Everybody's looking for something. Some of them want to use you, Some of them want to get used by you.

—Eurythmics, "Sweet Dreams"

"I go with you," she said softly as she slipped her hand inside my arm. Slightly startled, I turned to see a smiling face—twenty-something, I guessed, but she could have been sixteen. It is so hard to tell the age of a Thai woman, especially with the nighttime neon lights that reveal only outlines and shadows.

I looked at her beguiling face, smiled back, had a fleeting thought of saying yes, but said, "No, thanks." The waif-like face turned her lips into a pout of disappointment, and she tugged on my arm as I kept walking. My mind started playing "Why not?" and "What if?" games, and I started to slow down.

"I like you," she purred. "I boom boom good."

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as my imagination ran away with the idea of boom boom, but I started walking again as words failed me. She held on to me for a few steps and puckered her lips in a tantalizing invitation as I was prying her hand from my arm. She made a pouty face again as I walked backward away from her, but then she quickly turned to another man, put her arm around him, and said, "Hey, handsome man, I go with you?"

Whoa, did I feel special! I laughed at my momentarily inflated sense of attractiveness as I watched the girl disappear in the crowd. She was a walking fantasy but hardly the only one.

"Wewcome! Hewoo. Hey, sexy man, I wuv you. Want go wid you. What you name?" and more broken-English come-ons came rapid-fire from the steady stream of painted women on Soi Cowboy. Jeez. It was overwhelming and dick-hardening walking down the crowded street with sexy Thai girls touching me, beckoning me into some unknown mystery. I saw dozens sitting on bar stools, standing provocatively in doorways, coaxing strangers into bars with a little butt wiggle or titty jiggle. Some were wearing short shorts, some tight skirts, and almost all had high heels or boots to show off their legs. Yeah, Thai women have nice legs and cute butts, and they know how to advertise their best parts. The rubbernecked foreigners—almost all men, many with cameras—strolled through the soi (street) like shoppers at a market looking at the fruits and veggies. Hmm, this one looks nice, round, firm, feels good too. That one looks a little fat—oops, overripe—too skinny, too old. Really it was sidewalk shopping, but the goods were in miniskirts, shorts, halter tops, bras, and stuff that made Victoria's Secret look prudish and old-fashioned. It was hard to think straight with cute girls smiling and touching me as I walked by. Yes, sir, I blended right in with my wide eyes and silly grin, smiling while the music in the background made a beat that pulsated the night and made me bob my head unconsciously.

Welcome to Bangkok—candy land for sugar freaks, something for everyone, and an overdose for a newbie. Yes, I know there are skyscrapers, beautiful temples, shopping malls galore, and a bustling metropolis in this city of eight million people, but Bangkok's reputation for tawdry, gaudy sex overshadows the cultural highlights—at least for many foreigners, at least men, at least me. I had only been here for two hours, and I was still figuring out day versus night, but that is hard to do in Bangkok, where nights throb with action, where streets are lit up, where traffic always clogs the roads to a standstill, where food is cooking 24-7, and where midnight ushers in worlds that teenage boys dream about.

The doorman at the hotel gave me a funny look when I asked him where to go for nightlife, but hey, I had no idea. "Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza" was all he said, but the wink and grin gave me a pretty good hint that everyone but me knew about these places. Besides, I was a single American guy in Bangkok, slightly lost and clearly very naive, and not the first goofy foreigner to be snorkeling in the ocean and ask, "Where are the fish?"

That was how I ended up on Soi 23, a little one-block street near the intersection of Asok and Sukhumvit Roads, perhaps the main tourist drag in Bangkok. Every city has one street that is an anchor point for exploration and a common reference point for tourists. Hey, have you been to London? Do you know where Piccadilly Circus is? Paris? Yeah, look for the Champs-Élysée and the Rive Gauche. C'est tres bonne n'est-ce pas? New York? Go to Times Square, Fifth Avenue, and Central Park. Florence? Got to see the Ponte Vecchio and El Duomo. Venice? St. Mark's Square is action central.

Well, in Bangkok, everyone knows Sukhumvit Road and the Bangkok Transit System (BTS) Skytrain that goes from the National Stadium and MBK (seven floors of everything technological), past Paragon Mall and Ploenchit, past Nana Plaza, Emporium, Ekkamai, and all the way out to On Nut. Nana Plaza at Soi 2 and Soi Cowboy at Soi 23 are landmarks for farangs (foreigners), like the Reeperbahn in Hamburg and the red light district, De Wallen, in Amsterdam—all for the same reason: sex, in every size, color, shape, gender, age, and dress that you can imagine and a lot that I never thought of. Mark it on the map, and take a walk along Sukhumvit Road to discover Thai versions of sexiness, entertainment, and gender-bending. Actually, the fun is that your imagination will be stretched in ways that make you gasp or smile.

