Bright Lights, Big Titties

Bangkok in all its raunchy, romantic, and respectable splendor

Faux neon and tits flash in the dark night as arms extend in all directions to entice potential customers and swat away the heat panting in all our ears like a hot-and-heavy lover.

Flashing billboards of cowgirls and curvaceously twirling silhouettes wrapped around poles flash to the left and then to the right, lights changing from pink to green, turquoise to green. Bright signs decorate go-go bars from the tip to tail of the street, advertising the first-floor coquetry of buildings whose upper-story windows remain shadowed in nocturnal slumber.

View of Soi Cowboy across the street at night.

Women caught in fishnet tights, sporting G-strings, beaded bra-tops, and plaid school-girl skirts flash teeth adorned with braces, their bits jiggling as they jauntily hustle men into clubs; their stilettos pierce the pavement, the click of their heels inaudible over the boom of the base and the riffs of the electric guitars that run out of the bars onto the street. The women sway with a straight face, sit with a pout, and twirl with a smile—the joy in their gaze as real as their fake eyelashes and double-D breasts.

The air is dank and the smells coming up from the street grates are danker. Time’s minced up muddied debris into small pieces that blend in, almost seamlessly, with the celebratory, colorful confetti now being stamped into the street. A dead bird is kneaded into the pavements like a pressed flower, its feathers and carcass contorted and smushed earlier by the hundreds of daytime car wheels. Its abstract form lays unassuming, camouflaged, nearly consumed by decay in the otherwise lively metropolis.

It’s 12:17 a.m. on January 1^st and this roughly 150-meter-long street, known as Soi Cowboy, is cloaked in a hue of magenta. A prime tourist and expat draw, indeed, albeit drastically smaller in size and lacking in the level of debauchery that Nana Plaza (also in Bangkok) or Patong Beach (in Phuket) boasts. What this small soi¹ lacks in size, though, it makes up for in big shock-value and blinding-light intensity. On any given night, it’s alive with women, ladyboys, and flocks of on-lookers. Soi Cowboy carries the legacy of American G.I.s’ presence in its name,² and those same G.I.s, now white-haired and birthing beer guts, still walk, sip, and shuffle along the street shoulder-to-shoulder with all the tourists who walk and gawk. Some, like us, walk simply because it exists; others, because it offers what they’re desperately looking for on a short 24-hour layover or a long stint alone in a big city.

Out the backside of Soi Cowboy and down a parallel street, people flow like a river. We enter the current and surrender to the rippling crowd, Brooks’ hands on my hips, mine outstretched to soften the blow of the bobbing and boisterous bodies in front of me. As we shuffle along, past crowded bars that look like open-air dioramas of idealist nightclubs, our ears are assaulted by competing musical vibrations. Song after song blasts and crashes against the next—as if God were turning a radio dial at lightning speed, never ceasing to rest on a certain song or station.

Street vendors call and people cheer.

We pant along in the intoxicating heat and frenzy of celebration. Spring rolls rumble in the deep frier. Pad Thai sits in banana-leaf boats. Ice melts around glass bottles of Leo, Chang, and Singha. Pre-rolls are lined up like soldiers at the ready.

It’s two hours into 2023 and Bangkok is ablaze with smoldering doobies and overflowing with libations presented in bottles, buckets, and red solo cups. Sweat shimmers like liquid crystals on all our skin under the street lights.

A Chinese tourists’ knees bend in his inebriated state like a deflated tube man outside a car dealership. His wife screams as he kisses the pavement with the force of an elephant’s foot meeting the ground.³

Giggles, gagging, hurling, and hollers ring in the air as Bangkok continues its New Year’s bender.

The roti man—my Bangkok roti man—spins the dough between nibble fingers that move quicker than a hummingbird’s wings. The dough makes contact with the menage of oils on the hot griddle and bubbles up before he folds the gold-brown dough to encase caramelized bananas in now-crispy goodness.

After a snack of two rotis, some Pad Thai, and some spring rolls, we find an escape out of the crowd and back into the semi-open streets to score a tuk-tuk home. We walk arm in arm, feet stepping carefully to avoid uneven ground and piles of questionable liquids, smiling in our shared knowledge that we’re soon to succumb to the sleep that’s started to fog our vision.

