Soi Nana is located in the heart of what most foreign tourists would call Bangkok’s Red Light District. It has a long history.
Sukhumvit Soi 4.
This famous street is well-known as Soi Nana, but it is officially Sukhumvit Soi 4, which means that it is the fourth side-street off Sukhumvit Road. Originally, it was just an alley, a shortcut between two main roads. It is in the old Chinatown of Bangkok
Soi Nana.
It has a rich history. For example, Thailand’s first ever gin bar is located there and still open. However, Soi Nana now has scores, if not hundreds, of bars, hotels and restaurants. The variety is stunning and is the main reason for its popularity.
Chinatown.
In fact, Nana has always been able to ‘move with the times’. The gangs that fought over the streets in Chinatown in the Fifties and Sixties probably still exist, but they have learned not to frighten the tourists. If the turf wars of that period still continue, then they are invisible to the average visitor.
The Sukhumvit Soi 4 that you see now took form during the first decade of the new millennium. Despite its new image, it is the same as any well-organised nightlife area in any major city. If you are the kind of person who causes trouble when drunk, you had better stick to country pubs, where landlords are typically more forgiving of troublemakers.
Tourist Attraction.
My wife, my daughter and I have stayed in Soi Nana many times, and have never witnessed any problems, but given how drunk many of the young tourists get, I am certain that this is because of the staff rather than that it does not occur. When I visit Soi Nana, I expect to have a great time, and trouble is never on my list of expectations. So, visit the area with confidence – I’m sure that you will have a lot of fun ?
Tiger Lily of Bangkok – Prowling Avenger is a deadly assassin who hunts the streets looking for victims. She is looking for revenge on paedophiles!
Lily’s Childhood.
Lily was a happy little girl, who grew up with her loving Thai parents. They owned a small village shop near the Mekong River and were of Chinese extraction. Both parents worked hard in the shop, but her mother also grew fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers in their garden both to eat and to sell. He favourite flower was the Tiger Lily, which her parents and grandparents had used as medicine. However, only an expert could use it as such, because it was one one the most deadly plants in south-east Asia, despite being one of the most beautiful.
The thought tickled Lily’s mother, and Lily too, when she was told the story. She already had known that she had been named after it. This idyllic childhood lasted until she was eleven, when a family friend, who helped out in the shop occasionally, and whom she called ‘uncle’, started to take an unhealthy interest in her.
Revenge.
After more than a year of tricking her into massage his penis ‘because it hurt’, and unwanted groping and fondling, Lily was at the end of her tether. She had long wanted to tell her mother, and had even tried half-hearted a few times, but she could not bring herself to talk about the child abuse. It was too painful… too embarrassing. She also feared that her mother would not believe her and the consequent loss of face.
One day in the school playground, she saw a huddle of boys laughing strangely in a tight group. She struggled to get a look, and saw a boy holding a smartphone showing pornography. When the boy spotted her pretty Elfin face, he asked, “Would you like to do that, Lily?” The woman in the fil was performing fellatio, and Lily ran away as the boys laughed. It had never crossed her mind that her uncle had boasted to anyone, but maybe he had, she thought. She thought she would die of shame
As it happened, her secret had not got out, but it didn’t seem like that to Lily.
The next time that her uncle came for a massage, Lily surprised him by taking it in her mouth. He groaned with pleasure, and then in agony as she bit it off. She never saw him again. The police exiled him from the province and sold his property as compensation for Lily.
Tiger Lily of Bangkok.
Lily had to put up with the shame and embarrassment of the whole village knowing what had happened for another six or seven years, before she was able to use the compensation money to escape to Bangkok to fulfil her dream of becoming a paediatrician – a doctor for children.
However, costs were more than she could ever have predicted from the only environment that she had known, her village. She needed help, and sought it from wealthy boyfriends. Gradually, she discovered that some of them liked her especially because she was petite. She was five feet tall, weighed less than ninety pounds, but was all in proportion, and had the most beautiful pixie face.
As it dawned on her that these men could be like her old ‘uncle’, she began to despise them. Something began to twist in Lily’s brain. She started having nightmares, and plotting revenge.
