Disclaimer: If you are under 18 and/or have any shred of common decency, you should probably skip this post. There aren’t any pictures or anything, as cameras weren’t allowed (I wouldn’tve taken any even if they were. Actually, I totally would’ve) but I’d imagine it’s a bit explicit for young and impressionable minds. Move along. Nothing to see here…
So where were we? Oh yeah, naked girls and ping-pong balls.
Pat Pong. Ping Pong. One might expect the common occurrence of “Pong” would have more profound meaning than it actually does, but the overlap is actually just a pleasant coincidence. In Bangkok’s case, the famous “Pat Pong Show” (which does, of course, involve ping pong balls) refers to the shady red-light district in town between Silom Road and Surawong Road where all the unique NC-17 action takes place, and not in any way to the aforementioned balls.
It’s a famous (or infamous) act, worldwide, and word of my traveling to Thailand had already elicited recommendations of the bawdy show from past attendees (male and female) and requests for more information from those, like myself, that’d never had a chance to experience it. Even I, someone so regularly informed when it comes to the eccentric, bizarre and/or indecent that the world has to offer, could’ve said no more about what I’d be witnessing other than that it contained a naked girl and a ping-pong ball, with the latter crudely making its way both into and out of the former.
While this is true, and may have been the original erotic attraction in the less wholesome parts of Bangkok after-dark, the show has evolved and improved dramatically since its inception. It’s a deviant attack on the senses, like a vast multi-ring circus confined to a single crepuscular room combined with the traditional magician-pulling-things-out-of-a-hat act, only with the words “ring” and “hat” artfully replaced by the word “vagina.”
While in Amsterdam many years ago, some friends and I did as instructed and took an excursion to “Bananas” for its legendary sex show, only to find a series of listless, unenthusiastic women that could be considered legendary only in the sense that some of them had likely been performing since World War II. The things they did with themselves were too empty of imagination to be entertaining and too dispassionate to be sexy, making it one of the few times that our collection of ostensibly heterosexual men fled so quickly from a collection of naked women bearing fruit.
For some reason, I expected more from Bananas’ Thai doppelganger, which at the time I’d only known for years as the “ping pong show.” The problem is, I only had one night in town and most of that evening was spent at an extravagant, black-tie wedding affair at Bangkok’s Shangri-la Hotel. Would anyone else in our little co-ed wedding party possibly want to witness such an unwholesome spectacle? Yes. Yes, they would.
Leaving the bridal suite, my beautifully attired friend Melissa and I guide the bride and groom downstairs, along with the equally curious Kiira, sister of the bride. A Patpong show is hardly a black-tie affair, but that’s part of the appeal in our arriving at the seedy, windowless shack in some of the finest clothes we own. The other part is pure drunken laziness. The only remaining question is how exactly one is to track down the notorious Thai sex show.
Thankfully, the Shangri-la is an upstanding enough institution to provide a first class concierge.
“Umm.. We want to see a ping pong ball show. You know? With the girls…”
“Yes. Patpong. Hold on.”
He nods his head affably, with no sign of judgement, and guides us out to the hotel’s taxi stand (where we now must compete with the extravagantly dressed attendees of a Sikh wedding from the same hotel whose party is only just now ending). I catch little of the concierge’s conversation with the cab driver, but hear the term “pat pong” spoken over and over between the two of them. We pile in and drive for only about ten minutes to a poorly lit and poorly labeled brick building with no windows, much like your standard American strip club.
A lone, old Thai man sits at a desk in the anteroom, gathering money for admittance. A small amount of bargaining is tolerated, but it’s clear that our group has come a long way to see the spectacle and there’s little need for him to offer a discount. The final price comes to about twelve dollars per person and he waves us forward just in time for the first act.
At the time, of course, we’re unaware that there’s a linear progression to the performance; only when the acts start to repeat after an hour or so do we realize that each bit is meant to up the ante a bit from the one that preceded it. On the stage, a casually nude woman (Thai — all of the performers are indigenous) looks down at a ping-pong ball that lightly bounces away from her toward the end of the stage. Her back slightly slumped over, the woman has the tired demeanor of a nurse halfway through a second consecutive shift, pushing on with no concern for posture, appearance or facial affectations.
