Marble Inn - - Open Kitchen
Located in the Diamond Subdivision just down the street from Swagman's, the Marble Inn may have the best restaurant in AC. It is an open kitchen and you see the food prepared in front of you. Henrik, the Swede, and his lovely wife Belinda, the Pinay, are the proprietors and are tops. Yes, it is not in the center of the "action," but that is an advantage to some. Large aircon rooms will run around 1100 pesos. There is only one problem: now that I told you about it, it is no longer the best kept secret in AC.
I Went to Angeles and All I Got Was This Stupid Report!
Time to start writing my report and see if the guy in the next seat is snooping on me. {writes, then deletes entire section on receiving anal sex from male fur seals}. Okay, no reaction. He is apparently actually reading his book, or is so, so much more of a degenerate than I am that I feel honored to be in his Presence.
I'll break this into sections both to make it a little more manageable and so that I can try to put the useful stuff in one section and identify it as such. That way those who actually have lives can skip the rest of this garbage.
This was Phase Two of my trip. Phase One was Bangkok, where I left a trail of bodily fluids, admittedly primarily sweat, throughout the Sukhumvit strip. Phase Three will be Pattaya. I am basking in the cultural high spots of Southeast Asia. Or at least a part of me is.
On arrival in MNL there was a death March from the gate that passed three non-operating moving walkways. Nice to have that sort of consistency in a developing country. For reasons known only to the Gods of Travel I breezed through immigrations. There were actually two booths with no lines whatsoever. It wasn't a tough choice: One had an old guy. The other had the hottest immigrations chick I've ever seen. I found myself wondering what the Immigrations Service bar fine policy was. Probably better that I didn't ask. I could have had a LOT more sex than I was looking for, but not exactly of the type desired.
I'm really fed up with the Manila taxi BS so I opted to splurge for a car direct from NAIA to AC: 2800 pesos through Margarita Station. Highly recommended. Very good meeting instructions. They suggested I send a photo and the driver must have gotten it as he seemed to recognize me. Pretty amazing that he even showed up after seeing my mug.
I stayed at the Orchid Inn the crappy old one a block off of Fields. For reasons I cannot really fathom this is my usual home. I've only tried two other places. One, Valentino's, didn't have a restaurant; the other, the Apartelle Royale, was roomy as hell but a little far from the Fields action for numerous walking cycles. Besides, the Orchid rooms smell like urinal cakes and there is nothing quite like waking to the scent of a newly cleaned urinal.
You know you're in AC when the bellmen ask if you need Viagra or a girl.
I will definitely be looking for different accommodations should I return. When the hell did the Orchid become a family destination? The sound of screaming kids rounded out the wonderful urinal-themed waking. We'll get to more kid screaming issues in a bit because nothing says "Punter Forum" better than an in-depth treatise on volume and pitch issues in juveniles.
The whipped cream on the dessert that was my first morning's dawning was the pounding in my head. I know that a lot of you have this regularly and consider it collateral damage for gallantly attacking thirty bottles of San Miguel, but it is a rare experience for me as I am way too manly to drink alcohol. Hangovers, waking with dicks drawn on faces, exorbitant puke removal dry cleaning bills, and painful surgeries to set limbs broken while dancing naked on a Zamboni during the Stanley Cup finals pale in comparison to the deep and lasting damage done by gallons of Coca Cola and its peers on an average mongering night. Antacids scream in terror as I chug them by the handful.
I know AC is a party town but a contact hangover? Really? Probably not: My guess is it was the construction in a room a couple door down.
Also in evidence at the Orchid were at least a dozen South Asians (I think but detecting race or national origin is not one of my stronger suits). I only mention it because of the weirdness of how I found this out: I was delayed in the hall as they all filed into one room. WTF? That was going to be a serious sausage fest.
Ramblings on Tattoos, Children, and Cattle Prods
AC seemed delightfully uncrowded for what is supposed to be a busy time. I could walk, not creep, on Walking Street. I didn't always return to my room with homicidal thoughts about idiots there. I think some of this is because I just came from BKK and my very unscientific survey determined that far more people there were having their brains sucked out by mobile devices as they walked, so AC was a refreshing change. Mobile devices: Taking the "Mobile" out of mobility since the early 2000's. The crowding exception was when a tour bus would disgorge a few dozen guys who most likely had rice and fish for breakfast.
