karaoke: thai style

teaching always seems to get me in the mood to do anything and everything besides teaching, so i rarely turn down any sort of invite (provided it doesn't involve little kids or "e is for egg" or heads or shoulders or knees or toes...) so i don’t hesitate in agreeing to meet my coworker friend for a drink downtown tonight. i get lost all over the streets of pattaya on my motorbike en route to meeting him in sunee plaza, enjoying my self-guided tour of the city and stubbornly refusing to call tom for further directions until i at least made it to the landmark i was looking for. a night of family fun on the beach quickly turns to a night of mischief-making in the boys-only parts of town. we enjoy drinks around sunny plaza from the almost stadium-style seating of the small bars, making people-watching the principal form of entertainment. and there is no lack of interesting people to watch. the gay scene in pattaya is hilariously identical to the sex tourism scene of the rest of the city: fat, bald, open-shirted farangs sporting googly-eyes and goofy smiles as they stroll the streets clutching the hands of their young, slim thai companions.



my friend insists this random weeknight is a good excuse as any to make my first-time visit to a thai karaoke bar. we choose j.j’s karaoke, and i’m excited for the rumored selection of more manly-looking guys, as karaoke bars supposedly offer a classier version of the go-go bars to a clientele of predominantly straight women. but right away it’s not quite what i’m expecting… these boys are by no means unattractive. on the contrary, their attractiveness is actually the problem! as row upon row of bored looking boys shuffles out onto the stage, i am immediately struck with one glaring observation: their hair is perfect! i’m almost embarrassed that i hadn’t bothered to throw on a little makeup or put some sort of product in my hair. while i had come straight downtown still in my beachdress with sand in my sloppy bun, these boys had clearly spent the previous couple hours having some quality alone time with their designer texturizer and ceramic flatirons. i am suddenly all-too-aware that the ladyboy next to me is probably horrified by my lack of effort. but her perfectly-mascara-ed eyelashes and unbelievably silky man legs brushing up next to me are more expected. straight boys with a love affair for their hairstyles is something that hadn’t really occurred to me, even here in thailand. my friend explains that gay or straight, male or female, or somewhere in between, getting your hair done is just as legitimate of a nightly activity as beer and poker night for the guys back home. in the company of these immaculately-groomed boys, who could teach the queer eye for the straight guy crew a thing or two about perfectly-polished man-looks, it is very clear i’ll never be able to raise my personal grooming regimen to the scale of their’s. even so, i add late-night multiple hour session at the stylist to the top of my list of things to do once payday rolls around. this is clearly a thai “cultural experience” i need to have…