‒In the program that was broadcast, the audio over the scene where J.J. produces a gun is different to the audio on the raw footage from that day,” said Gavin Hill, who produced and directed the eight (now) six (uh, now) seven eight-part mini-series. ‒When it comes to that particular scene the audio was, in my opinion, faked.”

Big Trouble in Thailand creator Gavin Hill

‒The audible reaction of the marines to J.J. with the gun is not genuine,” Hill said.

The audio swap is just one of many liberties with the truth Hill claims Vera has taken with a series that has enraged Thai officials and he’s taken to the Web to make his case that it’s not only not his fault, but that it was not his intent. On Internet message boards, blogs and in e-mail he is complaining far and wide that Vera broke earlier agreements, has froze him out of the editing and now is now threatening a lawsuit to silence him.

‒The edit taking place in London has been described (publicly) as ‘overly creative,’ and that’s by the executive producer,” Hill said. ‒It’s coming down to bashing the shows out as quickly as possible and we’re seeing the result.”

‘Creative Editing’

Among the many ‒creative” changes to the truth were falsely implying a woman who fell off her hotel

balcony was raped, intentionally mislabeling Pattaya’s foreign tourist police assistants are regular officers, showing nude dancing inside a Pattaya go-go bar despite a written agreement not to and ‒racist blurring,” or blurring the faces of foreigners who didn’t sign a release form but not Thais.

‒You’d have thought after the BBC/RDF ‒Queengate” affair that production companies and broadcasters would have cleaned up their act,” Hill said, adding he plans to lodge a complaint with Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulatory body. ‒I’m not sure if I will be the first producer to complain about his own TV series.”

With some of what’s been shown in the first five

episodes, Hill may have grounds for his complaint. Ofcom’s rules on ‒Harm and Offense” state that ‒factual programmes or items or portrayal of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience” and that ‒that views and facts must not be misrepresented.”

Hill said even the series’ opening monologue stating that 288 Britons were ‒killed’in Thailand last year break those rules. So does purposefully giving police volunteers the wrong title, as was done in Episode 5 with Pattaya Foreign Tourist Police Assistant Howard Miller.

In an Aug. 18 e-mail to Carrie Fletcher, head of production at Vera, Hill reiterated that Miller and other foreigners were only volunteers, not full police, and urged Vera to label them truthfully. Fletcher’s reply, the same day, vowed the company would.

‒The Thais are being slightly pedantic about misrepresenting the Brits as being actual ‘police,’ but if that is what they want then we are not in a position to argue if it might cause repercussions,” she said.

But with Hill now frozen out of the editing discussion, BTIT Executive Producer Dean Palmer changed it back the way he originally wanted.

Implied Rape

It’s a small point that even Hill admits Ofcom won’t really care much about. But they might be more interested in Episode 5′s story about a drunken Full Moon Party-goer supposedly raped after falling off her balcony when, in fact, she wasn’t.

As the woman is being transported to the hospital, the show cuts to Tourist Police Volunteer Louise Rawlings telling about another drunk woman who was, in fact, raped in her hotel after a Full Moon Party -- a year beforehand. The original edit of the show, Hill said, made it impossible to know who Rawlings was talking about.

‒I was asked to sign off on Vera Productions’ attempt to fabricate a storyline. There was no suggestion whatsoever she’d been raped on the raw material (of which I have copies) sent back to Vera for editing,” Hill said. ‒Vera then go further by editing in an interview I conducted with Louise who talks about an Australian who was raped, although the rapist was convicted and sentenced to ten years.”

‒I was horrified and protested,” he added. ‒As a result, they were forced to abort this attempt at falsification but still manage to get the facts wrong about the Australian girl not pressing charges. She did, helped by her father, and the man got ten years.”

For its part, Vera and Virgin Media are withholding comment on Hill’s claims. But even some media professionals who know Hill think he may be blowing the seriousness of what is, in the end, a very minor television show, way out of proportion and that the changes are not really that substantive.

“Yes, he is in dispute with the production company and I don’t think he should have let it get that far to be honest,” one colleage involved in some of the Thailand shooting said in an e-mail this week. “Even though they did screw around with the edit there were no serious breaches which would lead a viewer to the wrong conclusion.”

‒This kind of thing goes on all the time,” former BBC sound editor and Thailand blogger Richard Barrow wrote on his Paknan Web Forum. ‒I agree it is not good to dramatize something that could lead to an arrest. But then, at the same time, the Thai police shouldn’t have jumped the gun to arrest J.J. without checking the evidence.”

For Hill, however, it’s a matter of integrity, particularly when in cases, such as he did with Shane Wheatley, the former owner of New Living Dolls One, he promised that, if he were allowed to film dancers in the Walking Street go-go that no nudity would be televised, as it was in Episode 5. (See the 6:44 mark in the video below.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3Omd883rU0

As I speculated earlier, the women shown have found out they were on the Boob Tube and are not pleased.

