Dawan is a mother of two and dreams of marrying an Englishman. This is her story.

 

Pattaya bar girls (Photo from Soi 6 Pattaya)

 

If you asked a large selection of bar girls in Pattaya how long they have worked there then you would quickly become accustomed to the answer of one week. The way the bar girl thinks is that every farang (foreigner) wants a girl who is untouched by the guiles of Pattaya and therefore has been manhandled by no other farang.

To them one week is a better bartering tool than five years, a higher price, a better restaurant meal and relief from the mundane life of the average Pattaya bar girl. Dawan has only worked in the Chonburi city resort for one week and I can only report what she told me.

Dawan’s English language skills were very rudimentary. My basic instincts told me that perhaps she’d done the rounds a little longer than the seven-day cycle she relayed. The interview was assisted with some help by the bar owner’s Thai wife, whose English was of a slightly higher pedigree.

The Shark Rider Bar is located on Soi Buakhao and is a same-same innocuous bar that blends in with the many other businesses and bars that are currently struggling in this tourist-hit sex city.

The road from Ban Lad Ya in Kanchanaburi Province to Pattaya is one that Dawan may have helped to lay as a road worker on 200 baht (US$5.50) a day until quitting a few months back as the lure of Pattaya overpowered the smell of hot tar.

Separated from her Thai husband and with three children to school and feed, Dawan has swapped road work for sex jerk and entrance into the Theatre of Teens. At 41 years of age, Dawan has to overcome and win the stiff competition from lithe and supple 18- and 19-year-olds and the 20 -something Pattaya-diehard. Sympathy in Pattaya starts with S and ends in ucks.

Dawan’s work duties are bar cleaner and hostess, all for the princely salary of 2000 baht ($55) a month.

Dawan’s work duties are bar cleaner and hostess, all for the princely salary of 2000 baht ($55) a month. Tips may add a further 500 baht. Hardly enough to keep the wolf from an unlocked door that is waiting for a knock from a baht-bearing farang.

Two days-off a month offer Dawan little time to visit her children who are now being looked after by her elderly parents in Ban Lad Ya. An ability to quickly grasp better basic English skills will help her dine with the sweet meat and dancing queens, as well as funding the school teens and leave a little money over to pamper herself. As simple as ABC.

Dawan is a smoker who enjoys the occasional drink of lao khao, luxuries surely only affordable to a hardworking road worker and not a bar girl working in one of Thailand’s more expensive cities on wages far below a country's apologetic average salary.

Dawan misses her two boys and daughter. She also freely admits to being a staunch yellow shirt supporter, and would you believe, her dream is to marry an Englishman.

My basic instincts kicked in once more and I know that if my passport spouted German then Dawan would have mouthed Munich, Jurgen Klinsmann and climaxed over the thought of vacuuming Teutonic blond hairs off the back seats of a BMW. The Pattaya seven-day cycle has some fast learning curves.

Beyond the Mango Juice wishes Dawan all the best in her quest for the perfect farang but somehow I think that on my next visit to Pattaya, for her the smell of the city soil sewers may be replaced by the sweet smell of hot tar.

 

This post was originally published on Beyond The Mango Juice in June 2009.