Soi Cowboy (pronounced Soy Cowboy) is a small area in
Bangkok,
Thailand. It is a famous street filled with bars,
prostitutes and
strippers. The clientele are normally
farang, or foreigners.
Almost every taxi driver in Bangkok knows its location, even if they do not speak english.
I walked down Soi Cowboy once because one of the supervisors of an associated company had a party there. Any non-Thai person walking down the street is immediately accosted by beautiful women in sparse clothing, who try to get you to go into their bar. The street is about an eighth of a mile long, but walking down it takes almost forty-five minutes. The bar where the party was located was called Jungle Jim's, about halfway down the street.
When you enter the bar, you are surrounded by women. Lots of women, of all shapes and sizes. The supervisor had a topless woman on his lap, and he invited us to feel the firmness of her breasts (I declined, I'm married). One of the technicians I was with did, and loudly proclaimed it to be "the firmest tits he had ever felt."
I sat there drinking watered-down Pepsi while a girl literally pulled the pants of of the technician and performed fellatio on him right at the bar. A very nice attractive woman named Wan sat next to me, and started to try to unzip my pants. She spoke english, and I told her I was married and I did not cheat on my wife. She looked disappointed (because I was not a "paying john"), but I asked her to stay with me and fend off the hoards of women. We talked for a bit; she had a degree in economics. It's amazing what you can find in Thailand... well-educated prostitutes. She didn't like the prostituting, but she liked meeting new people. She said hardly anyone ever speaks to her except to say what they want her to perform on them.
After a while, the bartender started playing some awful disco music and the women started dancing. I noticed all of the women had numbers inked on some part of their body. If you wanted one, all you had to do was tell the bartender and that woman was yours. Wan went up with the rest of the women and stripped. She was very attractive, I would guess around 28 years old and in great shape. After the strip show was over, Wan came back and sat next to me topless. The technician with me had two women, and he left for his hotel room with them both. My supervisor groped and fondled as many women as he could, but he had a Thai wife and didn't want to bring anyone home. After the party was winding down, I paid for the sodas ($45US worth), and I gave Wan as much as she would have received for going home with me to spend the night in my bed, about $15US. It was worth it to me to have her fend off the others and talk.
If you ever make fun of someone with a degree who has to work in a fast-food restaurant because they can't get a job, think of Wan. Things can always be worse, and people do what they have to to survive.