Tiger Lily of Bangkok was being born.
Tiger Lily of Bangkok – Prowling Avenger.
Lily began to play on her youthful aspect, inviting men to like her because she appeared young, but sexually active. She learned advanced make-up skills and bought young styles of clothing. She could look any age from about thirteen to twenty-eight, and she began prowling the streets to test her disguises. By day, she was sweet, but rather distant, beautiful diligent, hard-working, medical student Lily, but by night she was Tiger Lily of Bangkok – Prowling Avenger!
She killed with meat-skewers, and her calling card was a Tiger Lily.
Tiger Lily became famous throughout Thailand, but feared by all men in Bangkok!
Lily killed about a dozen men that she had found guilty of paedophilia, and feared capture several times but was never caught. Eventually, the need for revenge dissipated and she left the Prowling Avenger to sleep in perpetuity, or at least until someone woke her up again…
Sidebar: The book of this story – Tiger Lily of Bangkok – and its sequel, are available in a dozen languages. There are more details on this blog.
The Bangkok Red Light District is a magnet for visitors to Thailand, similar to Amsterdam of The Netherlands. However, I lived in Thailand for eighteen years, and have visited Bangkok scores of times. My wife has family there and most visa work is carried out In the capital too. However, I’m not completely sure that there is a designated Red Light District as such in Bangkok.
Bangkok Red Light District
To put it simply, tourists often ask: ‘Where is the Bangkok Red Light District?’
The point is though that there are sex bars and non-sex bars all over the city. Then there are the hybrids – ie, those which are respectable by day, but turn into sex bars after dark. Lots of these bars have a microphone stand in a corner, so they can play Karaoke songs later on. Many of the girls who come to sing will be on stage to draw attention to themselves. However, they are not hoping that a talent scout will spot them for a career in music.
If there is such a thing as a dedicated Red Light District in the capital, then I suppose that it is around Sukhumvit Soi 4. This area is more popularly known as Soi Nana, after the first and largest hotel in the street. However, many of the most popular sex venues are around, not necessarily in, that street
Great Nightlife
I know that many tourists to Bangkok head for the famous sex bars and nightclubs in Soi Nana. Nevertheless, if you are staying in Bangkok for more than one night, check out the bars around your hotel first. You will find some pleasant surprises that are not overfull and not overpriced. Thais, other Asians and foreign residents use these places. They are more typical of Bangkok than what you probably think of as a dedicated Red Light District.
One thing to remember when looking for typical examples of Bangkok sex bars, is that it is not like what you have seen on the films of American soldiers in Saigon, Tokyo, or even Bangkok. In general, the signs are not so flashy, and the girls promoting the bar on the street will be wearing more modest clothing, although schoolgirl uniform is popular.
If the Bangkok Red Light District is on your list of sights to see, don’t worry about checking it out. You are not obliged to do anything you don’t want to, and you will probably have a lot of fun. Millions of visitors to Bangkok have tremendous fun in the popular girly bars. So, don’t allow preconceived Western ideas of morality to spoil your adventure.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
Yesterday, we received an email from the Spanish Embassy to say that my wife’s passport was ‘ready for collection’. No mention of whether she had been granted a visa or not. Last year, this caused us considerable concern for twenty-four hours until we picked it up, but this year I simply told my wife that her visa was ready, because she gets very worried about things like that.
So, at nine thirty, after the morning rush hour in Bangkok, we embarked on the two-hour taxi ride to the Spanish Embassy, which is located in a swish, modern building called Lake Rajida – the rush hour is never quite over in Bangkok.
When we got to the Spanish Embassy on the twenty-third floor, there was only a young woman and her Spanish father in front of us, but we were dealt with and on our way back to the ground floor within ten minutes.
The official’s advice was replaying in my mind.
‘Don’t forget’, he had said in a friendly manner, ‘the papers I have just returned to you are adequate to obtain a residency card in Spain. Should your wife wish to go down that route, she cannot leave Spain until after the acceptance, rejection or appeal have been finalised, or you will have to start the whole process again from here’.
