As a huge supporter of the performing arts, I have, for some years now, enjoyed a good strip club. Patpong, Bangkok is, like Amsterdam’s, one of the world’s most famous red light districts. 

Not just famous for its go-go bars and prostitutes, the world famous ping pong ball and banana show has been drawing horny male tourists for decades. But exactly how accessible or safe is it for women? And perhaps, more to the point, would women want to see it, or be seen in it? In my continuing attempt to find vice throughout Taiwan and Asia, this season I’m off to Patpong with the girlfriend in tow. And don’t think I didn’t just hear your audible sigh. 

Originally developed as a shopping and business center, it became popular with soldiers serving in the Vietnam war around 1968, when they started coming here for R and R. Patpong hit its prime during the 70s and 80s as a nightlife spot but also for its shows featuring nudity and sexual acts. Although the more explicit upstairs shows are in fact illegal, the police seem to turn a blind eye and touts walk up and down advertising the shows with a list of all the items “their” performers can, in fact, expel. And as Patpong is officially designated as an entertainment zone, it is allowed to stay open beyond the 1am curfew that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra introduced as part of his social order campaign.

Patpong itself is merely two pedestrian-only streets of bars filled with strippers and hookers, and the streets themselves are now filled with rows of stalls. It seems that Patpong has become quite touristy. Or perhaps while the husbands check out the shows, the wives buy souvenirs. That’s not how we attacked Patpong, however. After a brief tuk-tuk ride across town from our guesthouse we were in the thick of it, and both quite nervous. I’m nervous because I was about to take my girlfriend to a strip club. This was my girlfriend’s first trip to Bangkok, and she was both underwhelmed and intimidated by the dirty old capital. Perhaps coming to the red light district should not have been undertaken on our first night in town. 

Our nerves got the better of us. Walking along the streets peering into the go-go bars, we are inundated with choice. Many ground floor establishments have open doors where you can see the girls dancing on the bars, and other women stand outside coaxing us in. And then there are the dodgy flights of stairs going up to second floor establishments. We use these as excuses to not enter any.

“That one looks dodgy. I don’t wanna go in there.” 

“The doorman looks mean. Skip it.”

“This place looks expensive. Nope.”

This goes on for about forty-five minutes before I say screw it, let’s just pick one and go in. And we do just that. The place is clean enough. There is a large horse shoe shaped bar that patrons, mainly men, sit around and the girls themselves are within the bar dancing on a raised platform. They are all wearing the same thing, a company uniform of sorts. A white bikini with a lapel that has a number, which I assume is how you pick them out. The girls dance back and forth almost rhythmically and occasionally pout at us in an attempt to appear sexy. This is not exactly what we are looking for. The girls are beautiful but we were looking for raunch. We are looking for the world famous Patpong ping pong ball and banana show. And this ain’t it. This is a bar full of bored women in bikinis. I, somehow, convince my girlfriend to ask a passing manager when the ping pong show will start. The conversation went something like this.

“Excuse me. When does the ping pong show start?”

“We don’t have one.”

“Oh.”

“You wanna see that?”

“Ah, no.” 

Right. It seems, to get to the full heart of the matter we may have to traverse a set of dodgy stairs to a second floor establishment. Shit. Out the door, we quickly climb the nearest flight of rickety wooden stairs which at the top opens up to a large stage with stripper poles surrounded by chairs and benches. There is nothing sexy about Patpong. Nothing at all. I, remarkably, imagined a bunch of alluring women coming out, sexily disrobing and then tenderly placing certain items snuggly below in their well manicured calibrated vaginas and then gracefully and dexterously firing them across the room whence we would stand, applaud politely, and shout bravo wholeheartedly. I am remarkable in my stupidity. Quite clearly, calibrating a vagina and perfecting this art takes years of work. It could possibly take years and years of work. The youngest woman involved in this show seems to be in her late forties. There is nothing sexy about Patpong. There is no sexy removing of clothes. A woman, of a later vintage, wearing only a bra (thank god), dances briefly, and then removes a string of twenty or so razor blades from her snatch. The second women comes on stage with a few peeled bananas, lies on her back with her legs in the air, and places one said banana within, before shooting it out again. I am cringing just writing about this. The banana gets about one foot of height but its trajectory sees it landing squarely on the forehead of the woman, much to the amusement of the other performers standing around. There is nothing sexy about this! Finally, we get to the crescendo, the ping pong show. I say finally, because we had to sit through Mrs. Doubtfire and her razor blades two more times before we got to it as well as other performances requiring marker pens, capped soda water (you don’t want to know) and bad dance music. It’s not too dissimilar to the banana trick, only this time ping pong balls are shot out and the third one lands beside me on the chair. She beckons for me to pass it back. But there is no way in hell, I am touching that. There is NOTHING sexy about Patpong. We pay for our beer, and leave a tip of about one hundred baht which sees one performer scurrying away with the hundred over her head showing off to her friends. We stand, applaud, and get the hell out of there. Fast. I am scared the other ones that look like Dame Edna Everidge and Imelda Marcos will chase us asking where their hundreds are. There IS nothing sexy about Patpong.

I don’t know exactly what I had hoped would happen, taking my girlfriend to a red light district. Perhaps I hadn’t thought it through at all. But for sure I am rethinking my support of the performing arts. 

See you in the summer.