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Sanuk scene in Khon Kean


Sweet mouth

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Hi all,

I may go to Khon Kaen to meet a someone I met on a chat board somewhere.

Just in case things don't turn out as expected, what's the sanuk scene in this area. Don't think I ever saw this city mentionned anywhere on this bord or the previous one.

Thanks,

PB

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I was in KK last week and and happy to report that it has a fair availability of persons of the female persuasion. There is a Entertainment area called the Night plaza, full of bars and even the occasional Gogo, lots of tarty looking little cuntry girls hanging about and then there is the Disco's etc under the Chareon Sri hotel (Royal Princess) good hotel BTW, 890 Baht incl Breakfast. There are other Disco's in which many freelancers frequent. I didn't go because I'm a decrepit and senile old fart, but I have been told this is so. Around by the lake there are some KTV places with pussy available, I hate KTV so can' give you first hand. But anyway if you dip out with yr intended (as I did) There are plenty of alternatives to shaking yr Johnson.

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(in Lurch voice)

Youuuu raaaang....

I wouldn't say that the sanuk scene in Khon Kaen is too impressive. The massage parlors were average at best (the Kosa Rama massage parlor mentioned below was probably the best bet), I heard that the go-go bar was crap so I didn't go, and the discos we went to didn't have any freelancers (though the hotel discos might have some).

The disco scene, however, was a blast... Here's my trip report:

* * * * *

I've just come back from Khon Kaen and thought some of you might be interested to hear about the town and what goes on there.

The road to Khon Kaen is fairly well marked but, like most Thai roads, certainly cannot be called safe. We saw a number of wrecked cars and trucks on the way up and come back at night we encountered a number of unmarked lane changes, crazy truck drivers, and even one fairly large fire in the median that was sending up large plumes of smoke.

Altogether, it took us about 4 hours of driving (plus another 45 minutes of stops) to reach the city. We were staying in the Sofitel which turned out to be an extremely nice hotel. The rooms are very large, modern, and extremely clean. There are several restaurants (I highly recommend the 183 baht lunch-buffet), a decent pool, a karaoke lounge, brewhouse and disco called "Wow!".

The first thing we noticed as we parked my friend's truck was the furnace-like heat. All weekend it was 100 degrees, with an enormous drop down to about 90 degrees in the evening. Walking around in the evening was difficult enough but with the sun during the day it was just unbearable.

After we checked into our rooms we decided to wander around the area to see what we could find. We hadn't found much information on the Internet about Khon Kaen, and our guidebooks had little more than a page or two on the city without much detail. So, for the most part, we were on our own.

The Sofitel is located in an area that has several large hotels, a shopping mall, and several discos. Each hotel, in fact, had a disco and a couple of them even had massage parlours on-site. Talk about a one-stop shop, eh?

We headed to the nearby shopping mall, I believe it's called Ocean, which didn't seem to have much in the way of eating facilities but had a lot of the standard stores one would expect to see in Bangkok. We cut through the mall, heading out the north exit and wound up eating at a restaurant called Parrot which didn't have any on the menu but did have air conditioning, so we were satisfied.

On the way back to the Sofitel we stopped by the Kosa Rama hotel to check out the massage parlor. The entrance is located just to the left of the main lobby entrance on the outside. The inside, shabby by Bangkok standards, consisted of a small restaurant area, small sideline girl area (1500 baht), and a fishbowl split between 1200 baht and 900 baht girls. There were a few decent looking girls in the sideline section and one or two in the 1200 side of the fishbowl. The rest, especially in the 900 baht section, looked tired and haggard.

From the Kosa Rama we ventured over to the nearby Charoen Thani to see what its massage parlor, called Lisa, had to offer. It took us ages to find the place as it is located in the parking lot behind the hotel. We wandered into the parlor and found it to have a similar setup to the Kosa massage parlor with even less appealing girls.

Back to the Sofitel for a shower and a change of clothes. Khon Kaen's nightlife really doesn't get going until after 11pm, though one should head out to a chosen disco by 10:30pm to get a good table (ideally not too far from the action but also near the door so you can watch the traffic going in and out).

Sofitel's disco, Wow!, is generally considered to be one of the best in Khon Kaen. On Friday we headed down there too early and, as we were one of the only customers, headed right back outside. Wow! is part of the 'Underground' complex at the Sofitel and, as such, it would be fairly easy to take back a new friend from the disco to one's room without having to do a lengthy walk of shame. My friends and I agreed that Wow! looked the part and that we'd check it out the next time we go back.

Next stop was T-Rex, a large open-plan disco located next to the Sofitel down a side alley. Two hello girls immediately roped us into the building where we again found that there were no customers. Apparently 10pm was far too early to be out on the town! One of the hello girls was very cute so I decided to try and chat her up. A third friend of ours showed up and was anxious to get moving. I told my hello girl that we'd be back later (though we never did make it back) and we got our check.

Next stop was a disco that became our favorite, Zheed, located in between Kosa and the Sofitel. The setup inside the disco was very similar to RCA discos, with no dance floor and many small tables. The standard operating procedure there is to arrive with your friends, order a bottle of something with mixers, get drunk and mix with the people around you. Thus having a table in a good location becomes very important.