That visa and those papers were the result of a year’s research and preparation; 35,000 km of travel and about £10,000
I’m sure that it could have been brought about in a far quicker and far cheaper fashion, but it is easy to make mistakes (and we made many), and advice, even official advice, is not always correct.
I have booked the nineteen hour flights from Bangkok to Malaga for Friday morning, so we will be in Andalucia before midnight.
The only fly in the ointment, is that I am now an illegal alien, and as such am obliged to leave the country as soon as possible, but my wife’s daughter’s graduation ceremony from university is in two weeks. All three of us would have dearly liked us to be there.
You can’t have everything, I suppose, but it is still very sad.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
When we were in the Spanish Embassy in Bangkok a couple of days ago, a man that I think was in charge of the visa section, said to us: “I am prepared to grant you a ninety-day visa.”
I asked when, he asked when we wanted to leave – the 23rd of January – and he replied, “I can’t see a problem with that”.
We were elated, naturally, after all the hoops we have had to jump through. So, with any luck, we will be flying out in eight days’ time, and we will arrive in Malaga on the 24th to start a new life… like we tried to do there in May, last year. There is a difference though.
Last year, my wife was full of excitement, but when her visa ran out, and she still didn’t have time to apply for residency, she became despondent, and had a nervous breakdown. She is frightened that that is going to happen again this year. She has begged me to stay here.
However, that is not possible, and she knows it. Sometimes, I think I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t want to go through all the stress and indignation of not getting residency again, and I don’t blame her. However, if we don’t try again now, my funds will be exhausted, and we will have to live 5,000 miles apart, and neither of us wants that either.
So, I am confident that she will get a visa, but beyond that the future is still far from certain.
In the meantime, we will stay in the village until Neem is called to Bangkok to collect her visa, and then we will stay with her sister, who lives a mile or two from Suvarnabhumi International Airport.
We both know that the time will fly now, and I share Neem’s anxiety about saying ‘Goodbye’ to everyone, and not forgetting anything essential, because I hope we won’t be coming back again this year.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
First of all, it has to be said that King Kaeo probably does not mean what you think it does if you don’t speak Thai. ‘King’ can mean a foreign king, but it can also mean ‘ginger’ and at least three other things depending on the tone in which it is spoken. Anyway, my sister-in-law lives in a street (soi) off King Kaeo (also spelled ‘King Gao’ and other ways) and I have been coming here for twelve years. At the bottom of the soi is a wire fence which separates it off from one of Suvarnabhumi Airport’s runways.
Surprisingly, the noise is not excessive and the houses have doubled in value since the airport opened several years ago. Needless to say, it is very convenient for the airport.
It is a quiet soi with no bars and no night life, although I did notice a gate with a new sign on it yesterday. ‘Massage’, read the hand-written sign in English. Strange, I am the only English-speaker I have ever seen here. Perhaps it’s a personal invitation 🙂
In an attempt to create some community spirit, the locals bought up an old house and knocked it down. This they concreted over to provide a thoroughfare to the next soi. They have placed tables and chairs for people to sit on, and someone has converted part of his house into a shop selling barbecued meat, beer, spirits, ice and crisps. They are doing a roaring trade in the evenings.
It is where I am sitting writing this now. Last night, I spotted a bird with its foot caught in the overhead electricity wires, so I mentioned it to one of the locals sitting there. I thought that the bird was doomed, because I have lived in a Thai farming village for twelve years and I have never seen much kindness to animals. However, one old woman fetched a five foot pole, which was ten feet short, and then they found one of the correct size. The bird was hanging upside down by one leg, but it grabbed the pole with its other one, wrenched itself free and flew away.
Well done, the locals!
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
They had said that the call to collect her passport would come ‘today or tomorrow’, but it didn’t and that has left my wife assuming the worst and being a pain in the neck, especially to me. Every time I open my mouth, I get my head bitter off, so I have come out to let her stew on her own for a while.
I really hope that the phone call comes tomorrow because today is Thursday, the current situation will only get worse, and Monday is a very long way off.
