by Al Culler
Immigration was politeness personified (pick the Shelias rather than the male officers), didn’t even bother to check my return flight. Customs was a breeze but I then had a hell of a job finding a taxi driver who didn’t want 500 peso. Walked out of the airport in disgust, past a lot of dubious looking Filipinos who’d seemed moments off slitting my throat and flagged down a metered taxi.
He zigzagged through the back streets, soon convincing me (not helped any by his convict stare and haggard appearance) that he was going to take me to a back alley where his mates would give me a good going over, if I was lucky leaving only my life intact, but we popped out at the cheaper end of Makati and he even had change for my 100 peso note.
The hippy disguise fools ‘em every time and also fends off the more rapacious women. By the way, the Culler diet consists of a combination of popping vitamins and only drinking alcohol, which causes a permanent brain haze, lots of throwing up and the odd bout of cleansing diarrhea.
Makati’s still packed with bars, but expensive to buy ladies drinks, etc. It took me an incredibly long time to work it out, but the more money you give to bar girls the greater the contempt they hold you in. The line to take, especially with Filipinas who are much more sensitive creatures than Thai girls, is that you’re happy to look after them but have no interest in paying for sex!
This tends to snare the very young and very old babes, those in the middle usually desperate to make their mark in the world or support their babies and extended families. The ploy also f..ks over Thai girls who have pimps in tow, unless (which isn’t unknown) he’s also into ladies clothes and can share in all the new goodies.
One poor farang soul thought his girlfriend’s infatuation with a katoey was okay because the transvestite wasn’t interested in sex (in his narrow view of the world); just another piece of Thai illusion.
A lot of the girls in Makati bars are into Asians rather than Westerners as that’s perceived where the serious money can be made, the guys dropping thousands of peso on drinks in a night... more often than not mafia money but money is money is... bloody boring after a while, absolute waste of time trying to buy love! The sex is okay, though!
In one Patpong bar, a couple of Indonesian politicians on holidays, 1000 baht notes falling out of their pockets. They kept changing them into 100 baht notes, throwing them in air, had the Thai girls smiling like crazy despite them being treated like monkeys fed treats. Needless to say, I was totally ignored.
Back in Makati I pulled this stunning eighteen year old with silken black skin, sublime body without an ounce of fat on it and cheekbones that could cut hearts in half. God knows what she saw in me but at three o’clock she pounded on my hotel room door and spent the next four hours screaming her head off in ecstasy! Heat, fluids and lust gushed out of her as if she hadn’t had sex for months... condoms were obviously out the question even when the sex went highly dubious. More amulet clutching and prayers followed...
Of Ogres and Angels
Pretty f..king frightening. A horny old Filipina dame, hair glued up two feet in the air. Done out in the business - stockings, suspender belt, G-string and cut-away bra that failed dismally to counter sagging breasts; the outfit emphasizing a beer gut even I hadn’t attained in my prime. Not some down on her luck bar girl but a pissed off general’s wife who’d taken one look at the Culler frame and pounced. She’d plied me with drinks and my next coherent moment was wondering how the hell I’d got from the Makati disco to the 112th floor of a luxury condominium.
Just my luck, to be the only foreigner to end up with some hundred year-old old bint. As she’d double-locked the front door and I didn’t fancy free-falling down a hundred-odd storeys, there wasn’t much choice, though it took half an hour of deep-throating to get me going and then I didn’t want to stop again.
I exited the condo at three in the morning. It was only then that I realized I didn’t have a clue where I was, which in Manila is akin to writing your own suicide note. Maximum ugliness abounds, the only survival route, as weird as it sounds, is total politeness even when some reprobate goes into throat slashing mode. Which was exactly how the military attired ancient looked as I entered and he exited the lift. Oops!
I was mildly revived by the sea breeze battering through the still heated night. Great slabs of mostly dark condo’s gave way to blacked out back alleys. Huge holes in the road could break an ankle in an instant and rats scuttled every which way. I was jumping out of my skin at every night note, figuring I wouldn’t last long, save that I’m an expert at the desperate 400 metre sprint. Another prerequisite in Manila.