It’s also why Hill is making well known that someoneuploaded the raw, uncut video of the gun scene involving jet-ski vendor Winai to YouTube. While Vera reportedly is threatening copyright and breach of contract lawsuits, it arguably gives Winai legal grounds for not only exoneration, but a criminal libel and defamation case against Vera.

‒Vera doesn’t like the release of any footage which shows how they doctored sound which contributed to a man’s arrest and imprisonment,” Hill said. ‒Now, whoever uploaded that video to You Tube did so in the public interest because I would imagine who ever did believes in professionalism, balance and fairness; and that factual entertainment shouldn’t be at the expense of factual accuracy. I would imagine they also believe that their credibility and that of the series is compromised by factual inaccuracy, attempts at fabrication, misleading information and the unnecessary dramatization of very real events.”

In a darkened editing suite in London, the final six episodes of ‒Big Trouble in Thailand” are slowly being pieced together. But the remainder of the reality miniseries that finally airs on the U.K.’s Bravo cable channel likely won’t be what creator Gavin Hill expected. Some might argue it never has been.

In truth, nothing about the eight-part series about Thai police and badly behaving Brits has gone according to plans, not Hill’s and certainly not those of the Thai bigwigs who months ago happily mugged with him for snapshots. The edited product is not the ‒Thai Cops” Hill claims he wanted to make and now Thai officials have gone into full witch-hunt mode, demonizing him, downplaying their involvement and doing all they can go discredit the show and bury the problems it highlighted.

Even officials in Pattaya, which so far has gotten off lightly, are promising that ‒heads will roll” after seeing a rough cut of Episode 3.

But should any what has unfolded over the past 11 days really have come as a surprise? Thais were never going to tolerate even remotely negative Western media coverage. And Hill’s own assertions that he never expected the reaction Episode 1 generated begs the question of not only how much he really understands Thailand, but whether he realized how little control over his pet project he really had.

‒I certainly regret any offense caused to the Thai authorities,” Hill told me in an interview this week. ‒Any offense caused was certainly not deliberate, although now -- with hindsight and having learned a lot -- I can see why it may have happened.”

Not Your Father’s ‘Cops’

It’s not hard to see why Thai police officials feel betrayed. They were pitched a spinoff of U.S. reality hit ‒Cops,” which follows officers on the beat, portrays them duly upholding the law and spending little time getting into the personal lives of the people they arrest. What they got was something totally different: a series that blatantly infers cops are crooked and that the justice system is not only slow, but only works for people with enough cash to pay their way out of trouble.

That type of thing simply isn’t done. There is no free press in Thailand. There’s not even free blogging, as was made painfully clear to me when I had my own blog and suffered physical attacks and death threats for writing the ‒truth.” How could Hill possibly think he could put out a show that pounds home the ‒truth” that Thai cops are corrupt? Or, for that matter, why did he think he could -- as he does in Monday’s Episode 3 -- criticize Thai authorities for letting a well-known con-man live in Pattaya simply by paying off law enforcement?

‒To think I could have made a western-style ‒Cops” series in Thailand … well, I must have been bonkers,” Hill wrote in a comment on my first ‒Big Trouble” story here. ‒I can’t begin to tell you what a challenge it was making this series for someone especially concerned -- to the point of going out of his way -- of not harming Thailand’s image.”

His claims of good intent don’t mesh with the final product, which definitely strays from the ‒Cops” model by delving deep into the lives of victims (and criminals), trying to put a heart-wrenching spin on their lives rather than simply focusing on law enforcement patrols as ‒Cops” does. That Hill maintains he was making ‒Thai Cops” makes you wonder if Bravo and Vera Productions, the film company partner that is editing the series, had their own ideas what the show should be.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWmv9o_14rE

‒I wasn’t making a probing, investigative documentary series designed to expose anything,” Hill said. ‒That was not the remit.  I was making a pro-police observational documentary series for a youthful demographic on a niche UK cable TV channel.

‒I haven’t been responsible for putting the show together in London,” Hill added. ‒I am interested in playing more of a role in that respect, in the future … if that’s possible.”

The Crackdown Begins

Earlier this week, the future, however, seemed somewhat in doubt. Hill told the Phuket Wan newspaper Sept. 14 that the Thailand Film Office sent a letter to Bravo asking that future episodes be canceled.

”I don’t know what’s going to happen now with the series,” he said. The Thailand Film Office has ”pulled all the releases and permissions that are required to complete the series.”

He has been told there is the likelihood of a complaint being made to the British embassy. At least one volunteer expat tourist policeman in Pattaya had also expressed concern.

