A Scary Experience in Thailand

It all started at the end of my first ever week in Asia. I’d been in Bangkok for about five days with my three friends, Simone, Lewis and Paula, and we’d packed a lot into those five days.

We’d seen countless temples, explored the Grand Palace, partied on Khao San Road, been to see a ping pong show, attended the Calypso ladyboy show, done a lot of shopping and we had one final night to kill before we headed south to Koh Samui. We’d heard from a couple of people that Soi Nana was the place to be if you wanted a crazy night out, and so we decided to check it out.

We knew that Soi Nana was one of Bangkok’s infamous red-light districts (it is home to Nana Plaza, which claims to be the largest sex complex in the world), and as I love strip clubs and go-go bars, I was excited to see what Nana had to offer.

It turns out that we were about to get a lot more than we bargained for…

bangkok, khao san road, thailand, scary experience
One of many crazy nights out on Khao San Road

The first indication that something wasn’t quite right was when we couldn’t find a tuk-tuk driver willing to take us there. More than one expressed confusion about why we wanted to go, before shaking their heads and telling us that Soi Nana is a ‘very bad’ place.

Now, it’s easy to look back and think ‘if only we’d listened to them,’ but at the time, we just figured that it was because the tuk-tuk drivers probably thought that we didn’t know that Soi Nana was a red-light district, and they were just trying to save us the bother of ending up somewhere where we had no business being.

Perhaps that was the reason.

But perhaps it was something more…

After the first couple of tuk-tuk drivers had refused to take us to Nana, we found one willing, and sipped our wine coolers as the tuk-tuk zipped through the traffic. It’s important to note that we hadn’t had any other drinks at this point apart from one wine cooler each, at about 4% alcohol.

khao san road,bangkok, thailand
A more quiet night in Bangkok. I always visit this place.

When we got to Soi Nana, we tossed our empty bottles into nearby bins and entered the first bar we saw. It was relatively busy, with pool tables, TVs playing sport, and of course, an abundance of beautiful young Thai women in the company of much older white men.

We sat down and a waitress came and took our drinks orders. Moments later, she returned with four pints of beer and we began to drink, chatting about whatever it is that young backpackers talk about at the start of a big night out.

We hadn’t had more than a few sips each when the waitress returned with four more pints of beer.

‘Oh, we didn’t order these.’

‘Yes yes, they from man over there, American man.’

Sure enough, when we looked over in the direction that she was pointing, we saw a man raising his glass to us.

We smiled and began to drink the beer that he’d bought us, feeling that it was impolite to finish our own drinks first.

After a few moments, the man came over and introduced himself. He said that he used to be in the US military but that now he lives in Thailand. He was good looking, in his late forties, with a muscular physique. We had no reason to suspect that anything was wrong.

That is, until, a young Thai lady on the next table beckoned me over frantically. I went over to her, confused, and she started firing questions at me.

‘Do you know this man? Have you met him before?’

‘No, he just bought our drinks…why?’

‘Don’t listen to anything he says. Don’t believe anything about him. It is all a lie. Don’t leave this place with him!’

‘Okay, you’re scaring me. Who is he?’

‘I can’t say. I have said too much. It is too dangerous, he knows too many people.’

I begged her to tell me more but she wouldn’t.

She was terrified.

khao san road, thailand, bangkok

Shaken, I excused myself and went to the bathroom. On my way back to the table, another Thai lady approached me. Just like the other one, she appeared to be a sex worker , and seemed very distressed.

Grabbing one of my hands in both of hers, she looked into my eyes and pleaded with me to get away from the American man.

‘You have to leave, he is a very dangerous man, you and your friends must go now!’

Well shit. 

I rushed back to our table, where the American guy was still sitting, chatting up Paula. I managed to communicate what had happened to Simone, who insisted that we all go and play pool, so that we could figure out what to do without arousing too much suspicion in the man.

As we got down from our bar stools, Lewis stumbled, drunkenly. This was odd considering that we’d only drank one wine cooler, and no more than half a pint of beer. I mean – we’d just finished university – we could handle our drink!

Once at the pool table, we filled Lewis and Paula in on what I’d been told, and panicked. We all felt drunk at this point, and it was difficult to know what to do, when we were potentially in a very dangerous situation. I mean, who knows who this guy was!

khao san road, bangkok, thailand
First night in Thailand! April, 2015.

After a hushed debate, we decided that we would go back to the table, and Lewis would go outside, pretending that he had to take a phone call. After a few moments outside, he would come back into the bar, still pretending to be on the phone, and tell us that we had to leave immediately as he had a family emergency that he needed to take care of.

Thank god, he seemed convincing, and we apologised profusely to the American man as we gathered our belongings and rushed out of the bar, leaving our half-finished drinks on the table. Once outside, Lewis continued pretending to be on the phone, and I turned around to glance back into the bar, where the American man was sitting, watching us like a hawk. I kept glancing back nervously as we power-walked up the street, and every time, he was still looking.

He didn’t take his eyes off us.

Deciding we needed to lose ourselves, we ducked into a random go-go bar in Nana Plaza, and sunk into a booth, watching girls in schoolgirl costumes try and look enthusiastic about their jobs, before deciding that it would be a better idea to just get back to Khao San Road to continue the night.

And what a night it was!

