I was undecided about how I felt about these kind of shows, and to be honest, I still am…
The infamous Bangkok ping pong show, you know the one, talented ladies fire ping pong balls out into the audience from you know where! You read so much on the internet about these places and the final statements on so many blogs is ‘do not go’ but that just sparks your curiosity even more.
I gave in to my curiosity and we went on the hunt for a show, I was really hoping to bump into a big group of tourists that had the same idea so we could sneak in with them and hopefully view from afar but of course, one of the benefits of being in Bangkok in rainy season is that there aren’t many tourists around so we had to brave it alone.
Choosing the place is the first challenge, there are so many men on the street with a little card listing all the ‘tricks’ a girl can do and imitating a Ping pong pop (like the one Donkey does in Shrek when he’s asking “are we nearly there yet?”) there are a range of prices, most state no cover charge yet have 100baht written on their cards. We decided to go with a free one, knowing the drinks prices would make up for it, I just thought it was easier to walk away knowing it was free than potentially having to argue ourselves out of a scam where we thought we were paying 100baht entrance fee but they were asking for 1000baht (apparently it happens a lot).
Anyway, we picked our guy and followed him through the streets to his bar…we ventured upstairs to see 4 or 5 women (a couple of which were well into their 40′s) stood on a stage in the middle of a room looking thoroughly unimpressed shaking their knicker-less bums out of tune to the music (I couldn’t tell you what music was playing), we were sat down and given a drinks menu, 300baht for a bottle of beer…fine. A tips basket was then thrust in our faces, we shook our heads no repeatedly as we hadn’t actually seen anything worth tipping…
We didn’t see an awful lot during the whole time to be honest, only one woman seemed to be enjoying herself but she was just having a dance around the stage in her bikini! We saw some razor blades being removed (blunt I’m sure), a 20m or so chain of artificial flowers, the same with a ribbon, a picture being painted (she wrote hello and drew a flower with her bits…how lovely!) oh and we had a very talented whistler!!
The Ping pong balls did make an appearance but it seems you only get to see that part of the show if you’re willing to grab hold of a bat and have a game of fast fire ping pong…we declined!
We bailed once we’d finished our drinks.
Overall, not an overly distressing experience although the girls didn’t seem too happy, they didn’t seem particularly sad either. The only part that upset me was seeing a pregnant lady up on stage, obviously pregnant too, I’m guessing at least 6 months. Luckily she wasn’t taking part in much, just having a bit of a wiggle near a pole. I can’t be judgemental because I joined in with the masses and went to watch but still, there were times I had to look away and try my hardest not to just run up and give the pregnant lady some money just to get herself out of there.
Would I recommend that someone else visited? Well, as they say, curiosity killed the cat but… You decide!