In an interview with friend and freelance British journalist Andrew Drummond, Hill went further, saying he was not only being singled out by the Thais, but ostracized by his U.K. partners as well.

Meanwhile producer Gavin Hill, who was working for comedian Rory Bremner’s Vera Productions, said: ‒At the moment our relationship has come to an end.  They have not given any support. They are also not honouring some promises I made to the Thai authorities or corrections I am making to the scripts.

‒They appear to have left me out to dry. The Thai authorities are trying to get the series stopped.  But actually if they look at it closely they come off quite well.  We were primarily looking at British tourists on holiday.

Today Hill is backing down a bit from those claims, which some might contend he made  to sound like a victim, not a perpetrator. It could be his published comments upset those still working with his raw footage or Bravo, which finds itself with an unexpected hit. Episode 1 was seen by 113,000 people on TV. That’s not much for a country of 60 million, but more than the 95,000 Bravo was expecting. Many tens of thousands watched YouTube and pirated copies downloaded from the Internet.

‒I have to be honest with you, I don’t know what is happening with regards to the Thai government, police and future episodes of the show… really,” he said in his interview with me. ‒This is because the Thai government, as such, has made no contact with me. I really don’t know what they think at the very top about the series.  I only know what I read and, if the Bangkok Post article is anything to go by, then I assume the government views the series negatively. But that’s only an assumption on my part.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhuXUdBmej8

Hill was referring to a Sept. 16 Bangkok Post piece claiming police were ‒furious” over scenes in Episode 1 they claimed were ‒staged” to show jet ski vendor Vinai ‒J.J.” Naiman threatening British Royal Marines with a gun in order to extort 34,000 baht from them for damage they supposedly didn’t cause to one of his watercraft.

Phuket authorities quickly arrested Vinai after the show aired Sept. 7 with Phuket’s governor winning plaudits for finally clamping down on Patong Beach’s infamous jet ski scam artists. But the governor seemed to be alone in taking a pro-active response to the negatives ‒Big Trouble” brings up. Everyone else in government seems to prefer denying, discrediting and covering up, with the governor and police now even cooking up anti-Thai conspiracy theories.

Pol. Lt. Gen. Santhan Chayanont, chief of Provincial Police Region 8 which covers the upper South, yesterday said efforts to tarnish Thailand’s image might be coordinated. …

In the clip of the British marine, Mr. Vinai was seen to go to a storeroom and return with a gun which he dangled by his side. Santhan said the way clips had been made suggested a set up.

They had been edited to tarnish the image of both Thai tourism and the police force and presented only the negative side of the story through narrators, he said.

Santhan ordered police investigators to find out if any Thai individuals were involved in the making of the footage. They could face criminal charges. He also ordered his subordinates to run a check on the production of the clips and report the findings to him as soon as possible. …

Phuket governor Wichai Praisa-ngob yesterday said the clips might have been produced by someone who stood to benefit from Thailand tourism losing its competitive edge.

Criminal Charges

Santhan’s probe has moved quickly, with the Post today publishing news that Thai video-production house hired to work with Hill now facing criminal charges.

Wanasiri Morakul, director of the Thailand Film Office which comes under the Tourism and Sports Ministry, yesterday said police had traced the tapes to a company called Black Sheep Productions.

She said the managers of the company, which had produced the ‒Big Trouble in Thailand” series for Bravo All News station in England, admitted to holding the copyright for the recordings.

Ms. Wanasiri said normal videos made by Thais do not require prior approval from the ministry’s Office of Tourism Development. But the people responsible for the Big Trouble In Thailand series … had violated Article 34 of the motion picture law by not having the contents examined by a Tourism and Sports Ministry film committee before they were broadcast abroad.

The company’s managers could face 12 months in jail and/or a fine of up to a million baht.

Seksan Nakawong, director-general of the Office of Tourism Development, said the film-makers also violated Article 23 of the same law for making a film tarnishing the reputation of Thailand. …

Sasisupa Sungvaribud, president of the Film Production Services Association, said the recordings took the form of a reality show and the events depicted were obviously staged and scripts written for the film.

Hill, of course, has strenuously and repeatedly denied the jet ski scene was ‒staged,” although debate here and here show the definition of ‒staged” varies based on who you talk to. TFS2M’s SideShowBob may have summed the incident best here.

My initial point I never made is I highly doubt that jet ski situation would have gone down the way it was setup to be. And I mean set up. Usually when any of the military guys get in scraps the military police or attaches will call in the local military for aid.

I know some guys who are the liaisons for these situations, so before they have problems usually they go in heavy and the locals back down. So in this case had it been handled properly, not setup for a ‒show,” J.J. would have been forced to talk to Thai military guys.

Tell me how that would have turned out: Chances are, since the kid lied, J.J. would have been put down gently and the military guys would have skated off Scot-free.

