For bar owners, bars work in the same way as at home. The owner is out to make a living. In Thailand, bars are owned by Thais and farangs. Most farang owners aim to support their lifestyle in Pattaya. Some succeed, but most don’t in the long term. It is often said that to make a small fortune in Pattaya from a bar, you should start with a large fortune. Anyway, for a visitor, this is not important.

Because bars in Pattaya employ prostitutes, they don’t work the same way at home. You don’t have to make any effort to have an attractive young lady give you some attention. On the contrary, you may find yourself fending them off.

Role of the Ladies

If you ask most farang bar owners if they consider themselves pimps, they will tell you they are not. This position is debatable, but that is what is being provided in bars.

For the bar owner, the ladies are there to earn them money. They do this by attracting customers to the bar. This is achieved by being present in the bar (if they are attractive) or through gentle (or sometimes playful aggressive) persuasion. Once in the bar, they encourage customers to stay as long as possible and buy drinks. This is achieved by them entertaining you using their womanly charms.

For the ladies, their aim is also to earn money. They achieve this through you buying them drinks, tips, bar fines, possibly monthly income from the bar, and providing escort services. Some of these will be explained shortly.

Check Bins

You will notice quickly that you are not required to pay for each drink as you get them. Instead, bits of paper are placed in a small pot before you. This is called a check bin. They are very convenient but not without risk.

Some bars will try to put extra drinks in your check bin, or bin for short. This is called padding. It would be best if you were not paranoid about this, as it is not overly common. You’ll quickly get to know where you need to be more careful. It is acceptable and advisable that you check what has been put in your bin from time to time.

Lady Drinks

As mentioned in an earlier section, bar girls derive part of their income from drinks bought for them by customers. These are known as lady drinks. How it works is that you buy a drink, and the bill is put in your check bin. The girl also gets a receipt for the drink, which she later exchanges for cash from the bar.

What sort of drink she gets depends on the bar and what she likes to drink. The drink may be in a small glass (a thimble would be a better description!) or the same drink that would be supplied to any customer. Go-go bars tend to be less generous with the size of the lady drink. Be warned that, in general, lady drinks cost more than your drinks. A ballpark figure would be about 140 Baht per drink, depending on what she drinks.

In some places, the ladies can be very pushy with lady drinks. Just remember that you are not required to buy them. A simple rule many people follow is that if a lady asks for a drink, she doesn’t get one. The better places to spend your time are those where the ladies do not ask for drinks.

Buying lady drinks is a good way of having fun. You will get attention from the lady that you are buying them for. You can have a harem of girls surrounding you if you don’t mind spending a bit of money. In go-go bars, you can have more fun with a lady for the price of a drink than with a lap dancer in our countries.

Be aware that buying a lady a drink in a go-go bar may not free her from dancing duties.

Tips

Another way that the ladies make money is through tips. Tips are expected for service and should be paid when you pay your bill. Generally, not a lot is required, and between 10 and 50 Baht is enough, depending on how long you remain in the bar. These tips are split amongst the ladies in the bar at the night’s end.

Some guys give tips directly to the girls. The tips are for various reasons; probably the most common one is that she gave some excellent attention to a guy in the bar. Other guys will provide tips for ladies in go-gos who put on a good show or just because they want to get her attention.

You may see people giving tips as high as 500 or even 1000 Baht!! You should avoid giving this much. To put things in perspective, a girl working in a shop in Thailand is lucky to earn 1500 Baht for working one week. The result of guys giving large tips is that the girls receiving the tips will be less likely to want to be bar fined. Why would she go with a guy if she can earn more collecting tips?

Bell ringing

Up a couple of grades from buying lady, drinks is ‘ringing the bell.’ In every bar, you enter you will see a bell. This has a particular purpose and has cost many newbies more money than they would like.

When a bell in a bar is rung, the bell ringer wants to buy everyone in the bar a drink. This includes all the customers and all the ladies. You’ll be surprised how many ladies can come out of the woodwork once a bell has been rung!!

In go-go bars, it can be a little less straightforward. Many have more than one bell. Usually, they are marked as to what they are for. A bell that only buys all the dancing ladies a drink is probably the most common extra bell.

Bar fines

So you have spent some time in a bar and bought a few drinks for yourself and a lady. You decide you like her and want to spend some time with her away from the bar. This is the time when a bar fine is required.

A bar fine is designed to compensate the bar for losing one of its workers. It’s not important if there is more to it than that, as it is a requirement if you want to take her away. In most cases, the bar fine is not open for negotiation. If you get a discount on the bar fine (that you agreed with the lady), you are probably taking money out of her pocket. That is perhaps not a good way of getting a good performance from her.

The bar fine is added to your check bin in a beer bar. You can either pay and leave with her or stay around for more drinks. It is up to you (you will hear this expression a lot in Pattaya.)

Usually, in a go-go bar, you are required to pay bar (i.e., pay the bar fine) for a lady as soon as you agree. She is then free to change into her street clothes.

Beer bars tend to have bar fines range from about 500 to 1000 Baht. Go-go bars charge more. In the Soi Soi Buakhao area, gogo bars charge from 800 Baht. This increases to up to 1500 Baht in Walking Street gogo bars. Many go-go bars have ladies who do special shows or temporary staff for which the bar fine tends to be higher. Also, during the peak season, many go-go bars raise their bar fines.

What to expect from a lady you have paid bar for will be discussed in a later section.

Mamasan

There is one position in a bar that you should be aware of. The role of a mamasan is to manage the ladies. This is more onerous in a go-go bar as she has to manage the dancers efficiently. She will know all the ladies, so she is an excellent person to seek if you have any special requirements that you are looking for on a particular night. An example is if you are looking for two ladies, she will know which ladies are prepared to do this. It is a good idea to compensate her for good service (e.g., buy her a drink.)

Hours of operation

You will always find bars open in Pattaya. The beer bars are open 24 hours a day. The only exception is on special holidays, election days, and other special events. Even during these times, you should be able to find somewhere to drink.

The go-go bars are a bit different. They close at about 3 am every night.

Some discos close at about 4 am, but others don’t get going until 3 am. These are great places to meet ladies without the need to pay a bar fine. This will be explained further in a later section.

If you are interested in how a beer bar complex looks, here is a short video. It was shot from the Cherry Bar in Soi 8 and gives a 360-degree view. It is a Windows media file.

Cherry Bar Video