Taking our seats in the second row, we notice a large, clear glass vase between the woman and the precarious position of the ball, which is now just milliseconds from falling off the stage. Thankfully the performer has an assistant on the ground who moves forward with alacrity, rescuing the ball from a potentially unsanitary plunge. The assistant deftly tosses the ball upward at the naked woman, who catches it almost delicately and in the same motion shifts the arc of the ball first downward and then back up, letting it disappear almost instantaneously into her pliant and well-practiced womanhood.
No gesture is made to rinse or sanitize the ball before re-entry; it’s either a mark of the stage’s immaculate cleanliness or a show of complete vaginal insouciance from the performer. Her face is implacable through the entire motion. The ball’s interior placement registers less on her calm face than slipping loose change into a trouser pocket might, and indeed she seems to put the same amount of enthusiasm and focus into her craft that most put into reading the daily news. She turns slightly to the side, standing with feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart as she lines herself up with the vase. Knees spreading subtly outward, the ball drops forward limply, ushered out by a silent wheeze.
BLIP. Blip. Blipblipblpblpblpppphh
The plastic sphere bounces its way toward the vase, but it’s obvious from the start that her aim is off. While the woman is clearly a master of loading and propelling her ammunition, she’ll need a few more weeks of rigorous target practice before, to continue the metaphor, she stops shooting blanks. If the audience minds her faulty accuracy, they don’t let it show. As the ball poorly navigates the large black stage, the room collectively holds its breath and not a single voice can be heard to compete with the blaring 80′s music artfully chosen to provide a sonic backdrop for the act. The Final Countdown, indeed.
Coming in to this show late, it’s possible that this series of do-overs has been going on for well over an hour now, but the benefit of the doubt puts the count of her misses now at two. Three strikes might not put the girl out, but it’ll significantly reduce her chances at competing with Cirque du Soleil for captivating entertainment value. Despite at least two flawed attempts, the game of catch, release and insert played between assistant and ping-pong provocateur flows smoothly enough as to almost warrant its own show.
Possibly there’s a longer pause before ejecting the well-traveled ball for the third attempt, though nothing else about her demeanor demonstrates any tension or extra attention given to this shot.
BLIP. Blip. blipblip PLINK.
The crowd goes wild, and the applause continues as the small ball continues to spin for a few moments within the vase before coming to a full stop. If the showgirl cares for the attention, it doesn’t echo forth in her features aside from a mild shrug as she ambles off the stage. With a heretofore unseen robe, the assistant wraps the naked Thai woman and they shuffle off into a well-lit back room that seems to be getting a large amount of traffic. Almost without pause, a new woman takes to the stage from the shadows.
A Patpong show thankfully doesn’t attempt to mimic a normal strip show. Hell, most of the time the performers seem to be going out of their way to NOT be sexy. No time is spent stripping down in any sort of strip tease; women take the stage fully nude or disrobe immediately with little fanfare. This next act is a magician of sorts, performing the time honored scarf trick. A series of scarves make their way out into the light, continuing well past the point where their storage should’ve been comfortable. Five feet. Ten. Fifteen feet of sullied, rainbow-colored material, dangling limply. She holds the long strand of damply iridescent strips aloft triumphantly and then departs as quickly as she had arrived. With only one trick up her “sleeve,” there’s little cause to dally around.
Next up is a subtle variation on the prior act. Squatting midway to the ground, a thin woman with almost imperceptible breasts and a fierce gaze that seems to affected to be genuine removes a small rectangular object on a string delicately from inside of her. We squint, but this act isn’t as obvious as the last and our group decides, en masse, to push forward to a section of seats in the front row that had just opened up. Only later does this prove to be a mistake.