It is a stressful time for us and especially for her as we have booked flights for the 23rd (12 days time) and we have to get back home (a day), pack, sort some things out, say our Goodbyes and get back down here (another day) by the 21st. We had expected to be in Bangkok for three or four days – five maximum – but we arrived nine days ago already.
Update: we have been here a fortnight now, but got an email telling us to pick up my wife’s passport ‘anytime’. However, they did not state whether she has been granted a visa or not.
Fingers crossed!
It was too late to get there yesterday, Tuesday, so she went this morning. It took hours to get there and hours to get back, however after ten minutes in the embassy she came out smiling with a ninety-day visa. So, it’s the bus home (650km) tonight, a lift back to Bangkok on Saturday and a flight out on Monday.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop.
We had to repeat our journey to the Spanish Embassy: five hundred metres on a motorcycle taxi, which took us to the end of our lane, across the busy dual carriageway and down the busy pavement to the taxi rank, where we took a taxi five kilometres or so to the Underground Station, going right across Bangkok before taking another motorcycle taxi for two kilometres against the traffic to Lake Raceda, where the Spanish embassy is situated.
Yesterday, that journey one-way took two and a half hours on its own; today we were back home, business completed, in three hours, because we missed the rush hour.
The man who dealt with us yesterday was cool, but helpful, the one today was ice-cold and almost belligerent. When we were called up, he asked for my wife’s application, scanned the papers and pushed them back saying something like: ‘You don’t have an appointment’.
I began to explain that we had been told the previous day that we didn’t need one, but I stopped when someone behind him said something. He held out his hand and I finished my explanation.
‘That’s why I’m asking for her papers!’ he snapped.
I wanted to say something, but thought better of it. He had two more digs at me, but seemed to be treating my wife courteously, so again, I let it go. In these situations, I like to think that slapping people about when their hands are tied is probably the only form of enjoyment he gets out of life. I can’t see anyone liking the shit for his personality anyway.
We were dealt with quickly and efficiently including taking fingerprints and photographs of my wife. It was the first time she had had to do that and was nervous, so I went to stand near her.
‘Keep back,’ he barked, ‘the applicant only!’
Now, I had guessed that they didn’t need my dabs as I wasn’t applying for a visa, but again, I held my tongue, although that was becoming increasingly difficult.
We had already paid the fee of 2,360 Baht, so my wife was told that they would phone her when she could collect her passport (hopefully, but not guaranteed to be, with a visa).
The call came
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop.
As many of you may know, we are now in Spain. Well, this is the first part of the story of our trip to Spain, for which my wife needed a visa. The one required, a Schengen Visa, which means that it is valid for most of the countries in the European Union, comes in two types: one for up to ninety days and the other for more than ninety days.
I wanted the latter because I want to write a book (or two) and edit another while there, so ninety days might not be enough.
It took us two and a half hours to cross Bangkok by motorcycle, taxi and train to get there and when we did, it was only to face a disappointment.
One of the stipulations for the ninety-day plus Schengen Visa is that the applicant proves marriage to an EU citizen. So, I had gone to the British embassy website and downloaded a page that says that British Law recognizes all marriage ceremonies in foreign countries so long as they were entered into under free will. Only a British court can legally validate a foreign marriage.
I copied that and took our marriage certificate too. We were refused on the grounds that no British court had validated our marriage.
‘But that would mean a trip to the UK, and we don’t want to go there, we want to go to Spain!’ I protested.
‘It is a common problem for Brits,’ he commiserated, ‘but that line about the British courts was put in there to make it more difficult to take your friend as your legal wife’.
‘But that is a Catch 22 situation…’ I began to protest knowing that there was nothing the poor man could do about it, and that I dared not alienate him. ‘I don’t have access to the British courts in Thailand and they wouldn’t validate our marriage by post… This is ridiculous!’
‘I can allow her to go as a tourist though, if you fulfil these additional requirements. It is what we always recommend in this circumstance. You can always reapply for the visa you want once in Spain’.
I was sure that I caught an ‘am I making myself clear’ in his voice and expression. It was something that he was not allowed to say let alone spell out. I nodded and thanked him and we left very disappointed indeed.