Earlier, when it was still 2022 and the sun had yet to set to reveal the bright lights and big titties of Bangkok, we meandered through neighborhoods of color-faded buildings wrapped in a cacophony of vines and telephone wires. The city wires overtake poles; they wrestle one another like a cluster of air-suspended black snakes and hang like streamers in quiet alleyways as if decorating a party-ready hallway. Walking past a cluster of wires trussed together, I catch the occasional worker scaling a bamboo ladder in flipflops and a neon vest to add in another line or tinker with one end of a wire on the narrow sidewalk with a pair of pliers.

Cement, rubble, peeling paint, and potted plants that flower despite the intense heat decorate the narrow corridors roofed by overhangs and umbrellas. Tiled walkways transform into balance beams of cement as the sidewalk cracks and ripples, as if the city were breathing with each pressing moment. Men sit in pairs in shop windows, legs crossed and fingers toying with lit cigarettes. Cats doze, outstretched, on vacant, tarp-covered vendor carts and pace on top of striped awnings, meowing for attention and a potential morsel.

Market workers hauling wheelbarrows filled with flora, fauna, and vegetable scraps mush along in waders and stiff plastic aprons on slick pavement. Stacks of onions; bouquets of purple, white, pink, and orange wrapped in last week’s news; and old ladies sitting with their aprons on, plucking chili peppers and chatting enter our field of vision.

Section of the agriculture and flower market.

The humidity piles on the skyline, where skyscrapers and stupas coexist, and presses down on the chests of all the city slickers. We walk through a labyrinth of streets, past street vendors, storefronts, and shops nestled in a secret maze. We scale narrow steps divided by a solid white or yellow line and walk along overpasses to the MRT and BTS,⁴ which—always—leads into an air-conditioned mall and then back out into the throngs of commuters. (Oh, the Bangkok malls: the epicenters of shopping, food, curated experiences, and heat relief.)

Motorbikes that look like they’ve gone without a tire and oil change since the 1950s chug along the crowded city streets, their handlebars gripped by leathered hands and their front baskets full of plastic bag-wrapped goodies en route to who knows where. Tuk-tuks jockey with cars, SUVs, taxis, mopeds, and pick-up trucks along landscaped medians and under daffodil-yellow arches decorated with the King’s portrait and the horizontal red-white-and-blue stripes of the Thai flag. Honks punctuate the air and fade as we zig-zag down side sois to seek noodles, crispy pork, dumplings, and Thai tea—any tasty morsels and cold refreshments to keep us fueled and cool in our never-ending journey through the vast network of Bangkok’s streets.

My first time in any city is always a blur. The sensory overload stops me in my tracks and makes me jump with surprise all the same. And Bangkok, with all its chaos and sensory overload—oh, baby! The city seems to carry me along and wring me out like a wet rag as I allow my senses to be delighted and assaulted by the newness. It’s glorious. It’s exhausting. Sometimes, after hours in the heat, I find myself sleepwalking to cope, walking and walking until I find myself in a blast of Bangkok mall AC. A reset. Revived, I bravely re-enter the heat in my pursuit of the city’s secrets.

The first time I visited Bangkok was during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, a time when I expected the city to either be vibrating with the impending excitement of the new year or just hustling and bustling in indifference, since my New Year’s isn’t the Thai New Year.⁵ What we encountered, instead, was something in between. In the days leading up to New Year’s (and thereafter until January 3rd), the city took a series of deep breaths, with certain sois taking complete catnaps. Market stalls closed. Families went away on holiday; a lot of the locals traveled north to Chiang Mai to escape the city’s heat and relish in the coolness of the north (pre-burning season). Businesses took a much-needed reprieve, similar to the ebb and flow in the hustle and bustle during the holidays in the States. Thanks to the city-to-country migration of a lot of the local workers, quiet pockets in an otherwise bustling city were created. In many ways, I got to experience Bangkok at a beautiful in between time, where we were able to pop in and out of the madness of the city pace and take it all in stride.

