Master negotiator (1)

'Get out of the way!'

That was farang C. He and bad-boy Kew, my Thai friend who is aged in his mid-20s but finds it hard to grow up, were wrestling in the back seat of a taxi.

We were kerb-crawling, as the Americans say. Farang C, who was drunk, had expressed an interest in sleeping with a girl, but did not want to spend much money.

Kew, a former bar boy in Pattaya, was keen to impress upon my friend farang C how clever he was at negotiating with girls of the night.

When he worked in Pattaya, foreign and Thai women alike had 'off-ed' him, so he knew how these things worked.

He gave the driver directions, and we headed off to Wong Wian Yai in Bangkok, where girls of the night ply their trade from the sidewalk (along with Pin Khlao bridge, outside Thammasat University, and various other spots).

The taxi knew where to go, as customers in search of female company had taken him there before.

The girls gathered in groups of four or five, spread over a 100m stretch. Each time we came upon a small group, Kew, who was on the driver's side, told the taxi to stop. Then he would lean across the back seat and call to the girls out the window.

Farang C, who was sitting closest to the girls, could not see them, because Kew's body was blocking the view. Kew had to lean across farang C to bargain with the girls from the window on his side.

'I can't see if they are pretty or not, because his body is in the way,' he complained.

Some girls came over for a better look at who was in the taxi. Others just called out from where they were sitting.

Kew negotiated over prices, and the number of girls. At each stop, he asked for two girls, and offered them B450-500, which included the tariff for a short-stay hotel.

'Some girls will only let you do it once, or you have to pay again,' said Kew.

I assume that is why he asked for two girls. Maybe he wanted to sleep with one, too. He can't possibly have thought I was interested.

In the end, he found two girls who agreed on his price. Kew took us to a short-stay hotel, which I had recalled seeing many years before, but only in passing.

The taxi took us up an off-road ramp, and into the back of the hotel. It stopped, and farang C, the girls and Kew went in to the office.

Five minutes later, they were back. 'We don't serve foreigners,' said the owner, a man in his 50s told us. He came out accompanied by the others.

We left. Traffic on the ramp is one way, so we kept going the same way we came up.

It took us past many small, squalid-looking rooms. Outside their room, customers can park their car. If they don't want their vehicle to be recognised, they can draw a large curtain across the vehicle to conceal it.

now, see part 2