Pattaya's worse Bar is that godawful large Naklua bar complex

Pattaya's worse bar is not a single bar but the entire beer bar complex on Naklua Road across from Barracuda Bar.

 Barracuda Bar for that matter is an excellent bar whereas the beer bar complex across from it should be avoided at all costs. 

What do you hate the  most about some beer bars?  False advertising?  Duplicity? A complete disregard of its customers?  A bad mamasan?  You will find all of these negatives and much more in this beer bar complex.

Let's start with false advertising?  First off the best looking, most entertaining, and most engaging women in this complex are not women at all.   They are lady boys and this complex has more than its fair share of them.  Now we are not about to come down on lady boys or come out for them either so if it's lady boys you are after, then come here by all means for you will have come to Naklua's Lady Boy Mecca.  However, those sinsational slender showy dancers you spot taking center stage at all the bars here are not ladies at all. 

Now let's talk about duplicity.  Let me describe several incidents.  I once met this very cute bar girl who was working in one of the bars here in the back row.  She smiled at me as I walked by and asked me if I wanted a drink in her bar.  Well, several drinks later I asked her if she wanted to go with me and she said:  "I cannot.  I am too busy tonight, but I can tomorrow night."  By this time it must have been midnight.  There was not a Western guy in sight who seemed interested in her, and I highly doubted someone was coming back for her after midnight.  And then I spotted the real boyfriend.  There was a young Thai guy behind the bar who was doing absolutely nothing other than to play games on his cell phone.  Obviously that was who she was going home with.

Incident two is actually two very similar incidents.  On two occasions I was buttonholed by the mamasan of the bars in this complex and told how much better the girls in her bar were than everywhere else in Pattaya and how she would not allow her girls to leave the bar for less than 1000 baht short time.  Well, let me tell you, the girls from several of the bars over on Soi 18 were sure as hell leaving with me for 500 baht short time and 1000 baht long time.  But this was right after Christmas when many plain jane beer bars in Pattaya were hiking their bar fines up to 500 baht in order to take advantage of the temporary oversupply of male tourists.   Even when I told the mamasan's that I lived in Naklua full time and that I damn well knew the going rate was 500 baht short time for beer bar girls, the mamasans did not bulge.

This is because of the concept of face.   Both mamasans had lied to me assuming I was your typical ill informed tourist and in fact both had programmed themselves into thinking all Western guys were brain dead clueless idiots who had no idea of what the real price of anything was that even my telling them where I lived and how long I have lived there didn't change their minds.  I was white.  Therefore I was a tourist.  Therefore I was stupid enough to pay anything they asked.  Then after out of sheer exasperation when I produced my Thai driver's license to show them that I actually lived here and that I really knew the real prices of many things, they held to their original theories that I was still a green tourist who would be quite happy to pay twice as much for women than the actual price really was.  They were Thai after all, I'm sure they had reasoned and therefore they knew everything and were never wrong.  So instead of working something out with me on basis of a 500 baht short time price or 1000 baht long time, they'd rather not make any money whatsoever, thus proving they had been correct all along even if it meant a great deal poorer.  After all, if they were doing this to me, one could assume they were doing it to most other customers as well.

The Mamasans were meddlers who had no business trying to control the price their girls would receive for their services.  So while  on the subject of bad mamasans I can remember one mamasan who asked me to buy her a soft drink when I brought my girlfriend into her bar.  Now normally it makes good business sense when dealing with a new customer to say to him, "Welcome to my bar.  Here, let me buy you a beer."  in fact two mamasans running bars in Pattaya had been doing exactly that and had bought me a lot more than one beer on numerous occasions.  But I sure winded up buying a lot of beers in their bars becoming loyal customers of both women, and not because they had the prettiest girls in town, because they didn't, but because both mamasans were very cool ladies.  And in one Naklua bar in particular the Thai woman bar owner had been good for buying me free drinks on numerous occasions.  What all three Thai women were telling me, was, "Look Jack. We are so glad to have you as a customer in our bars, let us just show you a token of our appreciation."

But there's two other incidents I just feel like I have to mention here.  One night I was having a beer with one of my pals in one of the bars in this complex when I spotted a showy girl dancing in one of the nearby bars.  I kept looking over at her, got eye contact with the woman, and then made a sign with my hands that I would soon be coming over to her.  My drinking buddy and I finished our beers, paid our bins and went over to this other bar.  By this time the girl I had singled out was over eating some rice with a couple of her friends just inside the bar.  I started talking to her and then my friend and I took seats at the bar and ordered two beers.  Suddenly I felt a woman's arms around me from behind and I figured it had to be her.  But it wasn't.  It was a lady boy working her bar who was coming onto me.  A few moments later the lady boy took a bar stool next to mine and asked me to buy her a drink.

About two weeks later a friend and I had come into the bar complex and walked by a bar when a pretty girl called out to me.  She was smiling directly at me, and even though she was a pretty girl she was far from being beautiful.  So my friend and I sat down at her bar and ordered two beers.  The girl then immediately pulled a bait and switch by going over to the opposite end of the bar as another woman, who was downright ugly came over to me. 

All my friends and I now avoid this entire complex like the plague.  We can only advise all those reading this column to avoid spending even a single baht in this entire complex.  Instead go across the street to Barracuda Bar.  Or go up Naklua Road just two blocks to our top rated "Girl Bar".  Or venture up the street a little further and turn left on Soi 18 and try out the Leo Bar or down a little further T.J's or the Pen Bar or Malai Bar.  These are some of our favorite bars in the area but there's plenty of others too we just simply haven't been hanging out in.  Try them out if you like but whatever you do stay out of that large beer bar complex on the East side of Naklua Road.