A few more of the rectangles have made their way out of the new woman now, each separated by about five inches of thin thread. Standard double-edged razor blades. Danger and excitement! This new girl is clearly the Evel Knieval of pulling things out of one’s vagina. Much like scarfgirl before her, the line of razors goes on longer than one would expect, and there’s a follow-up this time: Once all the razors are removed, the woman is given a slip of newspaper and proceeds to slowly shred it before the crowd. Unlike those before her, this artiste’s face is far from impassive as she looks about the room, smirking down at us cockily with each slice of the paper.
That’s right, look at me — I store deadly implements of destruction where other women just keep babies.
While undeniably impressive, the drunken audience used up the bulk of its fervor upon the razors’ removal, and can’t seem to muster up any added energy for her expository epilogue. She leaves the stage to the quietest applause yet, and the music sharply fades into a new song.
“I beg your pardon…”
Techno beats accompany the classic standard, as the next woman takes to the stage. This new performer is older than the rest by about ten years — possibly even twenty — though she’s still quite fit, and seems to be enjoying her work more than the others. Coinciding with the music, a fake silk-like red flower hangs from a green “vine” emanating forth from her groin. It pendulums casually between her legs as she raises her arms confidently into the air. She needs a volunteer and quickly zooms in on the tall guy in the front row wearing a suit. Me.
“…I never promised you a rose garden…”
I stand nervously with the eyes of the room now oscillating between me, a naked Thai matron and a still-dangling fake rose that seems oddly wilted despite its artificial nature. She takes the veil-thin flower in her hand and sharply offers it to me. Resistance is futile. The crowd watches on breathlessly, radiating a mixture of excitement and pity at my predicament as I raise my hand to the lifeless rose and lift it slightly.
“…Along with the sunshine…”
Any hope that she might back away from me, thereby doing the bulk of the dirty work, is quickly dashed. She rotates her arms toward her, clockwise, in unison. Pull. Pull. And I start to pull.
“…There’s gotta be a little rain sometime…”
Slowly, a matching flower comes out to join the first, and then another. Like the razors before them, each artifact is connected to the next by five to six inches of string. As each flower is removed, it jumps forward on the string until the next rose in the chain forces the line taut. Soon, six flowers have been extracted and I desperately hold the initial flower as far back as I can, but I know there are still more — many more — to come.
She gestures for me to pull once again, this time pinching a section of string — previously in utero — just inches from her mid-section. Here, she motions, pull from HERE. I pause briefly and then, seeing no way around it, I take hold of the new line and begin to pull.
One. Two. Three. Five. Eight more of the repellent blossoms come out, and still there are more. She motions again and I take hold of the “fresh” vine and pull and pull and pull, and still more remain. How many artificial flowers can one magic vagina hold?! Over and over, I reach in and take new segments until a crushed final rose drops out and, propelled by gravity, swings toward me. I’m quick to set the line down before any more unwanted contact is made.
Arms in the air again, she stands before the crowd victoriously and they applause. Flowers could ostensibly be flung at her onto the stage in appreciation, if there wasn’t already such a surplus here. A mild bitterness fills me at the applause she receives; after all, I did all the work.
As the director of this burlesque act clearly must’ve known that there are only so many tricks an audience can handle involving things being pulled from a vagina, the next act heads into new territory (while keeping things between the waist and upper thigh). The new woman saunters on-stage holding what appears to be a clear wine-sized bottle full of water aloft. Its topped by what appears to be a standard bottle cap, though the cap isn’t to remain on for long. Enveloping the head of the bottle with her labia — majora, minora and everything in betweena — she tenses, twists a bit and then releases. The cap falls to the ground with a dull clink.
“Ouch,” says the girl beside me, softly. The crowd reluctantly claps, and the woman begins to lay down on the floor of the stage. Her legs lightly spread and her knees raised, she moves the open bottle closer to her groin.
From the right, a hand rests down on my arm and its unexpected presence in the dark, smoky room is instantly jarring.
“Hello,” the older woman from the prior act says. She’s wearing a thin dress now that would seem revealing to me had I not just pulled an entire garden from her genitalia. Even with my attention fully on her now, she doesn’t remove the hand from my arm, and my heartbeat accelerates rapidly. I turn back to the immediate performance onstage. Ignore it and it’ll go away.