So, in that scenario, the Thais are getting screwed due to the close relationship of the two militaries.

Gavin Hill and his team on the scene during filming of Big Trouble in Thailand.

Hill, however, sticks to his guns in my interview with him:

All I can repeat is that the scene with J.J. was not staged in any way;  not by me or anyone connected with the series. J.J. invited us to film a case and that case panned out the way it did with me filming all the while.  J.J. could have chosen any case to show us.

‒I gave him an opportunity, a platform to tell his side of the story because there are always two sides to a story. That’s what I do: tell them as best I can.  J.J. did his thing. The Marines did theirs.  And I did mine. But my only role was to turn up and record what happened.  And what happened was as much a surprise to me as I think it has been to everyone.  Only I was there and witnessed it first-hand, which was unnerving at times.

‒People keep asking why would JJ behave like that?  Well, I think the reasons is pretty obvious: Why do many of us most often behave in ways we later regret?  It ain’t rocket science and the evidence is there if you notice.

Clearly, jet skis are a real problem for Thailand’s tourist areas -- Phuket, Samui (next on Hill’s hit list) and even Pattaya. The week before the British soldiers got swindled, Vinai took U.S. Marines for 70,000 baht. And, on Koh Samui, soon to be highlighted in the series, a Swedish couple had to be escorted to the airport after their lives were threatened by a jet ski vendor there.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gamMhnultLs

Even in today’s Bangkok Post article Tourist Police Chief Adis Ngamjitsuksri ‒conceded the extortion of tourists was a problem which the police alone could not stamp out.” And more meetings were being planned in Phuket today to radically change the rental system there and impose an insurance scheme and much lower penalties for damage, as well as removing requirements tourists give their passports to vendors as collateral.

Episode 3: Pattaya Spotlighted

There’s also evidence to support that Episode 3 upcoming Monday -- in which Pattaya will for the first time dominate the screen — has already had a positive effect.

Alleged Hyperfinance con-man Lance Shaw

Immigration police on Tuesday arrested 64-year-old Lance Frederick Shaw, an alleged Australian con man who supposedly cheated people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a gold-investment scam and other fraudulent ventures for more than 25 years. Episode 3 originally criticized Pattaya police for ignoring the complaints of defrauded investors and allowed him to live peacefully in Sin City by paying large bribes.

The episode that airs Monday now will show the arrest but not necessarily less criticism of the Pattaya authorities.

Hill told me today that Pattaya Police, which saw a rough cut of Monday’s episode, have promised ‒heads will roll” and that another investigation into Big Trouble’s makers will be launched.

Monday’s show also has a Pattaya jailhouse interview with Marcus Hilton (aka Marcus James) from the U.K. and Australia who was facing a possible death sentence. Also featured in Pattaya are a British bloke having a dispute with a very persistent bar girl who literally gives him a run for his money and a Kosovan man with a U.K. passport who gets a good beating from Pattaya cops after offending them in some way.

It will be interesting to see if the ruckus over ‒Big Trouble” will result in Vera and Bravo watering down the show or, as some alluded to earlier this week, making it more vanilla and palatable to Thai tourism authorities. Hill doubts it.

‒I’m not sure how anything could be watered down. The content we’ve gathered is the content we’ve gathered,” he told me. ‒I can’t see anything more coming up that would upset anyone in the way it has. But then I didn’t expect the reaction to the first episode.”

Face off in Phuket between British Royal Marine Police Sgt. Tim Wright and jet ski vendor J.J. (Photo: Andrew Chant)

It nearly derailed Banglamung’s epic yesterday and is basically all that people with an interest in Thailand want to talk about. SideshowBob thinks it’s crap. Others claim it’s staged, I personally think it’s pretty precise, but, no matter how you see it, Big Trouble in Thailand is definitely sparking a lot of discussion and debate.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, Big Trouble is the latest production from British producer/director Gavin Hill (APTV, Al Jezzera & various U.S. television outlets) and comedian Rory Bremner’s Vera Productions for Bravo Channel and filmed with the cooperation of the Thailand Tourist Police. The first episode aired Monday, with seven more weekly episodes to come.

The program tracks the travails of British tourists in both Phuket, Samui and Pattaya, with holidaymakers getting in trouble mostly with drink and drugs, but of course some sex, guns and rock-and-roll thrown in. Episode 1 spotlighted a skint young woman at a Koh Phangan Full Moon Party, who got caught with her boyfriend’s ganja and gets locked up; some British Royal Marines who ignore good advice and rent a jet ski in Phuket only to get ripped off, and (closer to home) the squad of Pattaya foreign police tourist assistants led by Pattaya One News boss and anchor Howard Miller.