There are no vehicles allowed on Soi Cowboy at night, because it is lined with bars, go-gos, discos, street performers, an occasional elephant, people cooking an amazing variety of food in carts, and hundreds of young women trying to hustle some money for the way they look and the promises they make. It is the tainted, touristy side of Thailand where the women ply their trade and the foreigners come for fantasies. It is a concentrated place for the free market economy based on sex and booze so it does not pollute the rest of the city, where supply and demand meet, where some gawk, some smile, and some lose their money, but where most get what they are looking for. So business is good, and the girls and customers keep coming back for the beer, shows, sex, money, and thrills. It makes capitalism in the developing world look like Girl Scouts selling cookies.

What did I need? Adventure? TLC? Sex? Yeah, all that, but I was curious too. What is a go-go bar like in Thailand? Are all the girls brown, skinny, and short? What is it like with a Thai prostitute? How much do they charge? What do I say? Yeah, I was very naive—a midwesterner from America lost in the lights, noise, and short skirts of Bangkok. There was a lot to see and do, and I wanted to make up for lost years and lost youth. It does not take long to stroll Soi Cowboy from end to end, especially if you don't stop to drink along the way, watch the dancers, or have a quickie. So I went up one side and back the other of Soi Cowboy in thirty minutes and was still sober and curious. Clearly, I was a newbie farang overwhelmed with sex, music, booze, and open opportunities to do everything I thought about when I was sixteen, and quite a few things that didn't occur to me until much later.

I wondered what Nana Plaza was like, so I walked the twenty blocks to get there. Distance was not the problem, but my senses were overwhelmed along the way. I smelled the fumes from motorbikes and buses as they roared and belched along Sukhumvit in traffic that was really a free-for-all. In between smog and exhaust, there were whiffs of food—some sweet like crepes, some spicy like som tom (chopped spicy papaya salad), some recognizable like barbecued chicken, and some totally new. The spicy Thai fish oil can be nauseating to a farang, but Thai people love it. Unfortunately, I hopped over open grates with smells of sewage that were just awful, and in a few steps more, I passed food carts with delicious aromas. Every ten steps brought different scents and sights, but it was difficult to look and walk at the same time in fantasyland.

The sidewalk along Sukhumvit is narrow because so many vendors set up shop (really a table is all they need) along the curb and along the buildings, so pedestrians walk a gauntlet of booths, tables, and displays with anything you might possibly want. T-shirts? Of course, they are there by the thousands, but how about knockoff Polo shirts for five US dollars? NFL or Premier League team shirts? Muay Thai boxing shorts? Swiss watches? Bikinis? Sexy underwear? Elephant tusks? Knives? Guns? Pirated DVDs of movies that are still being shown in cinemas? Viagra? Condoms? Dildos? Yup, anything you want. How much? You better be ready to bargain, or you'll pay double, at least.

Walk Sukhumvit Road twice and you'll learn that there are distinct places for different goods. Food and souvenirs are good near the BTS station at Soi 11; T-shirts are better on the even-numbered side across the street by Soi 6 and 8; most of the merchants along Soi 5 through 7 are deaf and communicate by sign language as they punch prices into calculators with big screens and show you the numbers; and the black girls stand by Soi 3, where the popular Arab and African restaurants are. The crowded sidewalks end at a huge gnarly intersection near Nana Plaza, and the McDonald's, Burger King, and Pizza Hut are sure signs that the farangs eat here. The next block has the JW Marriott, Starbucks, access to the motorway, and the beginning of the central business zone in Ploenchit with shopping malls and hotels—the civilized Thai world.

Somehow the food carts, vendors, and hookers along Sukhumvit fit in like all the other commodities for sale. It was hard to look at the variety of things on both sides of me as I tried not to bump into tourists who suddenly stopped to buy things. I tried to avoid stepping on the burka of the Arab women walking slowly or bumping into mothers pushing strollers (what the hell are they doing on Sukhumvit at midnight with their babies?), and I tried not to look in the eyes of the hookers who had me figured out thirty seconds before I saw them. After midnight the sidewalk traffic was fierce. There were poor, dirty women with sleeping babies begging for money; men without limbs, some with open wounds; and occasional motorcycles on the sidewalk—all under the shadow of the BTS Skytrain in a giant concrete tree house of walkways and tracks overhead. Pathetic, gripping, sad, smelly, chaotic, erotic, and maddening were alternating feelings as I picked my way through an undulating sea of people. Maybe that's why drinking is so popular along Sukhumvit Road.

