Chiang Mai

Thanks guys. Looks like I have plenty to choose from.

Geof

CB - hmmm... so higher prices in the hinterlands. Got used to B500 ST from beer bars

For those on a serious budget there are a bunch of short-time places for 300-500 baht a pop.

Mostly illegal Burmese immigrants and not very safe in more ways than one. Also I suspect a lot of the girls may not be working through choice.

These are located behind the dark-doors of an area called Santitam- popular with tuk-tuk drivers, policemen and other Thai mongers.

Rat Fink,

Tapae Place Hotel, Tapae Road, Soi 3.

I paid 550 bath for a very nice double room in a nice hotel (june 2004). So low season, don't know what the rate is in high season.
About 10 min. walk from the action. Girl friendly, no problems at all.

Joking.

It's funny that many Farang teaching English still can't speak English properly themselves.

Feel very sorry for their students.

Tapae Place Hotel used to be the same general rate -- 550 baht with breakfast included -- during high season, except from Christmas until just after New Year's, when they jack it up.

"Your good work will be repaid with good pussy"

LOL- thanks Joking!

It's late when I arrive at my hotel, the Suriwongse on the corner of Loi Khro and Chang Klan Roads. I've booked a suite, and it's enormous: Several generations of a large Thai peasant family would probably be comfortable in it. But the hotel has a feel of faded elegance. It needs a re-furb. Also, whilst the 'lower level' staff are friendly and efficient, junior management (cashier excepted) upwards are fucking useless and uniformly have bad attitudes (I'm swimming in the deserted pool at 6.30 one darkened evening when the bad-tempered duty manager comes strutting towards me. He's pulled back by a bellboy, who shows him the sign that says: Pool open from 10AM to 8PM). The place has a combined feel of Faulty Towers and Colditz.

Anyway, I head out to try to find some riverside beer bars that someone had told me about, but I keep getting badly lost. Jeez, it's hot and sticky tonight, like a sauna in a greenhouse. I'm wilting so I give up on my sortie, and fumble my way back to the hotel where I collapse, exhausted, on my bed.

In the morning, I decide to do a reccie for the CEC beer bar complex that I've read about in this thread (thanks, boys). I don't know why, but I just cannot get my bearings in this town. Over an hour later, I find it less than 200 yards from my front door. I must've walked past it half-a-dozen times last night. Oh well...at least I know where I'm going tonight.

I spend the rest of the day looking round town, shopping, etc, the usual tourist stuff. Later, I head over to CEC. There are about 20 bars, and all look fairly quiet, with old-ish girls. Bizarrely, there's an in-use Muay Thai ring in the middle. I spot a bar (Cannibals?) that has a few customers. I'm getting the 'welcarm' treatment from a couple of girls, and one of them gives me her best smile. She's gorgeous.

So I spend the evening in this bar in the company of Aor (23yo). She's part-Burmese, from a town on the border. She's a graduate in business studies. She doesn't want a 'proper' job because it would mean working with Thai men, and she hates them: They don't show her any respect. She went to work in Bangkok with expat farangs (she loves white farangs), but the climate was too hot and sticky for her. We play some pool when the Chinese pool table 'owner' and his barfine let us. One thing I've noticed is that the girls are drinking all the profits. Closing time comes all too soon at 12 o'clock: The new laws are rigorously enforced here. Me: "Where can I go now?" Aor: "You want come disco with us?" Me: "yeah, course, thanks.".

So 1 white farang, 7 bargirls, 1 ageing ladyboy cashier, and 1 Chinese pool table owner pile into 2 tuk tuks (how many people can you fit in a British phone box?). When we arrive at the Pornping hotel, one of the girls goes in the late store across the road and buys a bottle of 100 Pipers whisky. We take this openly, unchallenged into Bubble Disco. We're shown to a private balcony. The girls are obviously 'well in' here. I buy a stack of mixers, and the girls proceed to dance like crazy and get shitfaced drunk. One is falling around all over the place. We need more mixers, we look at Chinese pool table owner, he needs to go to the toilet. Nice man.

2AM 'lights up' time arrives, and the girls (including fall over girl) want to go to a 5AM disco called Spicy. I tell Aor I want to go home. She wants to come with me. Back at the hotel, we hit the sack fast. Aor is taller and more fleshy than the average TG, with amazing, full C cup tits that are a birthing present from her Mama. We continue with the kissing that had started in Bubbles, then onto decent owo ("But you no put water in my mouth."), then some fuck positions - those tits are awesome - and a gfe mish finish. In the morning, it's same-same last night.

