Bright Lights and Wild Nights « land of smiles

As any visitor to Bangkok will inform you, it is a city where nothing is unavailable.  The first time visitor to The City Of Angels will be overwhelmed by the variety of nightlife.  Cinemas, shows, restaurants, beer bars, go-go dancing, pubs, clubs, ladyboy bars, sex shows, naked dancers, gay bars and everything else imaginable is full on, 7 days a week all year round. Girls are everywhere, and it’s impossible to tell whether they are working or approachable.  Generally they are.  The girl selling perfume in The Emporium Shopping Mall on a Friday afternoon and the girl working in a girlie bar looking for a customer for the night on a Friday night, are all too often one and the same.
The first time I came to Bangkok I had a night out with a friend and his girlfriend.  The bars in Thailand offer a bar fine service.  Basically, if you see a girl in a club or a bar and you would like to take her out for the evening or even home for the night, you ask how much the bar fine is.  This is a sum of money paid to the bar to compensate them for losing the girl for the night.  It is generally around 600THB though bars on Soi 33 for example like to think they are better and charge 1500THB and even more. Anyway, we went out to eat in a Thai restaurant and the girl asked me, “Why you not have lady tonight?”  I was somewhat taken aback by this and just said that I was perfectly happy on my own.  “which lady you want?” she asked pointing round the restaurant at all the beautiful girls eating there.  “I am fine, “I replied, somewhat embarrassed, “It’s no problem.”  “OK,“ She said, “Which lady you think most beautiful in restaurant.”  I looked around and eventually said that I thought the girl serving us was in my opinion the prettiest girl in the restaurant.  She immediately called the waitress over and said something to her. They chatted for a while, then my friend’s girlfriend introduced me to the waitress and said, “She has to work tonight, but she would like to go out with you tomorrow night.”  I was really embarrassed at this point and just smiled and said thank you.  Thai people just say it like it is.

There are thousands of beautiful gogo dancers working in Bangkok.

Of course the girls working in the go-go bars are more “hardcore” and will openly name a price, though as often as not you will hear them say, “up to you.”  When you consider that there are 2500 girls working in Nana Plaza, the same in Soi Cowboy and even more in Patpong and Silom.  Add to that number the many thousands working in the beer bars and clubs of Soi 22, Soi 33 and many many more the numbers are colossal.  On top of this there are literally thousands of massage parlours employing anything from 2 to 50 girls at a time.  It seems like the whole City is on the make.  The police estimate that there are over 400,000 women working in the entertainment industry in Bangkok. A sky train ride into town from On Nut station at 6pm in the evening is a real eye opener.  Almost every seat is occupied by an extremely beautiful young woman on her way to work.  And this is just Bangkok remember, Pattaya is much bigger, then there is Phuket and the Islands and all the provincial cities and towns.
Travel about the city alone and taxi drivers ask, “you want lady?” It’s the same with the motor bike taxis and even when walking one is constantly approached by Thai or Indian men thrusting a photo of beautiful women in your face asking if you want to go for a massage.  In the midst of all this open sex sale, Bangkok remains, a particularly safe place for women to visit.  Western women don’t get hassled and are always made to feel welcome especially by the girls.  Its a very common sight to see a group of western women bar fining a couple of girls and taking them out for the night.
Even the Hotels get in on the act.  Some of the very best hotels in town will charge a man a fee for taking a girl back to his room for the night.  Not all do it, but plenty do.  They do it on the premise of looking after the customer’s safety and will hold the girls ID card, but it’s just a scam.  How they differentiate between a working girl and a man’s real girlfriend or wife is a total mystery.  I would be pretty annoyed if I went to stay in a hotel with my Thai girlfriend and the porter tried to take her ID card and asked for money.
It seems like everywhere you turn, sex is readily available. It takes some getting used to.  Only when you live here can you genuinely get to understand the whole story.

Transsexual Flight Attendants Take Off on Thailand's P.C. Air | NewsFeed | TIME.com

Ladyboy’ Flight Attendants Begin Their Ascent with Thailand’s P.C. Air

By William Lee Adams | @willyleeadams | December 16, 2011 | 1

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REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom

Transgender flight attendants pose for photographers at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport.

At Thailand’s P.C. Air, transsexual flight attendants are taking to the skies—and boosting acceptance of the country’s “third sex” while they’re at it.
Four transsexual flight attendants completed their inaugural flight over Thailand earlier today, serving drinks and snacks en route from Bangkok to Surat Thani province. That comes ten months after the recently-launched P.C. Air announced it would consider applications it had received from more than 100 transvestites and transsexuals. Four made the cut and joined a cabin crew that also includes 19 female and seven male flight attendants.
(MORE: Thailand Elects its First Female Prime Minister)
Peter Chan, the airline’s president, told Reuters that the new recruits faced the same stringent application process as applicants who were born female. Bosses judged them on criteria that included femininity, attractiveness and proficiency with English and Mandarin. They also had to demonstrate feminine posture and vocals. He believes that transgender flight attendants will prove more versatile than the airline’s more traditional recruits. “They might provide better services because they understand both males and females. And they’re well-trained according to the aviation standard,” he said. “I’m a pioneer, and I’m sure there will be [other] organizations following my idea.” (The airline doesn’t draw its name from its politically correct approach to recruitment: P.C. refers to Chan’s initials.)
Known locally as ladyboys or katoeys, Thailand’s transsexuals enjoy greater acceptance and visibility than their counterparts anywhere else in the world. Skilled surgeons have turned Bangkok into a capital for gender reassignment, and relatively low costs make procuring a sex change more realistic than in the United States, where fees can easily run into the six figures. The Miss Tiffany pageant—Thailand’s most prestigious beauty contest for male-to-female transsexuals—is broadcast nationally every year. And millions of tourists flock to transgender musical shows, like the Simon Cabaret in Phuket.
P.C. Air’s newest trolley dollies hope their work will allow other katoeys to explore careers off the stage and away from the beauty counter. “This is the beginning of the acceptance of transsexuals in Thailand, giving the opportunity for us to work in various fields,” 22-year old Tanyarat Jirapatpakorn told Reuters. “Maybe in the future we can get any job that transsexuals never did before, such as police, soldiers or even pilots.”
For now, though, they’re content to scratch flight attendant off the list. Twenty-three-year old Dissanai Chitpraphachin, a former winner of the Miss Tiffany pageant, told the Associated Press her new gig was a dream come true. “When I was young, I couldn’t take my eyes off those nicely dressed ladies in the airline commercials every time they came on the screen,” she said before starting her new career. Now, as you can see in the commercial below, Thailand has its eyes on her.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/12/16/ladyboy-flight-attendants-begin-their-ascent-with-thailands-p-c-air/#ixzz1h5n2qfcb

Transsexual Flight Attendants Take Off on Thailand's P.C. Air | NewsFeed | TIME.com