I am convinced that the shady guy spiked our drinks that night, as we were so drunk, despite only having one and a half drinks each. Small amounts of GHB, the ‘date rape’ drug, can result in a kind of giddy euphoria, and that’s exactly how we all felt. Simone and I were hanging out of the tuk-tuk, screaming and laughing manically, and Lewis found the biggest guy on Khao San Road and twerked on him! GHB can also affect memory, and the four of us could barely remember anything after leaving Soi Nana, despite the fact that we should have been stone cold sober.

khao san road, bangkok, thailand
Towards the end of our trip, Khao San Rd

Luckily, nothing bad actually happened to us, and hey, maybe the guy was just a lonely expat trying to make some new friends.

Maybe.

Or maybe he wasn’t. It strikes me as very odd that not one, but two locals would warn me about somebody, despite having nothing to gain by doing so. It strikes me as odd that we got blackout drunk after a few sips of beer, and that our experiences were in line with those of people who have taken GHB. It strikes me as odd that all of this happened in a dodgy area, run by Mafia, and fuelled by drugs, sex and petty crime.

Now, this is just a funny anecdote that I pull out at parties once in a while.

‘Hey, so my friends and I got spiked in a red-light district once!’

But despite the humour with which I tell the story, and despite the fact that no harm came to any of us (happy ending, woo!), it gives me chills to think about just what may have happened, had we carried on drinking the drinks he bought for us.

Was he going to rob us, sell our organs, sell us into sex slavery? Of course, all of these scenarios sound dramatic, but my gut tells me that those women saved our lives that night, because really, who knows what would have happened, had we stayed there – or worse – left with him.

bangkok thailand

 What’s been your scariest experience while you’ve been travelling? 

Further Reading

Common Scams to Avoid in Bangkok

Staying Safe in Southeast Asia

The Truth About Backpacking Alone as a Woman

 


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18 thoughts on “A Scary Experience in Thailand”

  1. This is WILD. I think I would have semi-shrugged off the first woman, but TWO telling you that is really suspicious.
    Also, it looks like you and your friends had an awesome time otherwise, so nice and glad you’re all aiight hahah

    1. Travelling Jezebel

      Tell me about it! And we did haha, it was at the very beginning of our trip and we went on to have an amazing time 🙂

  2. I woke up once to an older man masturbating at the end of my bed. I was in a hostel in Seville and he was an older gentlemen who somehow was allowed to check in with no bahs and no shoes. This was my first trip traveling completely by myself so I was terrified! There was a girl sleeping in the bunk next to me who was even younger than I was and I didn’t want to wake her up and scare her so I just kept whispering things to him in Spanish that I thought would make him feel guilty or ashamed and stop. He finished in his hand, wiped it on the pillow of the bunk below him (that person was still out partying). So I grabbed my bags and the pillow, woke my other friend up and told him to make sure the younger girl was alright, and raised hell in the lobby until they agreed to kick him out. I slept in the train station that night. I’ve had way more good experiences in hostels than bad, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget that night.

  3. This is down right scary. I’ve been to Phuket and it sends shivers down my spine. All too often you don’t realize just how bad things can get until someone like you reminds us. Thank you. It is a really valuable post. One that reminds us that safety should always be our first priority.

    1. Travelling Jezebel

      Yeah, at the time we were pretty scared but we were so giddy from whatever he’d spiked us with that it didn’t REALLY hit us until the day after just how bad it could have been!

  4. Great and honest post. Vacation is a time for fun but sometimes things can get a bit dicey. So glad you guys got out of there and everything turned out okay in the end. Good lesson.

  5. I somehow would not be able to see the humourous side of a story about girls being drugged no matter how well it is told. It is so dangerous!
    I was drugged in London when I was 20. I managed to latch onto a friend who said she was going home even though I could not explain that I needed help. I was totally disorientated. It was so bad that I could easily have stepped off a rooftop thinking it is a step. The drug, whatever it was, did not wear off completely for around 24 hours.
    I should have gone to the police as soon as I was able. I really don’t know why I didn’t. I’d been smoking hash that night and maybe I was afraid that would somehow invalide my complaint and get me in trouble with the police instead.
    And, no the hashish did not drug me to the extent that I didn’t even know how to go around the corner from the house I was in to get to my own house…

    1. Gosh that’s awful, I’m so sorry that happened to you! I’m glad that you were able to latch on to a friend and that you got home safe.
      Yeah, I think that my friends and I just found the humour in it because it WAS such a scary situation that it was kind of a laugh/cry kinda thing. We were so glad that we made it out of there safely.

  6. I came here after reading several of your anti-MLM posts and a couple of your travel ones. I thought they were well-researched and provided good information. I feel disappointed after this one. You showed a lot of clear thinking in the other posts I had read. That seemed to be non-existent in your visit to Soi Nana. I am glad you and your friends survived, but why would you choose to enter such a place (you knew what it was beforehand), and drink while there? Sounds like Russian Roulette.

    1. Hi, thanks for your comment. Of course me at age 22, fresh out of university and on my first ever backpacking trip is a lot different to me, age 28, five years into travelling. We are all constantly learning and growing and evolving.

      We chose to enter the bar because it was a tourist bar in a tourist district of Bangkok. Yes, Soi Nana is one of two red light districts in Bangkok but it is not only go-go bars there. You will also find Irish pubs, sports bars, backpackers bars, street food stands, market stalls etc. Thousands of tourists drink in the bars around Soi Nana every year with no problems, and the one that we were in seemed very above board. It was a sports bar on the main strip with TVs showing football games, pool tables and lots of foreigners like ourselves. It was not a go-go bar. So to order a beer from a waitress in such a place didn’t seem like a dangerous thing to do.

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