After breakfast, we head out to do some sightseeing. We get a tuk tuk to the other side of town, then a songtaew (sp?) for a spectacular ride up the Doi Suthep mountain to the base of Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. We skip the cable car and take the proper option of walking the naga staircase of 309 steps. To get in the temple it's locals free, farangs a few baht. The temple buildings are beautiful, but not as authentic as they should be, due to a recent major refurb (which is ongoing). Great views of the surrounding countryside 3500 feet below.

We descend the mountain, have lunch in Chiang Mai, then get a tuk tuk!!! to the elephant farm (Aor suffers from travel sickness in cars). It barely makes it up the mountain, and I'm ribbing Aor that she's pompoey and will have to get out and walk. On the way back down, we stop off at the snake farm and watch the show. It's entertaining, and those guys have balls.

It's late when we get back to Chiang Mai, and we go off to our respective rooms to clean up and change. I want to eat somewhere nice tonight, so I take Aor to the German restaurant on Loi Khro Road near the hotel. It's a nice place, with excellent Thai food and a good range of bottled German beers. But it's a mistake. Aor is like a fish out of water. I've never seen a TG look so uncomfortable. So we eat quickly and head over to her bar. I have to pay bar tonight because we're very late. No problem, 300 baht is chump change to stupid rich farang like me.

We get to play some pool tonight because Chinese pool table owner appears to have sold up. Aor is useless, and I cannot get her to win, even with me playing cack-handed. But we have a laugh. The girls are going to Bubbles again tonight (seems to be a nightly occurence). I go with them. Tonight they take two bottles of 100 pipers in. It's Techno night again.

By the time we get back to the hotel, Aor is badly drunk, and the fucking is sloppy but she tries her best. When we wake in the morning she has a throat infection. I feel shitty about this. It's the same one I caught off Tik in Pattaya, which I thought I'd cleared. Hope she doesn't get it as bad as me - I collapsed into the wardrobe the morning I started with it. She dresses and leaves to visit her sister in the next town, but I call her back. I haven't given her any money. I hand her 3000 baht and she takes it sheepishly.

So, there i was sitting at a table outside my hotel talking to another falang and his "friend" (she spoke excellent english) and trying my Thai as well (again was VERY surprised that I knew the alphabet - what is it - they think that merely because it is DIFFICULT it is unlearnable by falang??) She offered a "lesson" (real one) but I (in my smug complacency, declined politely - krup)

Anyway - up walks this cute young thing - who starts in Thai beyond my meager capacity and I only caught a word or 2 edgewise - and she walks away. The girl says something about "she just wanted to know how much a beer was. I tink she likes you." AHHH... SHIT - so I go off down the street to catch up to her and even though she have maybe a 90 second lead on me, I didn't catch up to her (she might have been the one going into Montri, but didn't know for sure.

She sure would have had enough for a beer (which I would have GLADLY bought) and MORE IF (dummy me) would have only realized what she was saying. There are GOOD things about learning to READ, but more good things about learning to SPEAK FIRST.

Sure was LOTS cooler in Chiang Mai than Krung Thep. (smelled better, too)

So I leave Chiang Mai today, a city with a unique 'feel' to it. I make a mental note that I must return and spend more time here.

Btw, for anyone who thinks that they may be experiencing mental health issues, I noticed a brand-spanking new psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of town. Glad I don't have to worry about that shit.

My next reports will be posted in the Bangkok 2004 thread.

Congratulations on learning some Thai. It is easy to see the benefits.

There are so many expats who have been here for ten years who still can't speak any Thai. Plus a lot of folk who can speak but not read or write.

If you want to speak it well it is also essential to learn to read and write, as otherwise you'll never master the tones. I've finally mastered reading and writing, I even passed the exam for foreigners that is the equivalent of a Thai thirteen year old student's level. Cool eh! I'm as clever as a schoolboy!

What I find annoying is Farang who know a few words and shout them, with terrible pronunciation, at the top of their voices to whoever they are with anytime another Westerner is in the vicinity.

But best of all is knowing Thai and pretending not to. It is great to listen to what people are saying about you and then once they've made a suitably interesting comment or compliment, throw them a snappy comeback in Thai.

Then again, perhaps you should practise running faster as that would have also got you the cute young thing.

Keep them coming - you've got a good style.

Always found the Chiang Mai scene second best myself - you really can't beat Soddom and Gomorrah by the Sea (Pattaya) in my book, once you know the 'rules'.

Agree on the mental health issues - have a look at the Korat board. Could be mistaken for thinking that some are posting from some kind of institution with special internet priveleges (no porn!).

Nice reports, Terry. Thanks.