Even before the show aired, it incited polarized debate from people claiming it will do everything from ruining British tourism to Thailand to those who think it’s an valuable, sobering lesson to young, thrill-seeking holidaymakers. Being that it had the blessing of the cops, you figure it’s not going to be too damaging to Thailand. I think England’s The Guardian probably has it closest to right, advising people not to take it too seriously:

Big Trouble in Tourist Thailand is about silly Brits who get into trouble in paradise, and end up in prison or paying enormous sums of money to stay out of prison. And all because they smoked a spliff or crashed a jet ski, or didn’t crash a jetski but the jetski man said they crashed a jet ski and now he’s got his heavies in. Awful for the people involved, obviously. But quite entertaining for us -- so much more so than those Wish You Were Here-style travel shows. Who cares about people having a nice time?

Others rightly point out the people being highlighted largely have only themselves to blame. Take Mike at Asia Travel Guide Blog, for example:

We often hear of reports how the police are corrupt in Thailand, but in most cases the foreigners involved in the incidents were drunk and out of control and pretty much all of their own doing. The warnings for drug use in Thailand are pretty clear.

Or Billy at Bangkok Diaries

On one level it does seem somewhat sensationalized which is to be expected of anything you watch on television but on another level this stuff does happen. The jetski rental guys are crooks. Dumb ass tourists take drugs in Thailand despite the ample warnings everywhere. Idiot drunks get themselves in trouble and get the crap kicked out of them by locals. So on that level, all of this stuff happens. The big question is whether it happens as frequently as portrayed in the program.

Or this from Brit freelance tabloid journalist Andrew Drummond.

What is amazing is that nobody ever gets it.  The same mistakes happen year in year out. Why do people bother going to ‘Full Moon Parties’ on Koh Phangan?  I gave up 18 years ago!  Here in this series we see how rapes, muggings, druggings and of course arrests occur, every time, not forgetting the drownings and occasional murder. And if you get thrown out of a brothel  for being drunk, why report it to police? It’s amazing how drink begets moral outrage.

That’s certainly not to say the show isn’t sensationalistic and -- even though the title is ‒trouble” in Thailand -- a bit too negative. Even Drummond, a longtime pal of director Hill, admits his mate pulls a few punches and massages some into over-the-top performances.

There are Pattaya bar girls chasing, now well-outnumbered foreigners down the street shouting ‘You. You. Give me money;’  then the drunken Australian being thrown very roughly out of a brothel. ‒They stomped my head in,” he wails then lunges at Howard.  Then Howard is seen politely asking his father on the boy’s phone to come and collect him, all the while being called a ‘dickhead’ by the son. Gormless foreigners being led by their penises into oblivion.

There are of course lots and lots of drunks actually, and the British seem to score high here, later happily signing their film release forms, I guess as if signing for a medal. There is also titillation as skimpily dressed go-go girls frolic around poles in Pattaya bars. Well that is how it is,  so don’t whinge about it to me.

This is not a film series about fancy spas and lush jungle resorts and so called Hi-So launch parties with twee people.  One can get that sort of  fur coat-and-no knickers production on ‘Destination zzzz Thailand zzzzzz’. But this is still the real stuff that even high rolling tourists must find difficult to avoid.

ssB will chime in early that he thinks it’s fake, but the Pattaya coverage, although hammed up a bit for the camera, seems pretty true-to-life from my years of strolling Walking Street. Miller and I actually chatted by phone just last week and although he takes endless heaps of shit from people who don’t know him and would never do one, let alone both, jobs he does, I think he puts the interests of tourists first. Sure, he even admits Episode 1 is largely about him, but only because he’s been involved with the project for two years.

‒it’s not really an expose of the Tourist Police; more a look at the way foreigners controversially assist them around Thailand,” Miller wrote Aug. 25 on the Pattaya Secrets message board. ‒It is a fast-paced show which will actually promote the sex industry here in Thailand, but will also show some of the consequences of it. It is not done in a seedy way (no hidden cameras in bars and girls with their tits out). It is done in a “funky” way aimed at the audience of Bravo who are predominately men aged between 18 and 35.

I think most people will like it. Some are concerned it is another nail in the coffin for Pattaya. I think many will be surprised how the program pans out over the weeks it is on.

Gruppenfuhrer Howard Miller is a lot more relaxed in Pattaya's walking street in a Home Guard sort of way. (Photo: Andrew Chant)

One surprising thing that has already come out of it is the reaction law enforcement in Phuket has taken. A big chunk of the show is devoted to ‒J.J.” a farnag-looking Thai Mafioso who rips off one British Marine for 35,000 for some small, older damage to a jet ski. The program insinuates J.J. is just one of many thieves scamming tourists on jet skies and, based on what I know of Pattaya, the program would be right. I’ve been told by some very senior guys around town never to rent a jet ski at random; only through a personal friend. Otherwise, you’re ripe for rip-off.