I visited about half a dozen bars. Generally the girl quality was pretty poor, but this is not that uncommon. Most places have the Elite bars, the Average Bars, and the God This Is Awful. You'd Better Be Able To Get Blown Under The Table bars. AC has a few of the Elites I spent a lot of time at Atlantis and was quite impressed, and a whole lot of the other two, but take-away beats a BJ under the table, so I guess that is not that bad, especially if you drink. Drink a lot.
It's a tough call but I think looks-wise the AC bars' girls have a slight edge over the BKK ones, but it isn't really a fair comparison between the countries themselves: It is more an entire country (PI) versus a region (Issan). The Pinays seem to have just a little more in the way of butts and a LOT less in the way of tattoos. If I wanted to have sex with an art object, I'd go to a port and bend over a sailor.
I've never seen a tat that improved the looks of the wearer unless it was there to distract one from the fact she had, say, an anus where an eye should be. Besides detracting from the girl's appearance there is a more insidious danger: In the sadly non-nude world of AC dancing one cannot fully examine the Girlfriend of the Night until unwrapping time comes in the room, so one has no idea what other tats she might have. It's bad enough that we already have to quiz them in the bar about procedures, e. G. , BBJ, CIM, rimming, domesticated animals, etc. , but at a minimum tat girls need the additional question, "Do you have Justin Bieber's face tattooed on a butt cheek?" Unless that is a turn on for you. I'm not being judgmental here: I'll grant that yes, slapping the ever-loving shit out of Justin Bieber's face does have a certain attraction, but not enough to compensate for the years of therapy I'd need after finding it there.
So that is a plus for the Pinays. On the down side there is the screaming. Yes, Thai girls can scream, too, like when Justin is getting slapped around. And yes, Thai bars have those f*cking ping pong balls for them to scramble after. But most multi-story Thai bars have dance floors on each floor. In Angeles the multi-story bars have just the main dance area with maybe a few satellites, but balconies overlooking the main. Balconies which, ahem, SCREAM for balls, bills, or Bieber* (* not yet, but I hope someone is working on it) to be tossed. The resultant screaming can best be described as sitting one row ahead of a family with two year old sextuplets in economy on a transpacific flight. For extra realism the parents should be poking the little bastards with cattle prods.
To carry the air travel analogy farther, I try to find a seat against the wall, much as one might seek a seat in front of a bulkhead in a plane to avoid the sextuplets' kicking. In the bar case it is to try to thwart the massage girls. There are now dedicated (not in the "hard working" connotation) massage girls roaming some bars. Not to insult the intelligence of the bar owners, but did they just do a cursory reading of the Thailand ISG forum, spot three different massage parlor threads and assume, "Punters really, really dig neck and shoulder massages"?
As you've probably guessed, I like massages about as much as I like tattoos, maybe less because one can always just close one's eyes with the latter. And the girls are persistent: At least half the time it takes two "No's", maybe even a twist to get away from them.
If this narrative sounds a little angry, blame it on Cathay Pacific. I'm now in a car heading for Pattaya after filing the appropriate paperwork at Suvarnabhumi so that maybe they can find my luggage before I head home in a week. Also, they had two menu choices in business class: Something with mushrooms and some noodles. No fungi for me, thank you! Oh, they only loaded the fungus breakfast! But I have to say that they aim to please: They hunted down an omelet from somewhere. Maybe the pilot went hungry. So did I: It was a mushroom omelet.
The Third Part, Featuring a Tiny Bit of Useful Info. Maybe
But on to more specifics. I visited LaBamba, Angelwitch and Grand Pharaoh and was far from impressed. LaBamba was a total loss while Angelwitch itself was bad, as well, but I kept waiting for the next shift to get on stage because there were some cuties roaming around. After a while I determined that they must actually work at the attached bar (maybe Roadhouse?) but I didn't want to risk more ugliness so I fled to Atlantis for a recharge. The Pharaoh had a couple doable ones (with that many girls the odds are that at least one is above average) and as a bonus featured a pushy waitress who later disappeared completely so I headed to the bar to settle to tab. The manager was not amused.
The Dollhouse was above average, but not as good as I remembered. Also, it is a multi story bar. Atlantis is, too, but they can make up for it with looks.
Insomnia may have been pretty good. I would know more if I had not been immediately seized by two girls who I think were waitresses. There were several offers of a massage. I did not tarry.
I spent a lot of time at Pony Tails. My first two visits were in search of a lovely I BF's last time, but she has moved on. Too bad, as I sort of wanted to screw her since I didn't last time.
What?
