The Gambler's Den

Thailand, Pattaya,
25 Jan. 2011.

I flagg down a 125 cc Honda motorbike taxi, not being in the right mood to walk all the way to rowdy South Pattaya, telling the Taxista to bring me to the small Soi where the Dutch W***M*** is located, which is up front just another Go-Go Bar but once inside will turn out to be a sleazy wh*rehouse where it is not all that unusual to see girls going from Farang to Farang with real intercourse taking place...

Not that paid sex is what I am after, rather the back room where I have been told Miss Tuk, Phom Tilac Kheo from last year, spends most of her nights rolling dice and trying her hand at cards which she never told me during our more intimate sessions in her spacious room on Soi Bhukaow but then I suppose our minds where on a very different track in that part of our mutual past...

Big heavy curtains block any view from outside but the heavy swirl of humanity inside is quite obvious nontheless... young Thai girls hurry from table to table, most of them dressed in fluorescent bikinis, carrying trays laden with Foster beers, Down-Under is the norm here despite the Dutch name of this joint, trying hard to ignore all the depravity going on here, I follow the doorman to a small opening behind the bar, a staircase going up, a long corridor, a middle-aged Chinese man lounging on a rackety chair in front of a wooden door, the noices of excited men and women betray me behind there is the Gambler's Den...

Old feelings of Bangkok gambling joints, dark and dank, ill lit rooms, green clothed tables...

It all comes back to me from a misty past, Jamie and his gang of badies from the Krung Thep streets, all addicted to the game of dice, the roll of small sized cubic dices, hands full of Thai Baht and while the doorman knocks twice I turn around, trying hard to fight the urge, an urge I had vowed to leave behind...Tuk Or No Tuk...