Recently, when I returned to Bangkok for a quick 72-hour jaunt, no catnaps were happening. In fact, we discovered more sites of liveliness and crowds during our recent weekend in the Sukhumvit and surrounding neighborhoods than we did when we were there for our previous week-plus stay. We stumbled upon a new food market, serving mostly locals on their lunch break. Hands down some of the best moo dang with noodles, wantons, and broth I’ve had all trip: porky, shrimpy, umami-y, spicy. (I’m daydreaming of another bowl as I write this…)⁶ As we slurped, we sweat in the covered warehouse market and then returned to the streets to sweat some more. Walking around in the blazing sun confirmed a recent fact I learned: Bangkok is the hottest city.⁷ Yep, the city and the heat were definitely alive and well enough to suffocate us. There was no room to breathe, no place to take a reprieve, except for the king-sized bed in our air-conditioned hotel room.⁸

We packed a lot into three days—and we had to. We were tasked with showing our visiting friends around. On the docket: the usual must-see temples and markets and all the food we could eat. So, there we were: Brooks, Joe, Harry, me, and the heat. We hiked around with the heat sitting on our shoulders and clinging to our backs. It weighed us down as we traversed uneven city blocks and paced around Wat Arun, also known as the Temple of Dawn. A 100-Baht fan was the only thing that saved me as I stood their squinting up at the sunlight reflecting off the white tiles of the massive, decorative stupas and scaled the nearly 45-degree inclined steps to get a view over the Chao Phraya River.

One angle of Wat Arun. (Check out that tile work!! A beautiful mosaic!)

After a quick trip across the river, we arrived at Wat Pho to see the large, gold, reclining Buddha and hear the meditative dropping of the Baht in the metal bowls that line the walls of the intricate, mural-painted enclosure. We enjoyed spicy pork-neck soup and rice at Jodd Fairs market, finishing off with taro ice cream to cool the palette. Then, we took the MRT to Chatuchak weekend market to comb through the many stalls and to ogle at the knock-off, raunchy tees. The next day, we returned, to see the market and it was nearly double—nearly triple—in size! Turns out, in the daylight, all the inner maze-like stalls open. (Bangkok, you’re just full of delightful surprises!)

A peek at Reclining Buddha in Wat Pho.

Naturally, once the sun set, we had to take a peek at Soi Cowboy (again) to view the magical lights and feel the heart-pumping music. We wandered until night settled completely, kicking its feet up without a care in the world. On Khao San Road—a popular place for backpackers, with shops, food stalls, and bars—we enjoyed Leos over ice next to a mediocre fan and then another round inside a Thai bar. Eventually, we piled into a tuk-tuk with a driver who sported a red to yellow ombré ponytail and blasted Backstreet Boys and ABBA through red-white-and-blue VIP speakers as he floored the gas pedal and tore off into the night, us scream-singing at the top of our lungs. The joy of tuk-tuk rides in Bangkok truly cannot be matched by those in any other province in Thailand.

And then there was the night at Rajadamnern Stadium, one of the world-renowned boxing stadiums and a hallmark of Muaythai, for what was dubbed “Knock Out Night”. Punches and kicks were thrown with cobra-like accuracy. Blood trickled from eyebrows. Fighters were carried out of the ring on stretchers, surrounded by ceremonial bows and applause.

The baritone of the announcer’s voice, the cheers, the sheen of the oil on the fighters’ rippling and tattooed skin that shone in the stage lighting, the rhythmic walking and movements that complimented the melody of the traditional Thai music played by the live band—it was all invigorating. And humbling. And beautifully punctuated by marks of respect and reverence.

View from our seats at the muaythai fight. It was an amateur fight, and, since it was “Knock Out Night”, there was a performative, choreographed element to the fights, especially in the last round, to truly deliver on the KO promise.

All rounds start with the playing of the traditional music as the fighters stretch and circle the ring in a rhythmic pacing that mirrors a form of walking meditation. Before fists or kicks are thrown, the fighters bow and lightly fist bump. The refs shout directions and warnings in Thai and the music continues to play as the fighters danced around the ring. One round was a South African fighter versus a Thai fighter. The South African fighter, noticeably a few years—perhaps a decade—older than the Thai fighter was less oiled and less lean than his younger competitor; however, once they started moving with dynamic power and speed, the Thai fighter took so many punches to the face that his eyebrow opened up, creating a fault line across his face that dripped red down the right side of his face and onto the mat. Despite his injury, he continued on, his kicks just as sharp, the grimace on his face just as fierce.