The extra requirements are not onerous: health insurance and a copy of my bank statement, but the implications of her being there as a friend rather than my wife of twelve years are huge. She will lose rights to which she is legally entitled as my wife and she is being denied them, because the British government wants to restrict how she can enter the UK.
With a Schengen Visa as my friend, and they can limit her entitlement to stay in the UK, but with a Schengen Visa as my wife, they cannot under European Law.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
Well, we were going to be flying out of Bangkok this morning, but I misread the times on the booking print-out. In actual fact, we were there in plenty of time, but we went for a coffee with the members of the family who went to see us off. We then walked two or three hundred yards back to where they told us we had to check in. However, we had to walk the same distance back the other way once through passport control to get to very roughly where we had to be in the Departure Lounge.
Last minute dash
I checked the departures monitor and knew instantly that something was wrong. Our flight was in red – Last Call.
Gate E7 was five to six hundred yards away and I can’t run anymore. Anyway, a man with a walkie-talkie approached my wife and made a call. He had been looking for us. I heard a last call for Owen and Pranom Jones over the Tannoy.
We hurried along and the man kept talking into his portable.
Missed Flights
A hundred yards from the final desk, we were told that the flight had gone, but that we could get on the same flight the next day for an extra £200
Completely cheesed off (with myself), I jumped at the offer. The same man led us back through emigration and reversed the cancellation of my visa etc, etc. He also took us back to check-in, where two men were waiting to take us to our bags. We decided to leave them in Left Luggage and the accompanied us there.
I was very pleased with the service we received. However, now, two hours later, sitting in a bar, it seems that it all went off too pat. I suppose they have to deal with this sort of situation every day, but what is nagging at me, is the fact that that guy was on his walkie-talkie when they gave us the first ‘last call’. He was also there for the second one, so why didn’t they wait for us or why didn’t they tell us we were too late?
Good Service
After all, they had to retrieve our baggage from the plane, or would they not have loaded it until we were on board? When do stand-by seats become available? Were there already people sitting in our seats as we were hurrying towards the Departure Gate?
I had to pay a surcharge of 25% to fly out the next day, and it would not have surprised me to have to pay the full fare again, but…
It’s that security guy with the walkie-talkie that bothers me. If he worked for the airline, how come he had so much influence with the Thai Immigration Police, and if he was working for the police, how did he know so much about the airline’s seating arrangements for the next day?
Does any of this make any sense to anyone reading this? If so, please enlighten me.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
We leaving for Spain in six days time, but my wife still hasn’t received her visa. Everything is pre-booked as a prerequisite for that visa, but it hasn’t seemed to help much. Neem phoned up this morning at ten thirty, and they told her thatthey were too busy to talk to anyone. She would have to email her query.
Meanwhile, I was checking our email and a message came in time-stamped ten oh-six that she could pick up her passport any time. However, it did not say that she has a visa. So, we won’t know until tomorrow because the embassy closes at one and it takes three hours to get there across Bangkok.
Spanish Visa in Bangkok
Why couldn’t they have said, “Oh, and by the way, congratulations!” just to put an end to her anxiety? It seems so petty and cruel.
If she has the visa, it’s the first bus or train back home (650km) for us, pack, say our Goodbyes, and then the return journey to Bangkok to stay with the sister-in-law a kilometre from the airport so we can be there easily on Monday morning.
If she has a visa, otherwise we will have to cancel our hotel and flights and reapply for a visa. The agony is not over yet, but we will know one way or the other in twenty hours.
Time for a few beers to help the hours pass, I think 🙂
Spain, Here We Come!
It will be the first time that that I have chosen a location specifically to write a book in. We are heading for the area around Fuengirola in Andalucía, southern Spain. I think it is the Costa del Sol, but I mix all the Costas up. I am hoping to find a place in or around Marbella or Los Boliches, so if you know of anything, please let me know.
Idealista.com is showing almost four hundred rooms to let in the general vicinity of Malaga, so we have nothing to worry about.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
A week today, at this very moment, we should be taking off from Helsinki Airport for Malaga in southern Spain. However, as a Thai, despite having been my wife for eight years, she needs a visa. However, the Spanish Embassy in Bangkok hasn’t issued it yet.