A dilapidated taxi came out of the polluted ether. Fifty-fifty chance that he was honest or into a complex rip-off mantra. The usual dross huge moustache, massive beer belly and a grin right out of a horror movie. He played a bit of rhythm and blues on the meter, a mechanical contraption that would throw Heath Robinson into ecstasy, and we were off.
The ancient Japanese heap was falling apart at the seams, expected the seat to fall through the rusted floor at any moment. Ruined road surfaces sent spasms up my back, which anyway was halfway to agony from the contortions with the old biddy.
The driver kept muttering about taking me to see his cousins, good girls who were students in need of a little extra dosh, and I kept muttering about having to make a meeting. The scowl deepened and his whole body seemed strained, about to burst out of his clothes in indignation, but my impoverished appearance probably saved me from a beating; wasn’t worth the effort.
After a mere five minutes we rolled up at the Burgos hotel and I bunged him a 100 peso because he’d been relatively honest. Of course, I waited for him to drive off before crossing the road into the hotel I was actually staying at. Desperate times in Asia, with all kinds of mad scams running through the minds of the populace.
Most of the hotel’s employees were males, not because they were better at the job but because they had to save face by finding some, any, work and they were a waste of time in the bar zone. The ugliest of the likely lads at the desk accompanied me in the lift, carrying a box full of cleaning tackle.
I commented that he was working late and he told me he was going to clean my room, giving me a big grin. Mad bastard, didn’t want to know when I told him it was already clean and only went away when I finally screamed at him I was going to sleep and he couldn’t come in the room. Big grin replaced by the natural characteristic, a bigger scowl. I blame the schools, the natives educated way beyond the ability of the economy to support their ambition.
Of course, trying to figure out what was going down kept me awake for the rest of the night and I checked out at seven in the morning. Such an unlikely event that they had no time to pad the bill.
Plenty of taxis loitering at that time. Found the oldest, most emaciated driver, working on the basis that he wouldn’t have the energy to do for me. I promptly passed out from exhaustion and woke up a few hours later in Angeles - once a bar zone for the Yank military, now a bar zone for anyone willing to make the trek from Manila (there are buses but I never managed to work out where they went from).
Its major plus points, hotels were half the price of those in Manila and the girls were fresher, less greedy. Also seemed a hell of a lot less oppressive than Manila, which seemed to harbour a concentration, distillation, of pure evil. One wrong step, your whole life totally ruined.
After sleeping through the heat of the day, cocooned by a battleship of an air-conditioner and thick red curtains right out of a bordello, I staggered out into the night and nearly caused an international incident when some tourist lout went to push me out of the way. Only I’d seen him coming, neatly side-stepped.
His huge mass had too much momentum to alter its course, fell into the road, nearly decapitated by a taxi! The bigger they are the harder they fall, but I didn’t hang around to argue the toss. Judging by the way he was swearing his head off he wasn’t seriously injured despite dripping blood over the road.
Angeles is absolutely pack
ed out with babes, most with an air of desperation. Unfortunately, the punters were the lowest of the low... ancient, deceased looking, carrying three times their natural mass (and I know that feeling), hard of eye... the living dead! The babes were all over them, somehow unaware that flirting with the soulless was likely to suck the very life out of them.
I could’ve fallen in love with at least a dozen of the girls I bumped into that night. But I played it easy, the same old shit going down... ten, fifteen, minutes of talk, glowing smiles, full of promises, but continued refusal to buy a drink or pay the bar fine meant that they soon wandered off with a weary scowl written deep in their features. Boring!
It’s also not clever to buy one gal a drink then lust after another, if it hadn’t been for the mammalian mamasan a minor war would’ve broken out over the Culler body. Flattering but ultimately frightening, once into a rage Oriental girls don’t give a shit about anything.
