Late night at the Long Gun

Something let me watch the Bangkok sex shows without losing my lunch.

By Laura Cavender

Dec 21, 1999 | So I'm sitting in this Bangkok sex show, wondering why I don't want to throw up. A horrible rendition of "Born to Be Wild" plays on the stereo system in an air-conditioned bar called The Long Gun. I can't see past the paunchy, middle-aged white men encircling the center stage, but balloons hang from the ceiling of the bar, popping all around the rectangular platform. Pop pop pop poppop! Rapid-fire blow darts make quick work of the balloon bunches. Most of the sex bars I've been to in Bangkok feature a stage like this, with enough space for 10 or 12 dancing women at a time. But right now, at midnight on a Thursday at The Long Gun, there's only one woman on stage. She's on her back, shooting blow darts with her vagina.

She's a good aim. All the balloons are gone within minutes. I sit through a few more tweaked versions of American favorites -- "Happy Birthday," "Magic Carpet Ride" -- before some other women take their places on stage, also on their backs. Each one blows a whistle with her vagina. It occurs to me that their rhythmic bleats are supposed to resemble another American song. I don't recognize it this time.

There are dozens -- probably hundreds -- of pussy shows here in Thailand's notorious fleshy capital. The Soi Cowboy, Nana Plaza and Patpong areas cater to Westerners, and these shows are always a favorite. You can see a pussy smoking a cigarette or "drinking" a Coca-Cola if you want.

Lots of the sex bars lack the acrobatics found at The Long Gun. They're all selling bodies though. You just point to a number, pinned on a knee-high boot or string bikini, to do more than just watch. Everything's for sale here. You can buy a woman for the night, a man who looks like a woman -- a katoey boy -- or one of each. I even saw somebody buy a picture of Elvis off the wall behind a bar once. Or you can just buy someone a drink, sit back and enjoy the show. That's what I did.

At Nana Plaza, just off one of Bangkok's main thoroughfares, there's a sex show at 10:30 on Saturdays. I get there early enough to secure a seat close to the stage, and a heavy, red velour curtain swings open as Savage Garden croons -- in English, of course -- about love and other romantic notions. There's a glass pane separating us from the young women inside a mock shower scene. I order a Heineken -- Thai beer gives horrible hangovers -- and watch as they wash and rinse one another. I'm getting used to the insanity and chaos here, which I must admit scares me just a little. But I like watching instead of being watched. No one pays attention to me in here -- besides a sidelong snicker once in a while from some guy who could be my father -- and why should they? There's plenty to see onstage.

Before the sex show begins, a couple of women write with suds on the window "Pay Bar 500 Baht" in large, English letters. That's about $10, and it will get them out of the bar for the night -- an interested patron will then pay for a hotel room and negotiate a price with the woman separately. I watch as the pale faces contemplate (that's probably too grand a word) the young women onstage. A hotel will cost one of the men between $8 and $10, and payment for the woman's time can range anywhere from $10 to $100 or more, depending on what the couple decides.

Dancers in Bangkok make good money, especially from farangs, or white foreigners. Women can support entire families in poverty-stricken Bangkok, or in rural Thailand, where they're often from -- areas such as Udon Thani and Ubon Ratchathani in the country's poorest, northeastern Isaan area, where families live in one-room huts with dirt floors and no running water.

Prostitution is illegal in Thailand. But Thai officials have made a practice of telling themselves that if something is illegal, it doesn't exist, and they treat the sex industry the same way. Officials typically ignore brothels and sex clubs, and government bribery is common. Now and then a massage parlor gets busted, but not often.

The U.S. State Department offers American travelers a couple of benign warnings about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS in Thailand on its Web site, but there's more said about the malaria and bad water here. I'm not too worried about the State Department as I sit in Nana and watch a lesbian sex show behind the glass. It's everything I imagined it would be: mechanical, rehearsed and a bit uncomfortable-looking. I watch a woman extend an arm to help her 'partner' up off her knees and it's the most genuine gesture in the show. Do they really think we believe this stuff is real?

Next Page: Two sisters at once -- what's not to love?

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