This is not all their fault, but they did refuse my request for a family visa last week. They did so on the grounds that it was the Spanish Ambassador’s interpretation of a British ruling that all Brits married in foreign lands need to have their marriage verified by a British court.
Ambassador Rules!
However, I was not invited to have a philosophical debate with him on the issue. Quite the contrary, the staff repeatedly told me that ‘these are the ambassador’s rulings’, but not given the chance to talk with anyone but flunkies.
This is ridiculous, because they just wouldn’t have the time. Furthermore, the British Embassy website says that only British courts can verify a foreign marriage. The corollary of which is that no-one else has the right to say that they are invalid! The British Embassy website goes on to say that they recognise all foreign weddings. Except where coercion has been used or consent withheld by one of the parties, naturally.
This is clearly not the case with us, so refusing a family visa is just an act of obstruction. However, why would they be so mean?
Immigration Issues?
Perhaps, to appease Cameron. To keep the UK immigration figures down, and help him win his referendum to stay in the EU?
Does that make sense?
It does to me. My right to take my wife of long-standing to Europe without let or hindrance is being quashed to keep us in the EU.
You may be thinking that six days is plenty of time. Perhaps, it would be if I were alone. However, my wife has to get back to the village to transfer the services accounts into our tenant’s name. Then she has to take leave of her friends and family.
Not only that, but we have to get up to the village (600 km) and back down here to the airport.
We have also had to change here visa application to one of tourist, not wife, which we both resent deeply.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
I booked the Swan Inn II, Soi Nana, on Agoda from seven hundred kilometres away. I stopped the taxi two hundred yards short at Swan Inn I, and we walked the rest of the way after my error had been pointed out to us.
Our room was ready, clean and larger than I had expected, but when i asked where the balcony was that I had booked (and paid for), the owner told us that we didn’t want a balcony because they only attracted dust!
Lovely Room
The balcony had actually been a free incentive to book, and i wasn’t that bothered, but two hours later, we were offered a ‘larger room’ – presumably one with a balcony. My wife and daughter turned it down.
However, she decided to stay with us, so we ordered an extra bed. It was a surprise to see a thin mattress on the floor when we got in that night and even worse, the owner hassled us all the next day for the extra, even though we were booked in for three more nights.
Decent Western Fast Food
That first night, I had a beef burger in the restaurant on the ground floor. It was all right, but not really to be called a beef burger. The second night, I ordered another, but it was not recognizable as a beef burger. It was wafer-thin and irregularly shaped.
Last night, I tried the third option, a hamburger with cheese. I would just love to witness the reaction of a dozen drunken Americans to what I was served – a cob (bun) with a slice of processed, cheese, a slice of pressed ham and a slice of onion. All raw – not even warned up! It was easily the worst burger i have ever had anywhere in the world.
My wife and daughter joined me last night and order two traditional Thai dishes, but they were too awful to eat, and my wife is pretty easy-going.
When we got in, the room had not been cleaned, although the towels had been changed and there were three small bottles of water outside the door.
Disaster!
I went down for a beer at three today. At four a waitress took my empty bottle away and i said ‘Yes, please’. An hour later, I was still waiting, so i spoke up. “The beer is finished”, said the girl. The charge to drink a large Chang in the hotel is 140 Baht; the 7/11, ten metres away, sells them chilled for fifty each, so why wouldn’t they just go and buy me two until the dray arrived?
Your guess is as good as mine, but my gut feeling is that they just don’t give a rat’s.
I might stay there again, if desperate, but the two ladies never would. In fact, we are moving to our daughter’s small flat tomorrow to sleep on the floor. I’m looking forward to it.
Please LIKE and SHARE this post using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
The Nana area of Bangkok is widely regarded as the centre of Bangkok’s Red Light District by millions of tourists from all over the world, although the police refuses to admit that such a thing exists anywhere in Thailand because it is against the law.
The thousands, nay, tens of thousands of young women (mostly) and (some) men in Bangkok, Pattaya and all the other tourist resorts are only working bars, according to the authorities.