Being the only farang in the disco we certainly got more than our fair share of attention. As the night grew longer, the various events of the evening begin to blur a bit. One friend of mine was interested in a girl at the next table so I brokered some conversation between the two of them that eventually wound up with phone number exchanges.

A little while later my friend spotted some very attractive girls walking in so, feeling bold, I started shouting sweet-talk at the first girl. Her friend shoved the first girl into me and we chatted for a few minutes. The music at Zheed was deafening and I couldn't hear a word that she was saying. I shouted something to her and she shouted something back and they moved on to sit down.

Our bartender, who had been desperately trying to set us up with girls all evening (no doubt to improve his tip), loved this encounter and immediately wanted to know if he could be of any help. I told him to give the girl my business card and try to get her number. Sure enough, he comes back a few minutes later with the girl's name and number. I send off an SMS message to say hello to the girl and continue drinking/dancing. A little while later the bartender comes back, frantically shouting something. He yells that the girl whose phone number I have wants me to go and chat with her.

I ask where the girl is and he points to a location. Try as I might, however, I simply cannot spot my girl. He continues pointing and says, "Over there... the girl in the white shirt". White shirt??? But the girl I spoke to was wearing a red shirt!

It turned out, of course, that the bartender made a mistake and got some random girl's phone number instead of the one I had been talking to. Only in Thailand!!! At any rate, my girl comes down a bit later with her friend and shouts to me that the disco will be closing soon (at 1am) and that we can go to a place called The Night Garden (http://www.hitech-music.com/night_kkn.html) which closes at 6am.

We stagger from Zheed to Night Garden and set up shop there. Night Garden is part of the 'Times Square Hi-Tech' complex and somehow manages to stay open until very very late despite the early closing of other area bars.

There is also a disco attached to the Night Garden that closes at 2am. Inside is probably the world's largest disco ball- no kidding! The thing is just enormous, so big that we wondered if it wasn't in fact cut in half with only the bottom being visible to everyone.

Anyway, the outside beergarden-type area was filled with many tables of guys, guys and girls, and a few tables of just girls. We, of course, were the only farang and got the usual stares because of this. Our energy began to wane at about 4am so we decided to head out of there and go back to the hotel. I had been trying to lean on my girl to stay with me but she wouldn't have anything to do with it- I had to understand that it's not proper for her to do such a thing, and so forth...

The girls decided that they'd send us back to our hotel rooms so they came up with us. My friend and I led the parade of four girls back through the lobby to the elevators. No one seemed to care that we were obviously bringing these girls in. One very drunk girl decided to raid my mini-bar, ridding it of Kit-Kats, Toblerone, swiss chocolate and nuts. That serves me right for trying to lure them back with promises of food!

Unusually enough, the Sofitel has strawberry Durex condoms as part of its mini-bar outlay. The drunk girl picked up the box thinking that it was some sort of strawberry candy and dropped it in shock after reading the label!!! Quite amusing. =)

The girls wound up chatting to me (my friend had passed out on the room's couch) for a while and they all left together, with my girl lingering for a bit to give me a sniff kiss. I woke up my friend to boot him back to his room and crashed out on the bed.

The next day we awoke at the crack of noon so we could experience the brunch served in the restaurant on the first floor. The price, at 183 baht, was very cheap considering the quality of the food and service. In fact, we noticed that all weekend things seemed to be cheaper than we had expected them to be. The first night at the disco, for example, we polished off a bottle of whiskey, went through a large amount of mixers, popcorn, and ice, bought drinks for the girl I had spoken to and her friends, as well as for the girl's friends whose number my friend got. The total for all of this was only 950 baht! There were six of us drinking beer at the night garden for a few hours and that bill was only 450 baht. I probably spent less money in Khon Kaen than I would have spent for a weekend in Pattaya, despite the hotel being much more luxurious.

We had arranged to meet the previous night's girls to take us to see some interesting things in Khon Kaen during the day. If we otherwise hadn't found some tour guides, in fact, we probably would have just resigned ourselves to staying inside during the day because of the heat. The three girls (one friend didn't come), looking very very good in their day outfits, arrived only an hour late and we all piled into my friend's truck.

Having no idea where we were going (except that it was to 'see nature'), we headed out quite far into the countryside. Eventually we reached our destination- a large dam and lake. The entrance had a guardpost similar to what is seen at national parks, so we anticipated being hit with the 200 baht farang-ripoff scam, but were instead amazed to find out that there wasn't an admission fee!

The dam was fairly unspectacular. We climbed over some rocks near the water (the girls in their obligatory platform shoes) but the heat drove us all back into the air-conditioned refuge of my friend's truck. We next headed to a more impressive Wat on the top of a hill near the dam. On top of the Wat was an enormous Buddha statue, though I've not been able to find it in any of my guidebooks. The name of the place, according to one of the girls, was Wat Pra Boat. We received a monk's blessing, snapped some photos, and wandered around a bit before heading back to the air conditioning.

Back to Khon Kaen into the evening and we headed to a lake where a large group of locals is doing a form of aerobics. How they could keep it up with the temperature that hot was beyond me. We dropped the girls off back at their apartment and headed back to the hotel to nap and shower.

I awoke at 10pm feeling much more tired than when I had gone to sleep. We ventured back to Zheed where I spent the next hour or so trying to wake up while drinking our first bottle of whiskey. The girls showed up shortly thereafter, though one of my friends by this time had taken a liking to a girl dancing at a nearby table.

Another blurred evening at Zheed and the Night Garden, minus my one friend who had ventured off with the other group of girls. Vast amounts of alcohol were consumed and we headed back to the hotel again, this time to raid my friend's mini-bar as mine hadn't been restocked yet. The parade up to the rooms was much noisier than the previous night, with one girl shouting in some strange language that none of us (probably herself included) understood. Even so, again we didn't have any problems bringing people in.

600 baht's worth of Kit-Kats and Toblerone later, the drunken girl passes out on my friend's floor. A second girl decides to stay with the drunken girl and my friend while my girl and I retreated back to my room to 'talk'.

Thanks to late-checkout, we assembled the troops at just before 2pm and I went downstairs with the girls to send them off. The girls still had their (now rather rumpled) party outfits on so they got quite a bit of attention on their way out. We paid our bill, jumped into my friend's truck, and headed back to Bangkok.

Overall, I'd say that Khon Kaen certainly has a very active nightlife for the size of the town. Being able to stay at the Sofitel and enjoying the nightlife is truly amazing- it's as if someone built a fantastic guest-friendly luxury hotel right next to RCA.

Just like RCA, however, one is going to have to rely on his social skills if one wants to meet any girls, let alone wind up in the sack with them. The stereotypical lumbering sex tourist is no doubt going to be given a wide berth in any of those locations. We did see one older farang at Zheed on the second night, lumbering around in a drunken stupor. He wandered over to us for a while and tried to chat to a girl in our group. We all just spoke Thai and tried our best not to encourage him to stay. Probably not the nicest thing to do but he was not really invited to join us and having the same colored skin as us shouldn't really be his meal ticket.

The girls we met are all Khon Kaen University students, studying in the Accounting department. They were generally very nice and didn't ask for much, though my girl did make wistful comments to highlight that she, in fact, doesn't have a mobile phone and would just love one similar to the one her friend has *hint hint*.

My friend who seperated from us wound up not getting anywhere with his girl, even though he tried to imitate our success getting girls back to the room. Today he met up with her (and her friend, as she wouldn't go out with my friend alone) and did a bit of shopping at Lotus. That girl also wistfully mentioned that she doesn't have a mobile phone but that it would be so nice and convenient if she did. Must be the new must-have item up there.

So, altogether, a very fun trip where we ate great food, went to fun discos, met great girls, and even saw a little bit of the local area while we were at it. Would I go back? I think I will eventually go back, if nothing more than to get out of Bangkok on the weekend. The scene is very different than the farang-oriented places in Bangkok, however, and other visitors to the area may be disappointed. If you don't like RCA or, for example, Gigis in Chiang Mai, then you probably won't like the discos in Khon Kaen. The massage parlors were, in my opinion, nothing interesting at all.

I do recommend the Sofitel if you're traveling to Khon Kaen on business. You can get very good discounts if you use a corporate discount, especially now during the low sweaty season.

Hope you enjoyed my report. =)

Cheers!

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To FatBastard,

You were right about the report by Crash. I even remember rearing from the old board, but at the time I had no interest in Kohn Kaen so I didn't notice. Thanks

To Crash,

Good and interesting report; just too bad it didn't work with the girls. One question though: How much was the Solfitel ? The way you talk about it, seem pretty expensive. Seems well situated for nightlife.

Still looking for more nitty-gritty details on the nightlife in Khon Kaen

Thanks all

PB

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Sweet Mouth,

The Sofitel was 1500 baht/night but we were on a corporate account (thanks to a friend of a friend). You could always call ahead and inquire about obtaining corporate rates for your own company.

Aside from the massage parlors in the hotels (which, if you've been to the ones in Bangkok, won't impress you) and the allegedly crap go-go, there's not much else in the way of sanuk. There are supposed to be some Thai brothels but I wouldn't go near those places if you paid me to.

As such, Khon Kaen isn't really worth heading to specifically for sanuk, in my opinion.

Cheers!

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Crash, How long since you were in KK ? I didn't think it was too bad, for a change of scene and its not that far away from BKK (4 hours if you go with me) There must be a lot of KK girls working the internet as I spent some time in one of the cafe's where there where about 6 of them on ICQ.

BTW, had a look at the Sofitel and although its good and think that the Charoen well beats it value for money. Never did find a really good Thai restaurant in KK tho', tried some in town, some by the lake and none compared with their price equivilent in Bangkok. Great Cops tho, ran a red light and pulled over but all the cop wanted was to know where I was from and practice his English a little.

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