Today Phuket authorities arrested J.J., better known as 28-year-old Winai Naiman. Using only the documentary as evidence police have locked him up without bail for scamming and threatening at gunpoint the young marines.

I’m thinking J.J. now rues the day he signed that release form and played up his gangster side. There are allegations he was paid to set up the scene, but Hill calls those claims ‒hardly credible.”

Big Trouble in Thailand director / producer Gavin Hill

‒We had to cut a lot of the footage. I am satisfied that what was presented was the absolutely correct portrayal of the situation,” he told Drummond.  I have not taken any side.”

Meanwhile, Phuket’s Governor, Wichai Praisa-nob, has been urged by the Deputy Prime Minister and senior diplomats from Australia and Britain to crack down on the scams.

According to Phuket Wan:

The governor, who went to the police station in Patong before attending a summit on the jet-ski issue, rejected an appeal from Mr Naiman’s family for bail. He said that although the weapon involved was a BB gun, intimidation of the kind shown on television was unacceptable.

”Jet-skis are allowed to operate as a sport in Patong, not as a business,” he said. ”Unless this kind of activity stops, we will ban them all.”

Drummond says his buddy Hill plans to expose more jet ski scams on Koh Samui in future episodes and that the director is a little surprised at the reaction to just the first show.

This was not designed to be an investigative programme. We just filmed what was going on in front of us.” He said however the next programme in the series probably reflected more on bad British behavior than that of Thais.

‒I am a little surprised at the big reaction now. This seems to have been going on for a long time.”

Pattaya’s Miller also said J.J.’s arrest proves the show’s ‒value,” and too dismissed claims scenes were faked.

‒Some people are suggesting certain cases were staged and scripted and pre-planned. Bottom line is they weren’t,” he wrote today on Pattaya Secrets. ‒It is all real stuff and as they say ‘reality hurts,’ which I think is why some are trying to question the ‘reality’ part of the show as they don’t want people to see this side of Thailand.”

If you’re into downloading torrents, you can grab the full first episode here.

I was in Patong a few days ago and had a good time, and although I found the hoards of massage girls in the streets very annoying one of them amused me as I passed by; ‒massage sir?” …”mai ao krab”…..”blowjob sir?” ….. You should have seen the look on the faces of the passing package tourists.

The Indian tailors with ludicrous Australian and cockney accents (like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins) are apparently Burmese of Nepali origin. Not that that makes them any less irritating but it does mean that some decent ‒Indian” food is available quite cheaply.

I found the girls to be the usual mixture of goblins, chubby farmers daughters, cuties and a few stunners with a mixture of attitudes. I found that if I walked some way into the sois they were happier to see me than those close to the street (and happier to play around). I found soi Eric to be the most fun but alas many of the poles in all the sois were occupied by drunken farangs including one granny farang from Australia of about 70 – she said it would be 5000 baht long time but strangely she was the only female I met who didn’t call me handsome man! Could it be I am not really a handsome man????? Shit.

2000 baht for long time to a cute and very entertaining beer bar girl from soi Eric had her banging all night and phoning me up for the next few days for a second meeting. This tells me that 2000 was too much. Also I got charged 500 baht for the bar fine so it sounds like they did me there. I found the lady drinks in Patong pretty pricey and the bar bills stacked up quite impressively and quickly.

There are a number of pool bars around town and one quite large one with air con on Bangla road, right next to Rock Hard gogo although I found the girls to be a fairly dull lot.

At 6 (or was it 7) pm Bangla road is closed off and becomes a walking street heaving with people – tourists, touts, sellers of all sorts of crap and loads of freelancers hanging around waiting to meet customers. These girls start to arrive at around 9-10pm.

The report here didn’t mention opening times. I was quite surprised to see that most of the beer bars did not open until 9pm and didn’t really get going until 10. Mostly they shut at 3am but one night I was there the police turned out the lights at 2.

On my last night there I ran into 2 girls in Taipan, which was fairly busy at 2am but not full, who were happy to come back to my hotel for the price of a bowl of noodles (I did buy them one each – 50 baht per bowl), so that bar rates highly in my book.

Air con rooms were easy to find for 600 per night but I will avoid the Andaman Resortel in Soi Sansabai. Despite having fairly good rooms the air-con sucks – I went through 3 rooms where it didn’t work at all until I got one that did – when I woke up the whole place was flooded by the leaking unit.