Inserting the bottle slightly within her, the current performer wraps a white cloth around its top, effectively locking the flow of water between performer and prop. The bottle secured, she slowly raises it, letting the bottle empty its clear contents apparently within her. Once empty, she closes her legs and stands with far less difficulty than one would expect from someone in her water-filled condition. But the trick isn’t over yet.
“Hello,” again, from beside me. I turn to her slowly, with an awkwardly wide and uncertain stare.
“Oh. You, again! Hello!” Her smile is unwavering, her gaze is fixed upon me. Hunter. Prey.
“Good, yes,” she says, and takes her hand off me briefly, flipping it around into the universal request for money. To emphasize her point, she adds: “Money.” Ignore it and it’ll go away.
Back on stage, the woman is placing the bottle back between into its prior, inserted position while she stands, she lets the water drain back into the bottle from whence it came. Except the water is not unchanged. The clear bottle slowly refills now with liquid of an opaque, dark purple color. Having told this story in person a few times since witnessing it, there are two standard postulations by listeners as to what the performer is attempting to impart:
- She has turned water into wine
- She has turned water into menstrual blood
Both are fairly disturbing, though the first is at least sacrilegiously creative. The second is simply icky. Perfunctorily, the crowd applauses as she leaves, though its an awkward cheer at best.
“Hey,” says my tenacious new sidekick. ”Money!”
“No money, no honey?” I say, repeating a line that seems to be popular on the streets here.
“No money, no honey.”
“Don’t want honey!”
“You give money.” She rattles her empty hand a bit for emphasis. ”Money.”
“Seriously? I mean, I did all the work!”
Short on English, she responds by tapping my arms a few times with her outstretched hand.
“I didn’t want to pull out your vagina flowers. I’m kind of stuck here desperately wanting to wash my hands while another part of me really wants to smell my fingers and you want me to pay for this.”
“Money…”
“Here, ok.” I pull out some small change. Nothing of consequence. What’s the payoff here?
“No! Don’t want.”
“Well, is all I give. I did all the work! No more.” I set the change down on the table in front of her and turn back to the stage in my last show of defiance.
A girl in her early 20′s walks up, naked, followed by a woman holding a birthday cake with approximately twenty lit candles. The cake is clearly a fake — a prop that exists simply to introduce a series of burning candles — but that doesn’t matter. In her hand, the naked woman appears to be holding a wide straw, like those used to drink in bubble tea. I risk a sideways glance and exhale noting that my unwanted gardener friend has given up her pursuit.
Placing the top end of the large straw into her vaginal opening, the master showmistress does an awkward walk over to the cake and stands poised above it, in a slightly bowlegged stance. Her knees apart, she aims the straw down at the cake and tenses slightly, releasing a quick burst of air outwards that immediately extinguishes over half the candles. In barely enough time to take a breath, she tenses again and releases a secondary burst, taking out all but the last two candles. A final burst of directed queef snuffs the cake entirely. For this, she gets the largest applause of the evening, but her part of the show isn’t over yet.
Taking something in her hands from her assistant, she walks over to the other side of the stage and lays with her back on the ground and knees in the air. The helper, meanwhile, has abandoned the cake and now holds a diminutive red balloon out with her right arm, as far from her person as possible. The naked woman opens her hand and shows a small, specialized dart, which she slowly lowers into the straw. All is silent, even the music. She focuses outward, determined, gazing deeply at the balloon. Not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. Scratch that; looking about, it’s clear the mice are still working overtime.
In the space of a heartbeat, her body tenses, her knees jerk slightly toward each other and at once the balloon explodes violently. Unlike the early performers, this woman clearly still loves the thrill of the show and her face lights up with a large, exultant smile while her genitals (presumably) glow with a deep sense of accomplishment. As she stands, the helper retrieves the fallen dart and then does a full circuit around the stage, proudly displaying both dart and shredded balloon to the gaping crowd.