I did not want to go in a tuk-tuk, basically a motorcycle with a two-seat bench under a covered top. They are everywhere and navigate effectively around taxis and buses, but they are touristy, overpriced, open to bus fumes, and the top of the tuk-tuk blocks the view. The drivers try to charge tourists two hundred to three hundred baht to go from Soi Cowboy to Nana, but the taxi fare is less than one hundred baht, or three US dollars. I walked it in thirty minutes. Sukhumvit Road after midnight is hard to describe, maybe like Times Square in New York with more sleaze intermixed with the wide-eyed foreigners and sex tourists. I could hardly look left and right fast enough to see everything before I arrived at Nana Plaza. I heard someone describe it as Disneyland for perverts. Maybe it is true. If you think Soho, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Hamburg have sex-filled streets, go to Nana Plaza. It's just mind-blowing.

There are many nicknames for the Nana Entertainment Plaza, including Sex City and Three Floors of Whores, but once you go, you know it simply as Nana. In the two hundred yards between Sukhumvit Road and Nana, the soi is jammed with bars, curbside food vendors, and crowds of foreigners. Street traffic has to fight the pedestrian traffic to snake its way through the crowds. Have a hankering for grasshoppers, cockroaches, or insects? No problem! Quick-fried and salted in a paper bag for snacks. Som tom (papaya salad), tom yum (hot and sour soup), dried fish, barbecued meat, too dark to tell what it is, and cheeseburgers on the grill are available within fifty feet of Nana in an assortment of portable carts, grills, and kitchens built on bicycles. If you are worried about what the meat is or how long it has been sitting in the unrefrigerated cart, you need to have another drink. Across the street, the Nana Hotel has a restaurant, a disco, cheap rooms, and a parking lot in front with twenty to fifty working girls leaning against cars and just waiting. "Welcome," they say, or they just smile and wait for you to make the first move. They know that someone will come to them, so they just wait.

If you look around, you can see anything near Nana. Young girls carrying babies and begging? Unfortunately, it is much too common. Disabled and deformed adults dragging themselves along the street with outstretched arms? Depressing. Elephants eating bananas from your hand? Yup. Young girls searching your eyes for interest? Every sixty seconds. All this happens in a crush of thousands of people walking through the streets and sidewalks with a background of loud music in every bar. Sex, lights, music, booze, food, laughter, and craziness—it is theater for viewing and participation, and it is hard to know when you are the audience or the actor. Actually, I was both but did not realize it.

I walked past the Nana Hotel and saw many bars on both sides of the soi with open seating facing the soi. It was like stadium seating overlooking the street so the spectators had good views of the action. Farangs perched along bar stools watching the fish swim by, watching the buyers and sellers do business. It is a fascinating show whether you like international business or just want to watch sexy women in short dresses. And it is important to note that Thai women are rarely overweight or overdressed, so what you see is a flesh parade of shapely brown legs in high heels with a bit of cleavage and a Thai face with big eyes, long eyelashes, and painted lips made up for the night. Some girls arrive by taxis or motorbikes to start work at Nana, and some hookers are coming back from short-time customers to try again. Girls come and go as they move from one spot in town to another to try their luck. There are young Euro guys, usually in small groups, getting drunk, who come to look at and touch the girls, maybe ask, "How much?" but are too proud or too poor to buy some time with them. Newbies fall in love with the first girl who puts her hand in their crotch and says, "Oooo, so big!" Old farangs get a street-side seat and sip beer for hours while they watch the show. I could not tell if they were saving their shot for later, or if they used it up already so were relegated to being spectators, or maybe their pensions were only good enough to pay for the beer, or maybe they were smarter than the rest of us.

The entrance to Nana Plaza is a small alley jammed between the food carts and the porch bars. It is the only entrance to the three-level "entertainment" complex. I pushed my way through a sea of dancers, working girls, hostesses, and farangs who streamed through the tiny walkway, some going in and some coming out. Hope was in the faces of everyone, no matter which direction they were heading, and the farangs in the audience lit up a smoke and ordered another beer. I passed the small Buddhist shrine inside Nana and made my way to the escalator on the right, and when I arrived at the top, I was greeted by five girls in white tank tops and orange mini-shorts waving me into the nearest go-go. I surfed their energy and found myself sitting in a front-row seat to a stage. I ordered a beer. The music started. Girls in underwear started parading on the stage. More started coming down poles from the ceiling—beautiful girls in bras and panties just falling like rain on the stage. No wonder so many farangs came here. The titillation started at my eyeballs and ended in my Jockeys!

The music pounded a rhythm, and the girls gyrated to the music. You could not help but move to the beat, feel the music. I was tapping my hand on the table when a girl slid next to me and took my arm. "Hi," I said, but I could not hear what she said, so I just smiled at her. I think I bought her a drink, and I had another beer while the show went on. She smiled at me and stroked my leg like she was trying to start a fire. Well, it worked—blinking colorful lights, throbbing music, sexy girls parading onstage, and the girl next to me rubbing my leg and smiling at me even though I could not understand anything she said. Oh, it was good—intoxicating, cock-throbbing, mind-numbing good—but after 20 minutes I managed to free myself from the girl and walk out of the bar.