My overloaded brain was fighting it out with my similarly distressed groin! Join in, get out fast or just get drunk out of my head, or some combination thereof? Toss a coin, right?
Sisters Six
Old Willie was in a bad way. Only sixty years old, but he could pass for seventy, despite the barrel chest and aggressive manner. Vietnam had done his head in long ago, a couple of years in a Thai prison completed the damage. The particular focus of his rage was a Thai babe who went by the name of Tan. He thought he was on to a good thing, picked her up in a shopping centre, used his knowledge of Thai to get off with her. She 26, but still full of the belief that she was a beautiful eighteen year old who no-one could resist - the kind of arrogance I’d cross the road to avoid. One look at her dead eyes told me all I’d wanted to know.
Not Willie, even though he’d been in-country since the Vietnamese war and had been through thousands of Thai women. The grass was always greener; the love of his life just around the corner. The big problem was she knew just how to wind him up, pussy-whip him into a blubbering mess whilst whispering sweet nothings into his ear. Almost occult, wielding a massive spell over the old fool that had him swaggering around like he owned the world...
Lasted for all of ten days. Took her that long to figure out he barely had enough dosh to survive, was unlikely to find any kind of paid employment and hadn’t even got the hang of sex yet - girls who’ve worked the bars for a few years need at least an hour before they orgasm! Don’t mistake manic twitching for an orgasm, the only way to really tell is when their fluids turn altogether more liquid; hard to describe but you’ll know what I mean when you experience it.
Tan started out in the Thai massage parlours, moved on to the Japanese scene with a couple of working holidays in Europe and Tokyo. Tan’s problem was that she thought she deserved the best and her fast fading beauty wasn’t enough to offset her indifference. She never really had the energy to do the go-go blues, preferring to slouch around on the periphery and let the farangs do the chasing.
She was getting pretty intense about finding a meal-ticket out of the scene, after her younger sister, Kai, dark of skin and far from beautiful, caught a rich farang who blew the obligatory millions of baht on house and land. The last Tan had heard she was busily servicing expats in Saudi whilst her husband toiled away in the day. Such luck had blown away her normal indifference, if her little sister could get that ahead of the game just think where she was going to end up...
Anyway, old Willie and I were in Rainbow 2 bar, he gnawing away at his skin, snarling at the couple of old dears who tried it on and getting pissed out of his head on Chang with whisky chasers. Tan had cleared off as soon as one of her boyfriends turned up - a long list of guys who’d spent a week or two in Bangkok, kept in contact with her - basically a great little lay but no way were they going to do anything silly like get wed or send money every month. Her eyes, as I said, gave the game away. Unless, like Willie, you were truly f..ked up.
This kind of bar was all the rage in Nana Plaza, huge old place with a centre stage packed full of girls, another stage by the door just to make sure people outside didn’t miss the action. A hundred, or so, babes, a lot of them naked - one of the better scenes, with some newish girls there for the taking - gyrating and looking kinda hopeful.
At least ten, maybe more, were really knock-out - pull your eye-balls right out of your head. Both Willie and I had been around the bars too long to pull anyone other than the more desperate oldster’s. The most beautiful babe in the place was all over some newly arrived ancient who was actually dribbling with lust. That kind of scene!
Tan turned up then, young farang hopeful in tow (no doubt blowing a year’s savings!) and her elder sister supervising some ancient, rather like you would an oversized child... couldn’t remember her name but she looked pure Laotian - had bull-shitted her way through four marriages to farangs, dropping a kid for each and ending up with a net worth in excess of ten million baht - not bad for someone who’d spent less than three years in school and would be hard put to find a straight job that paid more than a 100 baht a day. She still had wonderful cheekbones, shinning hair and the body of a particularly attractive sixteen year old - who says crime don’t pay?
Willie was somewhere between bursting into tears and going into a psycho rage but didn’t object when I pulled him out of the bar pronto. Up two flights of stairs went we, huffing and puffing, but a dubious enough sight to keep the loitering katoeys at bay. Rumour was they’d attacked a drunken farang and then thrown him down two storeys! Rumours meant shit, of course, believe nothing you don’t see with your own eyes - even then doubt it; after all, this is the heart of darkness!