Anyway, that aside, Nana is teeming with girls working the bars.
Soi Nana
That is great, that’s why people come here, because if you don’t want that, there are other districts where, let’s say, the nightlife is far less obtrusive. Khao San Road is great for shopping for goods, Soi Nana is far less so.
Khan San Road is very competitive, but Nana seems well-organized. From one end of the street to the other, no matter what is on sale, the prices seem pretty homogeneous.
80-90 Baht for a small beer Chang during Happy Hour, 100-120 afterwards.
The same goes for the food, although I hope that the quality is better than in our hotel. My wife says that she hasn’t found a decent Thai restaurant yet, but she is a very good cook and quite critical, although she wouldn’t dream of voicing her complaints to the management, which is typically Thai.
Bangkok’s Red Light District
You may think that the beer prices are cheap enough for one of the busiest places in the nation’s capital, but twelve years ago, when I first came here, the difference between UK and Thai prices was so vast, that I could never imagine them ever being remotely similar, but guess what? They are now.
Not hotel, travel and Thai food prices, but all the things that Westerners want, has shot up to all but parity.
This reduces Thailand’s attraction for many, but certainly not for all. If your reason for taking a holiday here is to enjoy the stunning scenery, taste Thai food as it should be and meet some amazing people, it is still a great place to come.
Nightlife, and its seamier side, is probably cheaper elsewhere now though, especially with the strong Baht.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
It is not only in, but Soi Nana is what most people call Bangkok’s Red Light District. However, not only sex tourists want to stay here. Thrill-seekers love it and so do those looking for visas, because many of the Embassies are within walking distance of it, including the British, American, Spanish and Swiss Embassies.
My wife and I have stayed here four times, three for visas and once for pleasure.
Swan Inn II
However, this is our first visit to the small Swan Inn II further down the street (soi), about fifteen minutes from the action. That may not sound far, but most visitors like to have it going on all around them.
This is the hottest year since 1958, and it will remain like this with temperatures around 45-50c – until the monsoon comes, which is traditionally in mid-May, although with the climate changes, it has been a month late. That would never have happened until the last decade. Thai weather has been predictable for centuries and more.
The natural heat, combined with the traffic fumes and omnipresent dust, half of which one presumes is powered dog crap, is becoming normal. Luckily, irascibility and road rage barely exist over here, except among the foreigners. Thais look on aloof, accustomed to bearing everything that comes their way, seeing it as part of their Karma. And that, as all Buddhists know, just has to be taken in one’s stride.
Karma
And Thais are good at doing that, if they are left to just get on with their lives.
Interrupt them in that occupation at your peril though, because there is a lot of pent-up rage born of frustration waiting to get out of most (poor) Thais. If you don’t believe me, look at the video of how they treated those Brits in Hua Hin, although from what I saw the Brits started it.
Please LIKE and SHARE this post using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
It is somewhere between six and seven hundred kilometres from our village in the north of Thailand to Bangkok. One authoritative German once assured me that it is precisely 644 km to the sign that says the equivalent of ‘Bangkok welcomes careful drivers’.
Be that as it may, it took us six hours at 120kph where possible to get there in six hours including a few stops for refuelling, the toilets and dropping off passengers.
Getting to Soi Nana by Bus
The minibus was comfortable enough, but what annoyed me, besides the crappy music, was the fact that the driver spent at least three hours on the phone. One hand on the wheel and one hand holding his mobile. On three occasions, presumably when he was talking to his boss, he had an exercise book pinned to the wheel and he was reading from that.
However, on two other occasions, he had the phone in one hand and was scratching his head with the other. ‘He must be steadying the wheel with his knee, I thought’, and stood up to look. But, no, his knees were under the dashboard and the wheel was nine inches above his crotch.
So we were rudderless at 120kph on a busy motorway!
Anyway, we survived that, and arrived at the huge bus station pronounced somewhere between Munch It and Moon Shit, except that at this precise moment, it only exists as a memory, because it is being rebuilt. The site, the size of a football field is just dust and rubble.