A few notes on Krabi:

Last night I went into a hotel karaoke bar – the Thai Hotel I think. No English spoken but happy to speak to a farang with reasonable Thai. Girls singing in skimpy outfits and sitting with customers. After visiting the place a few times over the last 10 days I took a girl out for a night out. It costs 2000 baht to bar fine them!!! And I am told that it is only for a night out to the disco. As it was quite late they took it down to 1200 baht – I paid it to see what would happen. The girl’s sister turned up in a nice car and took us to a nightclub called O2 – Thai style club with band. The girl’s sister was really hot but no chance of getting her number as the one from the hotel was all over me. When mother phoned (it was mother they had her on speaker phone) we had to go home at about 2am. I was dropped off at my hotel and kissed on the cheek and that was it. They are taking me to Ao Nang beach this afternoon – don’t suppose I’ll get a shag but it’s different.

Krabi also has a load of red light karaoke bars (hovels) where girls are bar fined and paid for less than the 2000 at the hotel. Hmmmm, look out for me tonight at the red light hovels.

I am not a Phuket specialist, but in my opinion 90% of the P4P there happens in Patong (for Farangs I mean) and 90% of the Patong P4P happens in or around Bangla Road. Let’s say from Taipan (on Rat U Thit road, opposite Bangla Road) to Banana Club (200 meters on the left after Bangla Road, on the beach road).

This is where I have focused my investigations, except from a quick (and rather disappointing) expedition to Christin Massage, further down on soi Rat U Thit). Yes I guess you can now call me Bangla-Psycho as well.

First a general observation about Patong Beach: The whole place is quickly growing. I had not been there for more than a year, maybe a year and a half, and there are more hotels, more shops, new venues, etc. Good thing for the tourism industry, but of course with growth and popularity come the annoying part: the Thai people not only lost their smile there, they also lost their coolness and their sense of respect (reminds me of places like Phangan or Samui), the Indian tailors are more aggressive than ever, not only they shoot at you to buy a suit while youíre going to the beach wearing only a short and a shirt, but they also grab your hand or your arm and try to literally pull you inside their shop.

Same for the massage girls: There are more and more massage places and the girls scream at you and grab your arm and prevent you to move along. And of course the ones who do that are not the prettiest ones. Talk about Zombie movies.

They’ve done a good job at JungCeylon though, as this is now a true upscale shopping and dining center with music, water shows, movie theaters and all the stuff.

The beach is still very nice, but if you want to swim you have to find your way between parasailing boats and jetskis. Why the hell do you want to swim here anyway?. Well, if I came only for swimming I would definitely head south of Patong, but it is actually in Patong that all the fun happens. At night at least.

Back to the night in Patong, then.

I guess everyone would agree that Patong is more about beer bars and clubs than Gogo bars. Most of the Gogo bars there simply suck and this is definitely not there that you will find the hottest girls. However there are one or two Gogos worth checking out. Anyway, the good thing with Patong is that it is so concentrated that you can check all places three times in less time than you would need to walk from Nana Plaza to Soi Cowboy .

Let’s start the review, from North to South.

Taipan, aka the infamous FBI (Finest Bar In Thailand), is still one of the most famous after hours places in town, with the double advantage of being close to the action and free to go in. However, like most after hours places, the quality of the crowd inside strongly depends on how the action has been, earlier, in other places. During the low season, the place can be very empty. I only went once and not that late, but it was quite empty.

Next to Taipan is the Baya Beach Club, which I never really liked. I didn’t visit, therefore I can not comment. But it is still there, so I guess that the owner manages to do some good business.

And next to Baya Beach Club is the new (at least for me it was new) Rock City. I think there is a Rock City in Pattaya as well, no? Well, anyway, Rock City in Patong is a strange place. This looks like many Thai oriented clubs. A huge stage in the back, a few tables in the middle where you stand and drink, and an empty space in the front, where the bar and the entrance are. And of course a Thai live band that sings odiously wrong and odiously too loud. I didn’t stay there more than 20 seconds.

Now in to Bangla. At the beginning, everything happens on the right side of the road, going south.

First is, in my opinion the best (and only?) Gogo bar in Patong: Rock Hard a Gogo. I like this Gogo. I mean I like the look and the way it is arranged. It is probably the best Gogo in Thailand in that matter. Looks like a Club with 2 large stages, plenty of space to sit and drink, a pool area, good music, not-pushy mamasans, etc.

The only drawback being – The girls! I have never seen a stunner in there. Ok, they have a few that are doable, but even in high season, nothing close to Shark, Doll House or Rainbow in BKK, to name a few.

Next, in the first street on the right after Rock Hard, there is a new Gogo:  Roxy a Gogo. Nice place too, but the weird thing there is that they dedicated twice as much space for the pool tables (2 only, but big ones) as for the stage. There is only a small round stage (looks a bit like the small one in the Carousel in BKK) that doesn’t even turn around. You end up spending more time looking at snooker than at dancers I would say the same about Roxy as I said about Rock Hard. Nice place, but don’t forget to put pretty girls in.

Next in the same street is the Seduction disco that opened maybe 2 years ago. Didn’t check.

