The Tunnels of Purgatory
Freelancer beer bars have always seemed in-between places to me. There are better options in LOS for either serious drinking or girl hunting, but much worse ones as well. The bars themselves are usually ramshackle and offer only a minimal comfort. More attractive girls are often just a stone's throw away and the male customers tend to be a sullen if harmless lot. It's sort of a whoremonger's limbo, somewhere between P4P heaven and hell.
Within this niche, the Biergarten at Soi 7 has achieved semi-legendary status. Its location in the heart of the Sukhumvit pink zone is a huge factor in its success, but the biggest attraction is the never-ebbing supply of girls willing to spread their legs at bargain rates. Nothing about them screams bar girl or hooker, but if they were to become any more accessible for P4P, they'd have to turn themselves into public parks.
These girls look... well, normal. A few bear the scars of too many years in the flesh trade, but mostly they're the kind you see riding the BTS every morning or behind the counters of noodle shops and convenience stores. Some are attractive, others less so. On the whole, it's average ho's for average Joe's rather than mingers for mongers.
The bar functions like a scaled-down P4P version of a Wal-Mart. It relies on self service and doesn't offer high-end products, but the everyday low prices can't be beat. There are no mamasans or bar fines and none of the blatant sexuality, pushy solicitation, loud music and rowdy drunkenness that mark a lot of go-go bars. Unlike massage parlors or brothels, a punter can spend as much time as he wants browsing the aisles before he decides to buy. When he does find a girl that strikes his fancy, he simply smiles or nods and she comes right over. After some conversation, they either leave together or he moves on to another girl.
Many guys find that an appealing setup, from the Skid Row decor and cheap beer in bottles to the direct negotiations with willing girls. It's sort of like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks - not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Average mongers, average girls, average bar, great location. Put them together and what do you get? The Biergarten on Soi 7. It falls considerably short of the pinker pastures of BKK pussy paradise, but is nowhere near the dark caverns of P4P hell on Soi 3. The Biergarten runs right through pussy purgatory and a lot of punters seem content to explore its many tunnels.
Old Man Cheap Charlie Place
I once asked a star provider at an upscale Bangkok P4P establishment what she thought of the Biergarten. "Old man cheap Charlie place," she instantly answered. A harsh judgment and not entirely unfair, although it would have been more accurate to say, "Middle-aged man cheap Charlie place." You'll encounter some gray beards as well as downy-cheeked youngsters still in their teens, but most of the male clientele falls in the 35-to-50-year range.
There's no doubt that for many of the guys who frequent the Biergarten, it's really about PP4P - penny pinching for play. The Biergarten could serve as the headquarters of the ICC (International Cheap Charlies, pronounced "ick"). These connoisseurs of cut-rate cunt are determined not to let their Bangkok breaks break their banks. And there's nothing terribly wrong with that. It's their money to spend or not spend as they choose The cheapos themselves suffer most from their excessive attention to dead presidents and live Thai kings. Through their reluctance to part with few hundred baht extra, they miss much of the joy and excitement available in LOS and settle for pale versions of the real thing. I've heard that someone once tried to open the ultimate cheap Charlie joint in BKK - bring-your-own booze and inflatable love dolls instead of bar girls - but I dismiss that as an urban myth.
For my own tastes, there's a bit too much of the “Bah! Humbug!� spirit at the Biergarten. Like Ebenezer Scrooge celebrating Christmas with a bowl of gruel, morose cheap Charlies sit hunched over their beers, worrying they've given a taxi driver or food vendor 20 baht too much. I don't know if visions of stunner's ever dance through their heads, but they are determined no freelancer will get more than the absolute bottom rate.
However, there's an enormous difference between what could be called thrifty Charlies - who don't want to pay too much yet thoroughly understand how the game is played - and the truly cheap Charlies who somehow find pride in taking advantage of desperately poor girls. The extreme cheapos fancy themselves great bargainers, wise in the ways of P4P and the world, but they're not really liked or respected by the girls. They have about as much street cared on the lower Suki as Vanilla Ice does in the South Bronx.
The Biergarten is not my favorite spot in Bangkok, nor is it one that I'd actively avoid. Usually I've gone there in the company of friends who like the place much more than I do. A visit from February is a case in point. It was my last full day of a seven-day business trip to LOS. By 1.30 p.m., I'd finished everything work-related and was on the way with a colleague to the lower Suk. I planned on stopping by the Eden Club but he preferred the less structured approach to P4P of the Biergarten. I agreed to have a beer with him before I took the short walk to Soi 7/1.
At 2.00 p.m., maybe 20 punters and twice as many girls had already gathered on site. Only a few mongers were locked in conversation with girls. Most of the guys were sitting alone, just sipping their beers. A quick glance around didn't inspire me to abandon my plans to visit the Eden Club, but my friend was already motioning over a girl, apparently someone he knew. Her facial features were more Korean than Thai, with her hair cut in a punk-in spired style and dyed a reddish hue. She was thin - borderline anorexic - and dressed in drab clothes. I didn't consider her attractive.
As she sat down next to my friend, she smiled with the sad eyes that usually signal a starfish. He introduced us but I've forgotten her name. She spoke English quite well, if with a heavy accent. He asked her the standard "How are you?" questions, then about her campaign to find a sponsor. She wanted 40,000 a month to become a one-man girl, but with takers in short supply, she'd consider a "time-share" arrangement under which two guys pay 20,000 baht each. He pressed her for details and she tried to explain how it would work. It began to sound more like a clip-card approach - pay for nine sessions in advance and get the tenth for free - than joint-custody P4P and seemed about as workable a notion as building a perpetual motion machine.
My friend had obviously heard this before, found the subject amusing and wanted to entertain me with it. That struck me as poor P4P manners. However oddball her ideas, the girl didn't deserve to be humiliated in front of another farang for the price of a drink. The more she talked, the more I struggled to follow what she was saying, and it wasn't all because of language difficulties. I began wondering if some of her non-sequiturs might be the result of a pill or two to take the jagged edge off the P4P grind. I tried to see if her pupils were dilated, but that's always hard to tell with Asian girls and I couldn't really decide.
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