Thigh Bar

Thigh Bar, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

Pom is the manager of Thigh Bar at the entrance to Patpong.  In the heart of tourist sleaze, surrounded by drunken Expats, desperate bargirls and wandering ladyboys, she somehow manages to stay friendly and relaxed.  If you have been there once in the last ten years, she will remember your name and what you ordered to drink, even the name of your girl and where she ended up.  If you know enough to show respect, you will be treated well and only hustled a little.  On the other hand, if you act like an asshole, it will never be forgotten.   You will always be an asshole, from the moment you walk in the door until the day you die.

Tall Blue Dancer

Tall Blue Dancer, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

Tall and slim, is she a girl or a lady boy….how to tell when everything’s been altered from top to bottom and back to front………..

Midnight Patpong

Midnight Patpong, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

By midnight on Friday, Patpong’s full, twenty thousand tourists from Europe, the U.S., Australia, India, the Middle East and Japan, ten thousand girls, hundreds of ladyboys, plenty of beer, whiskey, endless stalls selling counterfeit goods, thirty or forty different disco tracks blasting out of the gogo bars, a world vortex of man woman interaction, a combination sexual theme park, shopping mall and inferno, fiercely consuming an endless stream of humanity and their desire.

Peter

Peter, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

In Amsterdam where Peter lives, things are pretty quiet and usually nice, plenty of beer, drugs, girls, good jobs and high pay.  He arrived in Bangkok this evening, non-stop from Europe, his first visit, his brain very busy trying to process the overwhelming and unfamiliar density spread out before him in the hot and humid Bangkok night.  Food stalls with fried bugs, sexy girls and ladyboys,  baby elephants, 300 pound Expats, multiple layers of music, millions of Thais, infinite piles of counterfeit goods and an apocalyptic level of non-stop noise and confusion. Pretty soon, Peter’s brain is going to stop.

Afterword

Beyond the Expat version of the Bangkok Night, throughout this vast swirling metropolis of uncounted millions, are an almost infinite number of other versions.  Thai coffee shops, lady barber shops, massages places from tiny holes in the wall to palatial structures with five hundred rooms, as large and luxurious as a major hotel, beauty salons, spas, snooker rooms, restaurants with special menus, telephone and internet escort services, beer gardens, giant discos, intimate member clubs, hostess bars, short-time hotels, drive-in curtain hotels, Isan music halls and numerous other venues visible and invisible, with and without names and constantly being re-invented, mainly for Thais, both ladies and men.

As large and varied as the Expat version of the Bangkok Night might be, it is only one world of many, less than ten percent of what is there.  The Japanese version has signs only in Japanese and sometimes no signs at all.  The Arab version is rough and full of shame.  The Indian version submerged, hidden and silent.  The Chinese version, mainly in Bangkok’s Chinatown, beyond the knowledge of even the Bangkok police and populated with Chinese from every country in Asia and every province in China.  For the Nigerians, another version known only to them.

And then there are the various gay, lesbian and ladyboy versions, some small and dark, others as glitzy as Las Vegas.  All of these worlds make up the universe of the Bangkok Night, one of the largest shows presently on earth and ever invented, an entertainment venue on a scale never before equaled in the history of mankind.

Whatever one might think and however one might judge, what’s there reflects the full range of mankind’s wishes and desires, weakness and strength, dreams and nightmares.  It is a spectacle invented in the human imagination and staged night after night, week after week, year after year, for an audience of millions.  To pretend it’s not there or that it shouldn’t exist is to overlook an essential element of the human spirit and struggle that reveals who we really are, down deep, not just who we pretend to be.

It is a universe full of clashing colors, dramatic contrasts, jagged lines, extremes of behavior and personality, mankind tilted on a primitive edge.  If the Fauvists or Expressionists were re-incarnated and alive today, the Bangkok Night is where they would be, watching, absorbing and painting.

Preface

by Chris Coles

The Noir side of the Bangkok Night has always been one of its most delicious ingredients, kind of like that extra special secret sauce that makes the first taste of a Thai gourmet feast so exciting and interesting.  Without the Noir and the nightlife, the bargirls, punters, ladyboys, rentboys and thousands of service staff, the assorted cast of thugs, scammers, traffickers, dealers, perverts, hitmen and the endless stream of fugitives from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America, not to mention from Thailand itself, without this glorious and colorful assortment of Noir characters and faces and posturing, the Bangkok Night would no longer be so spicy, colorful and fun.

But then, as if that wasn’t enough, blend into Bangkok’s actual Noir, the delicious artistic and fictional noir found in the Bangkok novels of Christopher G. Moore, Stephen Leather, John Burdett and Jake Needham, in the Thai gangster films like the original Pang Brothers’ BANGKOK DANGEROUS (not the remake which turned out to be a marshmallow), in the edgy hip-hop soundtrack of Thaitanium and in my own series of Bangkok Noir paintings and portraits, you get an explosion of Noir, beautiful and frightening and thrilling all at once, making the Noir side of Bangkok a sparkling treasure to be savored and cherished, even if not actually consumed.