Then, right on Bangla road, is the Tiger complex. Not much change. But still in my opinion the funniest place in Patong. You can spend a night there, drinking downstairs and then when your drunk, climbing upstairs to Tiger Disco (250 baht with 2 drinks), till you find someone to bring (take you) home. Even during low season both the bars and the disco offer a wide range of girls which allows you to almost always find a few that you like.

Moving on on soi Bangla, the next soi you meet is soi Sea Dragon, the only soi featuring a few Gogo Bars. The beer bars are in the middle of the soi and the Gogos on the sides. The Gogos have the same names as some in soi Cowboy (Play school, Suzy Wong), and maybe the same owners, but apart from the names and the owners, they have nothing in common with their BKK counterparts. They look like old and dirty versions of them actually. In a way, the whole soi reminds me of the worst part of Patong. Dirty beer bars, weird Gogos bars, and even the touts that want to drag you inside for a ping pong show or something like that. In my opinion Sea Dragon is the worst soi in Patong. As far as girls are concerned, this is also true.

And now comes soi Eric.

Soi Eric is now a funny place. The whole soi has been transformed so that each and every bar has the same look and feel in the soi, with purple neons and small spotlights. Kind of club atmosphere for beer bars. The result is pretty convincing (photo). They are so proud of what they did that they sell a Soi Eric t-shirt for 100 baht. The weird thing is that there is nothing on the black or white t-shirt, but Soi Eric written on it. WTF?

In comparison with soi Sea Dragon, soi Eric offers nice and clean beer bars and a very good atmosphere, like a huge party all over the place. Girls are not only prettier than in the previous soi, they also are more friendly, dance on the tables, etc. I would rate soi Eric second after Tiger complex.

The next soi, soi Crocodile, is also now referred as soi katoeys, because the main attraction is the bunch of katoeys who dance on a small stage at the entrance of the soi. And in my opinion, there is actually not much to see on soi Crocodile besides that. And there are so many tourists taking pictures of the katoeys, than you could end up with your picture on hundreds of websites “my holidays in Thailand”.

Soi Gonzo (who came up with such a name???) is a bit away of the action as there are some construction in front of the soi and one need to go thru a small alley to reach the soi. Therefore it is pretty quiet, especially now with the low season.

Soi Easy is not really a soi, but is worth mentioning because it hosts the new club in town: Hollywood (talk about being creative!). Well, just another club in my opinion. Was free, but also empty, when I checked it.

Then in an interesting way, the action moves to the left of soi Bangla with a few beer bars, whose only interest is that they are open from noon or something and are the only ones to offer afternoon action.
Once youíve reached the end of Bangla Road you make a left and walk for 200 meters. Here is the Banana Club. 400 baht with 2 drinks. I gave it a miss for this time

Let’s talk about price!

Suk Psycho does not only look and report. He actually tries. Here are the prices you can expect to pay.

Well, at least these are the prices I paid.

First a general observation: prices have moved up. They are now close to BKK prices. Actually this is not a big surprise as everything in Patong, from water bottle to accommodation, from food to transportation is at least as expensive as it is in BKK. Patong is not Pattaya in that matter.

In the Gogos, the bar fine is 600 baht. Short time is 2000 baht and LT 3 to 4000 baht. In the beer bars, barfine is between 300 and 500 baht. You will find several girls quoting 2000 baht ST. This can be reduced to 1500. Some quote 1500 and this can be reduced to 1000, but this is rare. One beer bar girl did not negotiate the price upfront. When finished I handed 1000 baht and she was happy with that. Go figure. LT is also in the 3 to 4000 range.

A common scam in the beer bars is to charge you for more than the actual barfine price: let’s say the barfine is 300. If you ask to the girl, she will say 500 and mention that to the cashier. She will then make an extra 200 for her. Patong is the only place where I saw this. Don’t ask for the barfine price. Always assume it is 300, but be prepared to pay more in some cases.

Christin Massage: This is the only Massage Parlour in Patong. Well, at least the only one I know. Went there once at 3pm and once at 7pm. Both times the guy in there showed me three sets of girls, all ugly, with prices from 1800 to 2800 baht, all included. The second time, when I mentioned that they were “not that hot” – he said that the best time to come is 6pm. I guess there is a small slot when you can find a few good looking girls in there, but I’m not sure.

Naughty massages: I don’t know of any teen massages in Patong, however there are a few naughty massages (not designed for P4P but where P4P happens), mainly on Kepsab road and around. I paid 1500 baht for a massage + fool job there, which is rather a good price compare to the overall prices.

All in all I would say that there are some good experiences to be found in Phuket, but it is nothing to compare to BKK or Pattaya. It’s good to have a few girls you know in case you don’t find anything else. If you have a good experience on your first night, make sure you keep the opportunity to come back!