I tried a little experiment last week. As you may know, when you buy a lady a drink, she gets commission - usually about 40 or 50 Baht. How this works usually is that she gets a ticket, and at some point after midnight, the girls go to the cash till and cash up their tickets.

Well, I was in a mischievous mood the other night and thought it would be amusing to f*** with the heads of the staff, so offered to buy the drink tickets from a few girls at a purchase price of 60 Baht each, ten Baht more than face value.

This allowed me at just past midnight to queue up with the other girls and present my tickets for redemption.

The cashier was utterly confused. She checked that the tickets were genuine, consulted with her friends, and had to speak to the manager. I explained that I was a very handsome fellow and that a lot of the girls had bought me drinks. Believe it or not, they actually gave me the money!

One piece of very bad news, one that I know will cause Dean Barrett to go into a deep depression. The website has on many occasions made reference to Budweiser ladies, Guinness girls, and those very comely representatives of Heineken, Chang, etc. Well, soon those may be only fond memories.

The government is planning to ban all alcohol advertising, which would mean that the beer girls would not be allowed to wear uniforms displaying the brand. And some feel that if they can't wear the logo and act as walking adverts, their services will no longer be required. This is very worrying. We used to be able to blame Thaksin for such draconian measures. But this is perhaps the worst yet. Whilst I and Dean and countless others will suffer enormously because of this move, one should perhaps also give a little thought to the tens of thousands of girls who finance their way through university with these jobs.

Well, my pillow is right now covered with long dark hair, and it's not because I'm moulting.

The above report was brought to us courtesy of a young Englishman known for writing and directing strange ghost movies involving beautiful, young Thai go go dancers who turn out to be ghosts and who do baaad things to horny men. The report is such a fine roundup of what is happening in the soggy bar scene at the moment that I have decided to allow the British spellings.

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Muslims in Thailand are in the news, as the new Thai government may be able to bring about the peace in southern Thailand which completely eluded Taksin. But I hope the Thai government doesn't give away too much for the sake of compromise. The mind of those brought up under Islam is very different indeed. For example, why should the Pope apologize for telling the truth: Violence and religion don’t go together and there has been and still is too much violence in Islam. Muslims are always demanding apologies but never give any and never blame themselves for anything. And Western politically correct apologists not to mention hypocritical leftists like Noam Chomsky are more than happy to go along with Muslim bullshit. Even as they keep bombing and beheading and killing. Amazing.

Oh, yes, the press reports that under Sharia law in such places as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, etc., if a woman is raped, she needs four male witnesses to the rape or else she herself can be tried and executed. Bad enough, right? But what they are not telling us in the press is that the four male witnesses must be Muslims. Because of course we are only infidels and who could trust our testimony? Sharia law is the opposite of human rights; and even if Iraq and Afghanistan hold together, if they are in any way under sharia law when Coalition Forces pull out, then the West has fought for nothing.

Someti

mes I report on something that has nothing to do with Thailand at least on the surface but underneath, well, the case reminds me somehow of Thailand. For example, this dude in Serbia whose witch doctor told him to get it on with a hedgehog to cure his premature ejaculation. Of course, the hedgehog came out of the tryst in fine condition whereas the dude was operated on as his Mr. Johnson was “severely lacerated.” The picture at left is of a hedgehog. Even if desperate, would you want to bonk that? Hello, hello! Is anybody home?

It's coming, coming, about here: The new P.J.'s Steak and Ribs Grill on Sukhumvit, soi 31. Yes, the very same P.J. who was running Lucky Luke's and who now runs the Old Dutch Corner. Should be an interesting place because one thing for sure P.J. knows good food.

Women shoppers at Siam Paragon fight for the last copy of The Go Go Dancer who Stole My Viagra.

A Thai senator recently pressed the Prince of Songkla University to apologize to the public for allowing a racy display of the Coyote showgirls at what was billed as an agricultural fair. The article in a local newspaper speaks of "scantily-clad Coyote girls showing off lurid dance moves on stage and speaking provocatively to the crowds to draw people to their booths." And the girls spoke "rather suggestively to people." And put on a "butt-shaking dance." The senator says "It's about making an obsession with sex excusable. We need to work together to clean up social rubbish. What kind of society will our children live in if we don't act?" (The senator is a she, of course.) Isn't is strange how Thais in government worry so much about this kind of thing influencing their children but never worry about cleaning up corruption and cronyism and unsolved murders and disappearances, etc.? There is a lot of social rubbish out there, senator, and you'll find it in the remnants of the late Toxin government. As for what the Coyote girls did in Songkhla, I only wish the American July 4th Picnic organizers would take a leaf from their notebook.

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato