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Bygone Era Of Bars Gone By


Flashermac

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Not happy with the recent articles about Soi 22 becoming a 'hipster hangout' - as soon as they start talking 'fusion cuisine', tapas bars and art galleries, I might as well fly to bloody Noosa.

 

No shortage of rumors re the future of the Nana Hotel over the years, but I really hope that end of Soi 4 remains much the same as it is today. If the nightlife on lower Suk is attracting 'normal' tourists - and I need to confirm that for myself - changing it just doesnt make sense. Sure, I've seen families and couples scurrying down Soi 4 en-route to their hotel, but I cant say they seemed particularly taken with the zoo around them :D

 

(Less enthused about reports of burkha-wearing Arabs - presumably women - on Walking St in Patts. Must have been one hell of a recommendation to get them on a bus to Sin City !)

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Twas in and around NEP last week and though the bones of the place are still there, the varnish on the surface is all too recent, too plastic, too fake.

 

Bullshit kids with no idea of how to play the game annoying weary girls who were less pretty than their Facebook clued up sisters. Even a one eyed MILF was asking 4k and though she was mighty fine, stacking $150 for a shag when drinks and BF are included is a high gamble, or so I thought. Good company but no sale.

 

As to the Square, I only had time from the 1990s, by which time it was decades into its life. I always felt it could have sucked me in if I'd ever had time or to be truthful, ever given it time to do so. The truth is that I was simply having too much fun elsewhere when in the City of Angels. Thus it wasn't really a part of my history which left but a lost opportunity.

 

Like a short lived relationship, Clinton Plaza was a drug of choice during its life. From the bar at the front with Bt1 coins with which to pay Bt2 or Bt3 for a piss down the crapper at the back, it got under my skin from day one. Small enough to become a (very minor) face it helped push me into larger Bangkok, or to be more precise, into NEP and then into Cowboy.

 

I never really got to grips with Patpong and still I hold off realising those ambitions, perhaps needing to keep just one savoury delight to explore.

 

In general, I miss how it was. I also miss the time before time, my time that is, as I think I'd have loved it even more.

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I haven't even set foot in NEP in ages. It just doesn't even look inviting. I stay outside on the soi ... at Bar4 or Hillary. I'll go to a few places on Cowboy, but Nana is nothing like it used to be. Also, I first set foot in a Bangkok gogo bar in April 1973. Nothing is anything like it was back then ... including me! :(

 

p.s. A few weeks ago, I was talking to a guy who has been here since 1959. Talk about changes ... :p

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Christ - I was born in 1959, and there are mornings when I feel more like 85 than ~55 ....

 

Interesting to read what a nightmare it was to get from Victory Monument to lower Suk before the Skytrain, but his memories would go back a lot further than that - I'm picturing a city a lot more like Vientiane or Pnomh Penh, and that's an interesting timeline : the French would have been eyeing off Thailand as a potential addition to their fiefdom in SE Asia, British still wandering around Burma (it was Burma then..) and Malaya. I'm constantly learning new things about SE Asia - we all know about the Straits Chinese, but until last week I had no idea that Penang was once home to a large community of Dutch transplants - saw a photo of their descendants but the Chinese genes seem to have erased whatever European roots they once had, at least from that photo. I've always loved the abandoned mansions on Penang and in Ipoh - will try to post some photos next year.

 

Flasher, I would imagine that anyone who has been in Thailand for that length of time must have gone native by now ?

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Not really ... unless you count a Thai wife, children and grandkids. :)

 

He was sent here to JUSMAG and saw so many opportunities that he resigned his commission and went into business. Made his money importing almost everything, including heavy equipment. He said Bangkok back then had a population of about 2 million but very few cars ... not a single traffic light. You could drive anywhere in no time. His office was on Patpong ... before the bars started appearing and finally drove the businesses out of there. He was friends with Georges Orjibet, who came here at the war's end in 1945 and stayed. Georges told me Thai drivers were so polite in the 40's and '50s. They would stop and wave for the other drivers to go first. What the hell happened? :p

 

I enjoyed talking to an "old timer" again. They are so rare these days. When I came here in the '70s, I used to talk to folks who remembered WWII and the Japanese occupation. One friend upcountry used to tell me about going to study in the USA in 1919 and his life as a boy in Sukhothai, when a trip to nearby Phitsanulok took 2 days by elephant. His wife was killed in an Allied bombing raid in WWII, and he said it was too much trouble to get another one. He was chief engineer of the Royal Thai Railway. :)

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Cmon Flasher - we didnt all get a free plane ride to SE Asia like you did ! ;)

 

 

Only lottery I ever won ... all expenses paid trip to SE Asia with possible return. I couldn't believe how lucky I was. :)

 

p.s. RVN from the beginning on February 1969, when the plane landed at Bien Hoa. I didn't make it to Bangkok until the beginning of March '73. I was still in the inactive reserve, so I did my best to avoid MPs just in case. As far as the BGs and taxi drivers were concerned, I was just another GI. I often had problems getting taxis to drive me back to my hotel, since they were determined to take me to some R&R nightclub that gave them a kickback. Bangkok was about 3 million then, and we thought it was too big!

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