“Did you ever dream of having as many girls as a rock star?” When you travel with us that dream will come true.”   The Man Tour’s advertisements promise a Shangri-la to its tour members where  women hit on them every time they venture out of their hotel..  But Shangri-la, that mythical and idyllic tropical paradise all real men dream about can only exist in our dreams even though I had heard on the best authority that the Man Tour’s visits to Thailand were the real thing and that it offered a money back guarantee to those not completely satisfied with their AROUSING experiences to cum.  Since all this was too good to be true–Shangri-la really can’t exist now, can it, we assembled our own special task force to find out.  First was Big Daddy, who owns Big Daddys Cabaret, a topless club at Fort Leonard Wood, who ever since he returned from the Man Tour’s previous trip to Thailand had gotten in the habit of replying to nearly every serious question with: “I don’t know about anything other than it’s X number of days until we are all going to Thailand.”  Accompanying Big Daddy would be Hawkeye, his able assistant and club D.J.  Rounding out our troupe was PlONe, the most gifted computer professional I’ve ever known, whose main job would be to keep the rest of us completely objective while collating the data from the more than  twenty other tour members. 

“American women are pigs”, Peter announced on the microphone as our mini bus took us from the Bangkok airport to our hotel.  Peter, an American citizen, who had just moved to Pattaya Beach, Thailand, then continued to explain the ins and outs of being picked up by Thai women.  We arrived at the hotel tired from having endured close to thirty hours of planes and airports.  Which meant that it was time for a couple of beers at the hotel bar.  This revitalized us into wanting to check out the city’s women.  A quarter of a mile from the hotel PlOne and I encountered Peter on a crowded sidewalk of street vendors selling everything from roasted insects to fake Rolex watches, not to mention all the bar girls hitting on us to join them at whatever close by bar they worked at.  The three of us opted for a beer garden where I ordered Heinekens for Peter and me.  Time to check out all the women in the place.  I must have gotten only half way though the large bar when a woman sitting alone smiled at me and motioned for me to join her.  I bought her a drink, then propositioned her before I had my Heineken half way down.  After all, there was no time to lose since I’d have to meet the rest of the group in an hour for the orientation dinner.  Walking out of the place while waving at my friends, I showed the girl my hotel key since she was bound to know all the short cuts to my Bangkok idyll. 

Somehow I managed to get us in and out of the hotel room and walk her back to the beer garden and still make it back to join the group just in time.  After having dinner, Joe, our tour leader took us to an area that resembled a large building with a court yard.  There were three levels.   Here there were a number of bars most of them open to the air and filled with attractive Thai girls, each one doing her damnest  to get our attention.  Upstairs we went into Hollywood,  a go-go bar where I had several beers.  Then the whole group of went to Carnival, another go-go bar up on the third level across from Hollywood.  The Mama San seated us in a group.  I never had the chance to as much as sip from my first beer before a pretty girl suddenly jumped into my lap and started kissing me.  She was cute and passionate so I payed her bar fine after which we walked to the hotel together.  That must have been a mile and a half walk during which she kept putting her arms around my waist. The girls do not expect payment before going with a man–“it’s all up to you,” the bar girls will often tell you so if you give them a tip or a cash gift plan on giving it to them when you want them to leave.  I had a hard time prying myself lose from this girl the next morning minutes before joining the group for breakfast prior to our going on the royal palace tour. 

Our next destination was Pattaya, which is a city with over 2,000 bars with its own ocean side beach two hours from Bangkok.  During the trip we’d return to Bangkok twice–once to fly to Cambodia for a 2 and a half day adventure there and the last time to catch our flight back to the states.  Twice I’d go back to the Carnival Go-Go bar.  Each time looking for the last girl I had taken back to the hotel to spend the night with.  Miss Passionate I would give way to Miss Passionate II, a tall beauty who I hated having to wake up at 5 a.m. to make my flight to Cambodia as she snored softly into my ear.  And then there was that last girl who wound up feeding me with chopsticks from her plate when my own food did not arrive in the beer garden next to our hotel.  God...I love these Thai women. 

But if Bangkok is terrific, Pattaya is the ultimate answer to a man’s dreams.  One of my meals cost just $2.50 at a nice restaurant while my date, and I sat with the group watching Thai dancing.  I remember leaving the hotel with my dinner date when we encountered two New York members of the tour. One of the guys had two women on his arm, while the other had just one.  They explained to me later that the girl who had been alone with one of the guys was disappointed with herself since she had lost face by not matching his friend who had two girls, not just one.  Twice attractive women would come up to me on the street and either start walking with me arm in arm or proposition me on the spot.  This on a street without a bar in sight.  And this does not even account for all those streets filled with outdoor beer bars and go-go establishments where one would encounter two hundred girls before walking one block. 

Pattaya is a man’s paradise.  There are offshore tropical islands I did not have a chance to visit.  A traditional Thai massage costs just eight bucks for an hour and a half.  Then there’s places such as Sabailand which offer the Thai bath or soapie massage where fifty dollars gets you your choice from up to fifty girls who will drench your naked body and hers with warm soapie water while massaging you with every inch of her slick bod as you lie on one of those  little plastic swimming pool rafts .  I wound up taking my soapie girl out the next day for about fifteen hours and plan on seeing her when I return to Pattaya in October. 

In Pattaya a man has to work hard not to get laid.  Getting women is as Big Daddy put it “Like hunting in a zoo.”  And most of the women are slender with flat bellies, not fat like most American women cattle fed by a fast food diet. The girls ALWAYS  shower (and make sure you do too) before having sex and smell so so good.   Experiencing them is a trip to another dimension--a dimension of excellence.  Here women have traditional values where there’s respect for one’s elders and family.  And if many of the women are prostitutes most of them are not spending their earnings on drugs, instead  sending their money home to ensure a better life for their parents.  American women, as General Patton put it, “Do not know how to make a man feel like a man and they do not care.”  Some say General George Patton’s dead but I know differently. He’s 83 years old, but his real name’s John, and like the famous WWII general he’s relentless, having managed to get laid by two different women each day he was in Thailand.  Now that’s what I call showing respect to one’s elders. 

Our findings are–that Shangri-la, the land of magic, does exist and it’s in Thailand.  Twenty years ago I took another tour that included Bangkok, but Thailand took up only three days of the itinerary.  But our tour guides sure as hell took us to every shopping outlet, places where glass utensils were made, along with Jade decorative items and clothing, and at these places most of the women on the tour went wild, their eyes protruding with glee as they spent their husbands money for things they did not need. Of course our guide only took us to those places from which the owner of the touring company got kickbacks so he could pay for his two Rolls Royces back in Hong Kong.  On the Man Tour little was said about shopping.  We rode elephants, watched crocodile and poisonous snake shows, went on canal cruises, watched Thai boxing, doing all those things that appeal to the little boy in us. PlOne, Hawkeye, Big Daddy, and I  have all sent for Thai foreign language courses on CD since we are all going back in October.  This time I’m spending a month there.  As for everybody else, experiencing the Man Tour could very well be more than the trip of a lifetime, it could very well change forever the way you look at both women and the world you live in.