It was rather bizarre: We got some room service then discussed Corregidor for something like an hour and a half. I was not completely clear on the terms of the BF. Like the time limit, so she had to rather belatedly ask if anything else was on the menu for that afternoon. The time was short enough by then that I just blew it off. I don't think it was a scam: She was more than willing to go for the quickie. On the brighter side she did have a tattoo that I was going to have to overlook if we got intimate, so I dodged that. She was, though, one of the thong girls so I was sure I wasn't going to find any unwanted faces lurking.
But back to the recent past. Their day crew may actually be better than the night one. Numerous cuties, not really stunners, but definitely good enough. It also gets major points for dancers dancing to the William Tell Overture. True, it was a choreographed group, not just a standard song, but that still goes in to my top three in weirdness from over 1300 bars, along with the theme from the Jeffersons and Glen Miller's "In The Mood". Dishonorable Mention goes to an Oklahoma bar with a song whose chorus included, "Well she ran off with a {synonym for "black gentlemen" that rhymes with "trigger"} six foot four, named Buck. " Yes, Oklahoma: If it isn't their college fraternities' videos that are racist, it's their topless bars' playlists.
I talked with one of the girls from the choreographed group. They come in at 10 AM to practice for two hours before the club opens. I assume there is decent monetary compensation for this. They may be bar fine-able, but I'd be a little surprised since it is choreographed as a group. If they are not their income would just be LD's, tips, and a salary.
I had a fleeting hope that things would elevate above talking, though: It turned out that the next day, my last day for this trip, was her day off, so I was much distressed that I would not be seeing her again. I would have cried in my beer except the non-drinking thing. She volunteered to come in to see me. We set a time, 6 PM, but I wasn't expecting much. Sure enough, the time came and went. I figured I'd give her half an hour.
At six thirty she walked in. Good thing I didn't go with twenty five minutes. I bought her a drink which she drank very slowly. I asked if she was hungry. Yes. Hey things were looking up. When her drink was finally finished it was time to make our exit. Or really our exits. It turned out that she would get in trouble if she went to eat with me, so I wasn't going to get my chance to elevate to the next (horizontal) step. I suspect this is legit because after going to the trouble of meeting me there, why would she lie her way out of it? That begs the question, why the hell did she come in, anyway? I've never seen myself as the irresistible Casanova type.
Other bits and pieces from Pony Tails: I guess they have a kitchen, at any rate there was some guy walking around with a hot dog. Time to get back on my soapbox. NO MAN SHOULD EVER WALK AROUND A STRIP CLUB WITH A HOT DOG. I can only pray that he was bringing it to a girl for a certain demonstration. I pray this because the other, horrific possibility is that he ate it. A hot dog. In a strip club. I cannot imagine that. Yes, I guess I can, and he should go fall on his sword somewhere. The one he probably swallows along with hot dogs.
They should sell tacos.
In the other Men Behaving Badly item, as I waited for Miss Choreography the guy on the next couch, a Pinoy who had been sprawled backwards, utterly absorbed in his phone for ten minutes, decided to get more comfortable by kicking off his sandals and sitting on his feet on the sofa. I have now permanently struck Pony Tails from my list of strip clubs to break into to sniff sofa cushions. I don't want to smell a ruined fish bouquet, nor come out of it with athlete's nose. I would have complained but they tend to change the locks when I do that.
His opposites were two gentlemen who came in on my second visit there. It was very early, with perhaps a dozen customers. I was on the not-yet ruined couch and they started to sit down in front of me, then one spotted me and I heard something like, "Let's not ruin his view," and they sat instead at the next table. Common courtesy that is often just not common. I paid for their first drinks as I left.
The closest I came to BF'ing was a girl at Atlantis. I bought a LD and chatted her up one night as an evaluation for the next. Not a whole lot of charisma, but I don't f*ck charisma. She quoted 3000 for the BF. I don't know what sort of time period (did we have time to talk about freakin' Corregidor?) was included as I figured we'd get into the details the next night and told her so. So I did weird stuff like shaving and tidying the room the next day, positioning the condom and the lube in the bedside drawer, then went to collect my prize. She didn't show up for work. Weird: One comes in on her day off to see me, the other doesn't even come in on a work day, presumably to avoid me! What a waste! You only get so many shaves out of a razor! Thank goodness I'm not into the pharmaceuticals yet: I'd be dashing around with a turgid member looking for some place to plant it so that I didn't waste THAT money. I might even have dropped by Pony Tails to see if Hot Dog Man was there.
She did show up the next night, but by then I had rationalized that my being shunned was a sign that she would not be that awesome in bed (don't ask me to actually describe that logic), so the magic was gone.
