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Lessons learned
In Bangkok, you can resist the tawdry sex shows and adolescent bar girls, but if you do, you won't sell your travel story.

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By Scott Moore

April 1, 2000 |   I was looking for something, I wasn't sure what, but I figured if I looked for it in Thailand I could at least get some freelance dough and tax write-offs out of it, something that couldn't be said for, say, my apartment in Dubuque. One thing I knew, though: I was NOT going to go to any tawdry sex shows or have sex with any 14-year-old hookers.

After I got my backpack from baggage claim at the Bangkok airport I went out to the curb and a little native fellow offered to get me a taxi. I talked to him for a moment to see which kind of little native fellow he was: A little native fellow who could give me insight into the human condition with his naive but wise statements? A little native fellow who would say and do unfathomably wacky things, giving my story a nice splash of "color"? Or a little native fellow who wanted to rip me off? I decided he was the latter and set about to get my own taxi.

April Fools' Day cover Salon's regular issue

I found an empty taxi and began haggling with the driver over his fare. He said he could take me to my hotel for 50 baht -- about $2 -- but I am a savvy traveler and will NOT be taken for a ride by some huckster out to make a buck off a tourist. I'm no tourist: I'm a travel adventurer, a seeker of life. I said 35 baht or I'd get out of the taxi. He sighed, but then he winked at me. "OK," he said, clearly impressed with my most un-American street smarts, "I guess my kids can have half portions tonight." We had a nice laugh over it.

It took four hours to go the two miles to my hotel because -- you are not going to believe this -- traffic in Bangkok is really bad. I mean, you think it's bad in your town. Well, I can tell you: In Bangkok, it's really bad. How bad is it? It's so bad that it takes four hours to go two miles, and the whole time, the taxi driver keeps saying, "I take you to sex show? Little girls. Bang bang! You like."

I passed on the sex show. I wanted to find someplace unspoiled by all those damn tourists and travel writers. I wanted to discover some idyllic little community in the back woods that had been happily surviving by itself for hundreds or even thousands of years. I wanted to give them little gifts -- a cigarette lighter, a "What Would Jesus Do" bracelet, a Spin Doctors CD -- and watch their little brown faces light up in wonderment. I wanted to accept their gifts, take them back to Dubuque, put them in my apartment and impress any chick I can talk into coming home with me at closing time at Ted's Midnighter downtown. I wanted to write about them in a national publication, then come back in five years, only to discover that their idyllic little village had been overrun by development and tourism, that the proud hunters and farmers were now reduced to hawking Chiclets on the new superhighway. Then I could write a beautiful, elegiac piece about paradise lost.

But when I got to the hotel, after a 15-minute argument with the unfathomable hotel manager over the price of the room (I talked him down from 100 baht to 90), I couldn't sleep, so I decided to, what the hell, go check out a sex show.

I went downstairs and found a tuk-tuk. The driver wanted 10 baht to take me to what he called "Best Sex Show," but I refused to get in for more than seven. He finally agreed, cursing under his breath that he'd been outmaneuvered by such a clever foreigner.

He took me to a bar called the Red Veil, and I went inside and was immediately met by a "hostess" who called me "Jim" and asked if I wanted to buy her a "drink." Not falling for that old "ploy," I found my way to a table and ordered a beer. In a few moments the show started. A lithe young woman who didn't look older than 15 danced around for a while, then inserted a penny whistle into a very private part and played "Für Elise," "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" and the Louisiana Tech fight song. She was quite a talented musician, and yet somehow I still felt vastly superior to her.

Suddenly a cute short-haired girl sat on my lap, facing me. She was wearing a white blouse and miniskirt. She was about 14. "Hi," she said. "My name Ting. You want to buy drink for me? I dance for you." At that, she opened her blouse and bared her chest. The lights were flashing. The flute player was jamming on "Miles' Blues." I looked into Ting's eyes and she looked into mine as she played with her small breasts for me. At that moment, I realized something: It was time to go home. They were waiting for me at Ted's Midnighter.

And after spending three weeks with Ting, that's where I went.

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About the writer
Scott Moore is the nom de porn of a bon vivant and raconteur.

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