It’s a tough act to follow, and the organizers likely know this. The end of this rotation of acts rapidly approaches, and there won’t be any more magic or feats of vaginal prowess. In fact, the next act is nothing more than pure unadulterated lesbianism. Two Thai girls take to the stage, fully disrobed, and begin writhing together on the ground.
“Oh my god, that’s really hot,” says the girl beside me.
And it is. There’s no doubt these girls know how to make out with each other lustfully in a room full of drunken people. They’re fit, rhythmic, sultry and seductive. It’d be a great act if it didn’t feel so out of place after the circus-like exploits that preceded it. Hands thrust across bodies with the exploratory drive of Marco Polo crossing into Asia, and legs seek to encircle and encompass all within their lithe reach while the women thrust at each other unendingly. But after so many displays of unerotic vaginal gymnastics, reverting to a simple sex show, no matter how effective, feels strangely unnecessary and out of place.
For some reason, though, I still can’t quite take my eyes away.
The show continues for five minutes or so until reaching a natural climax and then the girls help each other up and off of the stage, making way for the final act. The new couple comes out onto the stage, a tall Thai girl and the first and only man of the evening’s performance. She lays on the floor and he lays atop her, quickly mounting her, as they begin to have slow, empty sex before a quiet and curious crowd.
“This isn’t as good as the lesbians,” whispers the girl next to me. ”They don’t look like they’re having fun at all. They just look… bored.”
The listless humping continues for a few moments before shifting gears and regaining the rapt attention of the room. Without halting his steady humping motions, the man shifts onto his knees and lifts his partner’s legs over his own and holds her tightly by both shoulders with his strong hands. And then, with one steady motion, he jerks forward and upwards simultaneously, and suddenly she’s now in the air above him. His muscular legs are planted firmly and hold them both in place over the dim stage.
Throughout every feat of sexual acrobatics, the couple continue their mechanical sexual motions, though it comes across practically as an afterthought to the real performance. Standing up a little taller, he leans back slightly while lowering his partner to a near-perpendicular angle and holds her gently in this position, parallel with the stage, for just a few seconds.
And then he flips her.
In what seems like a single motion, he takes her legs and she rotates the full 180 degrees using his member as both pivot and anchor. Once secured into position, her legs tighten around his back and lock into place which allows him to let go. For several moments she hovers there in midair, locked into place by her own legs and his remarkably muscular groin, which not only keeps her secure but continues to thrust constantly through the entire act.
The show continues like this for a few minutes more. There’s never even a hint of love, passion or even middling interest between the two, but I suppose anyone seeking those three things would put “Bangkok Patpong show” somewhere quite low on their list of places to look. It is an astonishing — if mildly disturbing — show of human agility and endurance, though. And it’s almost hypnotically compelling.
Our curiosity about what could possibly follow the lovers is quickly satisfied when the “lovers” exit the stage and are replaced without a beat by the original (and least impressive) ping-pong girl. The rest of the group is at least curious enough to stick around a bit longer and see if we’d missed anything, but this non-stop assault on the senses has gone on for well over an hour and mutated into a non-stop assault on my bladder, forcing me to dart for the nearest toilet.
The men’s bathroom is immediately visible, located in the back of the venue in the direction the girls have been entering and exiting from. It’s only as I start to relieve myself in the nearest urinal that I discover that the toilet isn’t in the direction of the room the girls have been coming from and escaping to — it is the room. As I pee, a naked girl, wearing only flip-flops walks by me casually and heads out into the main room. Zipping up, I notice a second back room, located off the back of the men’s room. Backstage is often not as conveniently located as one might hope, but having it located off the back of the men’s room has to be a global low for performers.
Outside, the others are out of their seats and ready to go. Not just ready — a few of them seem to be in a profound state of distress.
“Same ping-pong act as before?” I presume.
“No,” one of the girls says, disgusted. ”The ball bounced off the stage sideways and hit my leg!”
That’s the problem with this kind of spectacle: There’s a very fine line, and easily crossed, where entertainment irreversibly changes into perverse trauma. Slightly shell-shocked, our group breaks out into the humid Bangkok night and silently jump into the nearest cabs.
