My Pattaya Darling, Tell Me True

In the timeless war between the sexes, a conflagration with an epicentre that could well be contained right in Pattaya, there is no doubt both males and females operate under differing rules of engagement. Truth is the first casualty of bars.

“You have my wife?” asks Miss Buriram.

“No”, lies Mr. Burgeoning Beer Belly, with a straight face. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No”, lies Miss Buriram, with an equally straight face. “I not marry, I not have baby. No one like me, I not beautiful.”

Such are the conversations taking place a thousand times a day in hundreds of bars across Fun Town.

The stretched truths spouting forth from the mouths of babes (dressed in low-cut tops and tight-fitting jeans) are mirrored by the amount of guano emanating from the jowls of bar hoppers (dressed in clammy shirts, ill-fitting trousers, and black or white socks and sandals).

If it were possible to harness the amount of energy expended in maintaining the mountain of lies making up just one enchanted evening in the environs of Pattaya, it is just possible nuclear power could be made redundant.

After all, it is the aim of every girl sitting behind, or in front of, a beer bar or hugging a chrome pole in a go-go, to ascertain the credentials (read: monetary potential) of all those with whom she comes into contact. If a man asks, “Do you have a boyfriend?” and she lies and says no, the truth may be she has several paramours, not just one. Therefore, she is not actually telling a lie when she demurs, just stretching the truth somewhat.

Equally, when a man denies having a girlfriend it is because he may well have a wife, and few people who’ve sauntered down the marital aisle would ever think of classifying their nearest and dearest as a ‘girlfriend’. If he doesn’t have a wife, then he probably has a number of ‘girlfriends’. Bend and stretch.

Of course, all this liberality with the truth is something your garden variety bar girl has learned from close observation of the average politician. For example, back in 1999 the-then (female) minister of tourism came to Pattaya, conducted an investigation and upon her return to Bangkok stated she had found no evidence of prostitution in the city.

Part of her research involved going into one go-go bar and asking two pertinent and searching questions. The first was, “Are any of you girls under the age of 18?” They all answered in the negative. Then she cut to the chase by asking, “Do any of you girls make love with men in exchange for money?” Again, being law-abiding model citizens they all answered in the negative, no doubt affronted by such a preposterous suggestion. The tourism minister, knowing a golden orb of truth resides in the heart of every female dancing maiden, was happy with the verbal somersaults of answers she received and returned with heart a-gladdened to the smog-filled streets of Bangkok.

The reality is it can sometimes get worse, rather than better, when members of the opposite sex decide to live together. Not only are they from differing cultures but more than likely from different generations and so their social mores reside at opposite ends of a very cloudy spectrum.

One man, who had ‘saved’ a go-go dancer from the drudgery of caressing chrome poles, discovered his sweetheart had been somewhat liberal with the truth.

“But you lied to me,” he exclaimed, all injured pride and pouting lips.

“That’s my job,” she replied matter-of-factly.

According to the old TV series The X-Files, the truth is out there, somewhere. However, Agent’s Mulder and Scully would have more chance of discovering Mars is inhabited by little green men than finding a single bar girl or regular foreign visitor to Pattaya who could pass a lie detector test.

©Duncan Stearn