By Taxi
We looked for a taxi, but he would only take us to the nearest taxi rank – a hundred yards or so away. The first twenty-odd taxi drivers refused to take us because it was ‘too far’, but the next one did.
He was on the phone when he stopped, didn’t get out to help us with our luggage and had not finished his conversation twenty minutes later when we arrived at our hotel. It was bad enough, but at least he had a hands-free set.
However, neither I, my wife nor our daughter had sat in a car before with a man seeming to talk to himself, we are still used to the incessant rabbiting of the driver to us.
Has it got like that where you live yet?
Please LIKE and SHARE this post using the buttons below and visit our bookshop
I have been living in Thailand for eleven years, and learning the Thai language organically from day one with the help of a ‘Teach Yourself’ book and a wife. However, I am still not there yet, which makes Thai the hardest to learn of the eight languages I have studied. German and French took four years or so, Welsh six, Latin also six, Russian four, yet all to a higher standard than I now speak Thai after eleven years. It is just so different, and one of those differences is that it is such a succinct language.
I don’t know how much you know about speaking foreign languages, so please forgive me, if I am teaching you how to suck eggs, but amateur linguists, unlike the experts from places like the Hungarian translation company, tend to translate words , whereas they should be translating ideas. This is also true of newcomers to a language, ie before they learn how the natives think.
I am still at that stage in speaking Thai, so my Thai sounds odd to Thais. Yes, my accent is not good, and that doesn’t help, but it is not a huge problem with people who know me. The problem is a tendency towards flowery language – verbosity.
For example, we might say, ‘The wife’s mother is not well’ (six words), but in Thai that is ‘Wife’s mother not well’. ‘I have to be going now’, becomes ‘Drong bai’. It is such a succinct language.
‘It smells good’ – ‘Hom’.
‘It smells bad’ – ‘Min’.
People compliment me on my Thai every week, that is a sign of their nature rather than my ability, but I did receive a real compliment the other day and all she said was, ‘Good. Speaks short like Thais’.
High praise indeed.
Does that mean that speech loses something; that flowery prose is not possible; that Thais are not creative in their everyday conversations?
I don’t think so, just that they don’t expect to spell everything out to their interlocutors. They expect them to be paying attention. If you are talking about your own mother, why keep repeating the word ‘my’?
In a succinct language like Thai, for a flowery-speaking foreigner like me, this is a hard thing to get used to, and accounts for why foreigners have difficulty understanding Thais.
Please LIKE and SHARE this article using the buttons below. Thanks.
The weather reminds me of the stories of the doldrums on the Equator… Another forty-sixer today, but forty-seven yesterday! I forgot to report our plight. As we approach the Summer Equinox, though, we have gained an hour or daylight over not so long ago with another thirty minutes to come by June 21st.
∞
‘Asian Shorts‘ received a welcome shot in the arm yesterday from an author I admire, so it is now standing at 38% full. I think that at this rate, it will be the end of May before the book is published, but I am happy with that, even if it is slower than I had hoped for.
I often find that my understanding of the word ‘quickly’ is at odds with the definition of others. Especially living in Thailand. ‘Manyana’ may be a Spanish word, but the Thais have taken it to a different level.
∞
My wife’s, our, son and daughter ascended on us, came up from Bangkok yesterday, which was a nice surprise. For me anyway, because my wife was probably expecting them, but ‘forgot’ to inform me. I still find it comical how I am always the last to know about anything, even after all this time.
If you haven’t read any of my series called ‘Behind The Smile’, you probably won’t know what I’m talking about, but there are Amazon links on this page, if you want to find out. Click the red book, ‘Daddy’s Hobby’, to start at the beginning.
∞
I have been trying to sort out a ‘partial drawdown’ of my pension with Friends Provident for the last two weeks and they keep fobbing me off with ‘an agent will be in touch by email’. Well, Friends Provident, or whatever you call yourselves now, not yet they bloody haven’t and I’m getting fed up with your lies.
I hope you see this, and I hope even more that you care enough about your reputation to ‘get in touch with me soon’, you tossers.
You took my premiums, and took your commission for thirty-three years, but now you are showing your true colours.