More punches were thrown. More blood hit the mat. Dings, bows, tapped fists, kicks. Soon, the Thai fighter was down on the mat being checked by the medic, who ruled he could not go on.

The South African fighter was immediately on his knees, bowing. Just kneeling and bowing. Hugging his competitor and bowing. The reverence for his competitor and his admiration for his strength and determination stirred up something within me. So, there I was: crying at a muaythai fight, completely in awe of the mutual respect, the reverence, the ceremony of it all.

Bangkok, in all its raunchiness and grittiness, is cloaked in a reverence and beauty unlike any other city. From the humbleness of the muaythai ring to the organized chaos of the agriculture and flower markets to the shock value and high energy of the red-light streets and open-air markets, there is a coexistence the city concocts in what can only be described as an expansive pressure cooker. Love and lust, combat and compassion, hard work and relaxation, seriousness and whimsy ooze out of every action that occurs in those city streets. Each time I visit, I find myself wading through another layer, another level, compressed into the chaos all the same. I leave exhilarated, spinning in a delirium, and already thinking about the next time I can return. I grow more in awe and overwhelmed each time I visit; I find myself taken aback yet, for some reason, still leaning in closer to get a good look at the grimy glory of it all. The makings of the most interesting city in the world? Perhaps…

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1. For those of you who are just reading my posts now, soi means “street” in Thai.

2. Soi Cowboy, one of Bangkok’s red-light and entertainment streets, is sandwiched between Sukhumvit Soi 21 and Soi 23 (aka Asoke Road). Here’s the origin story of its name (in a nutshell): “In 1977 [an]…African American, and retired U. S airman, T. G. Edwards, opened a new bar in what was then little more than a quiet back street. The street was dubbed Soi Cowboy by Bangkok newspaper columnist Bernard Trink (The Night Owl). This was due to the large cowboy hat permanently on Edwards’ head, and the fact he named his first bar, unsurprisingly, the Cowboy Bar” (The Oasis Soi Cowboy). 

“Soi Cowboy Bangkok – 5 of Your Questions Answered.” The Oasis Soi Cowboy, 9 Nov. 2020, https://oasissoicowboy.com/soi-cowboy-bangkok-5-of-your-questions-answered/. 

3. New Year’s was particularly crazy in Bangkok because, just days before, China opened up their borders, allowing its citizens to start traveling again. Overnight, Bangkok was flooded with Chinese tourists; and, since it had been a while since they traveled, they were noticeably going “hard” (as the kids say).

4. The subway (MRT) and skytrain (BTS): two forms of public transit in Bangkok.

5. Thai New Year, known as Songkran, occurs in April (this year on April 13^th and will be celebrated for a couple days thereafter). Thailand used to follow just the Thai lunar calendar, which marked the New Year as April 1st. The lunar calendar is 543 years ahead of the Gregorian (Common Era) calendar, marked by the day the Buddha died and entered nirvana. Sometime between 1888 and the early 1940s, Thailand revised their calendar system and adopted the Thai solar calendar, which is in line with the Gregorian (Common Era) calendar, and they started observing New Year’s on January 1st while also continuing to celebrate traditional Thai New Year, Songkran, in April. So now, Thailand operates on two calendars: one for day-to-day functioning and global congruity (solar) and one for religious holidays (lunar). All this to say: While we were celebrating the change from 2022 C.E. to 2023 C.E. at the stroke of midnight on January 1^st, the Thais were observing the switch from 2565 B.E. to 2566 B.E. (Buddhist Era).

6. No photo, sorry. (You know it’s that good when you don’t take a photo. Come to think of it, I haven’t taken a lot of food pictures in Thailand… Yeah, the food is that good!)

7. Bangkok is the hottest city, not because it holds the record for the hottest recorded temperature, but because it is consistently the hottest temperature-wise year-round.

8. Ah, a five-star hotel room: a nice, surprisingly affordable, splurge that we truly enjoyed on our little weekend getaway.