Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich

BANGKOK, Thailand -- We could only pursue the bar girls in the early evening, before they began working, but not too early because they'd still be crashed out from some romantic, miserable or naughty-kinky pre-dawn tryst that defied description -- especially to two mischievously grinning authors.

Yes, this would be more than mere journalism.

This would be a Book, enshrining the unimaginable secrets of why Bangkok lures foreign men who cannot resist falling in love -- really in love -- with a bikini-clad (or unclad) high-heeled angel as she dances atop her roadside carnival stage.

Co-author Dave Walker had a mad gleam when he first spoke of collecting the best of the weird love letters which are sent to Patpong's bar girls from foreign men all over the world.

To balance such a profound literary collection, I suggested interviewing the bar girls as well, to hear what they think about all this desperate international lust, all these urgent jet aircraft arrivals, all these farang faces squeezing out breathtaking emotions backed up by big chunks of international cash transfers, heart-to-heart and bank-to-bank.

This would be the birth of,

"HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews

Despite the sensationalism of such a topic, our aim was actually serious: to use the thread of falling in love to tell the larger story of Bangkok's bar girls, including their motives, marriages, finances, the problems of AIDS, drugs, suicide, society and other woes, and what goes on in the minds of the foreign men and Thai women involved.

The best way for such a book was to have them tell it in their own unguarded words.

Getting a hold of real love letters -- which would wax eloquent enough to display the euphoria of passion and the ravages of despair -- would prove difficult.

But by haunting the bars and all-night restaurants, we eventually found our way past the gaudy crowd of lecherous nomads and baht-faced babes and entered a world where true love was being tugged out of the bars and into peoples' lives.

Amid the degradation, hysteria and hedonism, bar girls and their foreign customers were sometimes -- not often, but occasionally -- allowing themselves to fall in love.

This was grueling labor especially when the blaring disco-speak of, "I HATE MYSELF FOR LOVING YOU," would smear everything into inscrutable fleshy rituals.

Worse, bar girls would refuse to turn over their hard-earned love letters until they were very sure who we were, why this great poetic collection of letters and interviews would be cherished by historians and biographers throughout the ages and why we kept grinning uncontrollably.

Reading other peoples' mail is shameless, immoral and an invasion of privacy -- things which Dave and I absolutely refused to do.

Reading love letters to Bangkok's ladies of the night fortunately presented no such problems because these were letters written to bar girls who, by definition, had placed themselves in the public domain.

To be sure, we checked with several of Bangkok's international lawyers and even the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Article 71, concerning correspondence.

Though that article deals with letters written by "prisoners of war" held by a "detaining power," it was assuring to know that reading other peoples' letters to bar girls, if not allowed by the Geneva Conventions, was not forbidden by any of its articles.

There were other key precedents as well.

For example, who reads all the mail sent to the president of the United States?

Who reads letters to Santa Claus?

Obviously, other people.

These fine legal points allowed us to at least peer at the letters these women were by now holding up to us and, in their own expressive way, shouting out the contents anyway.

We also knew if we were accused of reading other peoples' mail, we could always explain that much of it was actually yelled aloud to us, thus negating any sleaze on our part which, of course, had to be negated at all times if this book was ever to get written.

Someone once said there are two places a person can never hide: in bed and in their letters.

And here we suddenly had -- on expensively embossed, personalized stationary, or on cheap ripped-out notebook paper -- foreigners from Holland, France, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, England, America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere pouring out their feelings in unique and often tender ways.

Of course, amid the thousands of letters we eventually (were forced against our will to) read, there were big-mouthed louts, drunken nasties, indifferent playboys and others too superficial to connect with their primal Patpong feelings.

But amid the stacks, there were true gems of men's emotions which surprised and dazzled even the cynics who thought Patpong's bars never could truly inspire real love -- at least not beyond all night.

Interviewing the bar girls was equally complicated. First, we had to find ones willing to talk not only about the nuts and bolts of their job but also about the grander and often more painful, secretive regions of their hearts.

We chose English because most of their relationships with foreigners are conducted in English, even if broken, and the bar girls would usually have to be conversant to establish a rapport if deep love was to emerge.

When the women did tell us about their attempts at love and how they had decided to trust their customer's vows...well, most of it really breaks your heart because there is too much tragedy on that short street.

But sometimes they did find the man of their dreams, and were finally able to chance a try at living happily ever after.

The women also spoke of the whole maze of life as a bar girl.

One woman was a bar girl during the Vietnam War with Air America pilots.

A younger woman had just attempted suicide and was resisting a second try.

A professional pro was saving up for a house.

Another travelled the world as an anti-AIDS speaker yet still would make love without a condom if she needed the money.

Older ones said the younger generation of bar girls didn't plan for their future and just wanted to have fun despite the dangers.

They all spoke about romances they were having, or had, with foreign men and what such love really meant.

After about two-and-a-half years of working on this book, we turned to a Thai sociology professor, Dr. Yos Santasombat.

He surprised us with a lengthy prologue about how a lark for a foreigner walking on the wild side can sometimes strand him in a dizzying culture-twisting emotional nightmare.

We ended with an epilogue by Mrs. Pisamai Tantrakul, who runs a typing school, helps bar girls translate their letters and also gives them etiquette advice if they are about to fly to the West.

Mrs. Pisamai wrote about why some of them fail with their foreign boyfriends, while others do get married and succeed.

She also detailed some interesting statistics -- how many bar girls are "good girls" in the wrong place, how AIDS has drastically cut the number of love letters, etc.

I offer an introduction, trying to describe the imagery inside the bars and the complex behavioral knots which tie and untie each time a bar girl and her customer entwine.

Dave also weighs in with an insightful introduction about the pros and cons of dating bar girls.

An example of the dangers of collecting these letters came when Dave almost ran into the legendary Cuddlee Wuddlee, a letter-writer who uses that nickname for his bar girl.

The usually intrepid Dave said, "Once I walked into Goldfingers Bar and one of the girls said, 'Cuddlee Wuddlee is here! Cuddlee Wuddlee is here!' I had to flee."

Feedback from readers and reviewers has been good.

Many foreign and Thai men said they started reading it with a chuckle, but soon realized it was a wrenching, often sad tale of love, loss and hope.

Foreign and Thai women said what interested them was hearing bar girls tell about their real lives.

We are now looking for a film maker to turn this book into a TV documentary or full-length movie.

Fame?

Fortune?

Did Shakespeare get such thrills?



(I would like to take this opportunity to thank Peter "Make It Funny" Janssen for inviting me to write this column, and also thank the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand members whose letters we used in the book. You guys are real scribes.)



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Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based correspondent for international media who has reported from Asia since 1978.

His web page is located at http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent

and he may be reached by email: animists *at* yahoo *dot* com