The circular stage in the bar turned so slowly that seated on a precariously tall stool I somehow gained the drunken impression that I was aboard a ship floating serenely through the night. Though a very strange ship, indeed, with about thirty naked babes packed tightly on its deck. Even Willie almost managed a smile.
It was one of those nights, the youngest sister of the six, Deng, but barely eighteen, thrust out breasts so minor yet so uplifted and perfectly engorged in nipple that I almost fell off the stool. Skin as black as an Ethiopian, and body sublimely slender, only generated by the blood of ten generations of rice-cutters... all the sleekness of a Western model but also the muscle tone of a Russian gymnast and the heat and smoothness of the heart of darkness. Old Willie tried to grab her passing leg but received a kick from the following frail who shimmered in obese contrast.
I managed to drag my eyes away from her body the next time she came around - about seven minutes! - saw that her face was already far gone in bar girl angst. She’d lost her virginity to a Thai guy who lost his job in the recession, although able to support her mildly, the thought of waiting half a decade before the easy flow of money resumed made her do a rapid disappearing act, to emerge under her sister’s embrace in Soi Nana. She had the kind of body farangs dream of and was soon breaking hearts left, right and centre - not even bothering to hide her disdain for all things not Thai!
Another sister had disappeared into the dark, deathly, depths of the yakuza bars in Japan and hadn’t been heard of again; presumed dead or crippled with AIDS. The least attractive of the six had married an Isarn lad of passing handsomeness whose expression went reptilian come the night hours when he’d set out on a killing spree - not yet people, but anything that breathed and could be leapt upon with a little silent skill.
Willie was by then fending off some battered thirty year old who’d slid through his defences and clamped herself to his groin. They seemed well matched to me but Willie spewed forth some Thai, soon had her leaping off in a rage. Apparently she had a Thai boyfriend who Willie had described as a pimp and a waster, whilst she defended him by saying he couldn’t earn serious money by working. This kind of shit all too common in Nana.
I tried to keep a benign smile in place whilst the stage rotated slowly. Another frail took my fancy, large and strong of breast, flat of stomach and wild of arse she had a face so beautiful and pleasant that she seemed t
otally unmarked by the neon nastiness - until she saw me staring intensely, her visage going as distasteful as if I was a cockroach trying to invade her space. I switched my attention to a taller babe, canopied not unsuccessfully by a baseball cap, who grinned like a cat at the milk, bent down promisingly and screamed in my ear that she wanted a hundred baht.
Charmed I wasn’t. Neither by Willie’s disappearance, leaving the bill for me! No doubt in one of the short-time hotels. In the toilet, cleaning my hands, a girl grappled with my bulk from behind, whispering that she knew me from before; then she should’ve realised she had no chance as a pick-pocket. She laughed delightedly when I slapped her hand away from my pocket, twirled back into the neon.
The beer was warm and flat by the time I regained my stool; the space fast closing in by some young Navy types with loud, ugly accents. I glanced at my watch to find but bare skin! The bitch. But I didn’t need the Seiko to tell me that time was running out, wasting away...
All or Nothing
One of the greatest mistakes that foreigners make about Oriental girls is to think, that in some essential way, they are different to Western women.
This may come as a shock to anyone who walks into a Nana, Cowboy or Patpong bar and sees young babes all over the ancients, whispering the mantra, over and over: ‘I like man with good heart.’ Not exactly a lie, more a ripple on the surface of superficiality.
Watch, listen, for instance, to those same babes on an apartment balcony commenting on the Thai men passing below whilst their ancients gorge themselves on cheap beer. Pretend you know no Thai or they’ll switch to Lao. What they really want in a man just the same as everywhere else - youth, handsomeness and strength; with a good heart and loadsa money thrown in if they’re lucky.
