Cowboy Jobs

Today's song is: To All the Girls I've Loved Before  .. Willie and Julio

Thavorn and I decided to head off to Cowboy last night and listen to some music at Country Road and maybe play a little pool. Despite it being Monday, usually a slow night, Country Road was busy and there were no open tables. However the band was playing and we ordered a jug of Singha for 190 baht and sat back and enjoyed the show.

After an hour we thought it was time to checkout some of our favorite GoGo bars so off toe Lighthouse we went. The girls at Lighthouse are always fun and we stayed for a couple of happy hour vodka and Redbulls at 90 baht each. After 45 minutes it was 8:45 so we thought we would move on to Dollhouse and ordered another 4 vodka and Redbulls at 90 baht each before happy hour expired at 9 pm. At that point, the drinks jump twofold to 160 baht.

Dollhouse was fun, despite only one of my regular girls being on stage. My other friends must have taken the month off as it is the slow time in the bar industry and the older more experienced girls know when it is time to spend time with family rather than hanging onto a chrome pole.

Outside on the strip, Thavorn and I noticed at least 3 signs outside GoGos advertising for dancers. The base salary is now up to 20,000 baht for a 7 hour shift, from 7 pm to 2 am. It entitles the girls to 3 nights off a month. If they do not show up for work then they are fined. Ditto for being late.  The girls also make money off of lady drinks at about 50 baht a drink. Figure in about 5 lady drinks at 50 baht time 30 = 7,500 more baht a month for a total of 27,500 baht in salary from the bar.

Of course, the real money is in pay for play, 2,000 for short term and 4,000 for long term. There is no hard data that I know that tracks the number of times a lady goes with a customer but lets assume 10 short terms or 5 long terms per month for about another 20,000 baht for month for your average girl.

That means that a good looking, fun, appealing young girl hauls down about 50,000 baht a month and that's about the figure I get when talking to my bar girl friends. Some girls like the industry and some do it strictly for the money. The happy ones seem to be the busy ones.  Average career length seems to be about 10 years in GoGo bars and 15 years in beer bars.  Nothing is sadder than a GoGo girl dancing on stage who aught not to be there as time has taken it's price.

No shortage at this bar

TTYL