Bangkok Dangerous

One of the great Bangkok Noir films is the original BANGKOK DANGEROUS by the Pang Brothers, very visual, very dark, very raunchy........

The Hollywood remake of BANGKOK DANGEROUS, also by the Pang brothers, this time starring Nicholas Cage, comes out in the summer of 2008 and should be Hollywood's first and, to date, best look at the excitement, chaos and wonder of modern Bangkok and the Bangkok Night.........

Here are two links, the first to the Spanish language version of the trailer and the second to the English language version:

Link to BANGKOK DANGEROUS trailer in Spanish

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Click below to view Bangkok Dangerous trailer in English:

Polish Gentleman in Bangkok on his Way to Cambodia

Polish Gentleman in Bangkok on his Way to Cambodia - Chris Coles

........fresh from the cold, grey winter in Poland, he's stopped off in Bangkok on his way to Cambodia for a few weeks of adventure with sweet little Khmers...................is he an undercover priest or just an ordinary man.........whichever, for sure he's a sinner..............

Mona Lisa Patpong

Patpong Mona Lisa - Chris Coles

......some say that Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa was a transvestite hooker from the streets near his studio, the mysterious smile reflecting both her own and Leonardo's sexual ambiguity......

......in a world of reincarnation, could it be possible Mona Lisa's alive and well in the Bangkok district called Patpong, perhaps as a wired Thai Ladyboy or as a beautiful and tender Isan bargirl named Wan Jai.....

.......who can say for sure..........................

Nana Beer Garden Girl

Nana Beer Garden Girl - Chris Coles

....she works in a beer garden off Soi Nana, the early shift from eleven until nine PM. For two weeks now, every day, a German man has come to see her. He buys a few drinks and they go to a nearby hotel. He gives her more than she asks. He talks to her in broken English, almost the same as hers. He's over fifty and very friendly, also nice to her friends. Tonight he's flying back to Germany and he gave her some flowers when he said goodbye. He's promised to come back, he's not sure when. She smiled and wished him good luck. Inside, she is crying.........

Beverly Hills Crime Boss at Nana Plaza

Beverly Hills Crime Boss at Nana Plaza - Chris Coles

..........in Beverly Hills, he's the Boss, the go-to guy for real estate zoning, condo conversion, business permits, all the myriad ways the Beverly Hills crowd feeds at the trough...........

.........he's been married to the same woman for 40 years, she's at his side for Beverly Hills status events, networking with the power wives, deep in conversation about botox, plastic surgery, community property divorce, status cars and diamond jewelry..........

.........but when the Boss is away, on business trips to Bangkok, he heads off to Nana Plaza, chasing the Isan bargirls, slender, youthful, smiling, dark, sensual, wild, ready for the rough sex he craves, a Master of the Universe set free, doing dirty things, shameful things, depraved, rude, violent, satisfying his insatiable lust for ownership, dominance and power, his wallet full of thousand Baht notes and an endless supply of Viagra.............

Italian Sex Tourist Nana Plaza Bangkok

Italian Sex Tourist Nana Plaza Bangkok - Chris Coles/2008

......he's partied in Estonia, Prague, Havana and Rio, even little Costa Rica..........but he always comes back to Bangkok........Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy, Patpong, Sukhumvit, the mighty Ratchada. There's something about the ambiance and smiles, the slender girls........the music, the street stalls......the feeling of another planet beyond space and time.................

Patpong Portraits

Patpong Expat Guy - Chris Coles

Located at the center of the vast and sprawling metropolis known as Bangkok, the notorious district known as Patpong is only a couple of rundown blocks, strewn with garbage and stray dogs, filled with stalls selling tawdry counterfeit goods, a sleazy row of go-go bars staffed by a few thousand girls who didn’t make it into the hi-end of the Bangkok Night and a thousand or so ladyboys wacked out on drugs, hormone injections and too much silicone.

The millions of tourists who each year wonder through Patpong and make it all possible come from all over the world. Not exactly shining examples of First World bliss, they are often grotesquely overweight, dressed in a shabby assortment of sweat stained t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, and weighted down with knapsacks, cameras and shopping bags filled with worthless knick knacks. Many of them are drunk and jetlagged, their faces showing the pain of unfulfilled and despairing lives.

What these First World Ambassadors are looking for in the primordial mire of Patpong is an indecipherable mystery, even to themselves.

As for the Thais, Patpong’s simply a place to work and make money. No matter how strange and shoddy the endless river of foreign tourists may look, by some set of circumstances very few Thais comprehend, these primitive beings are usually loaded with cash and happy to spend it on items which appear to be completely unnecessary. Counterfeit watches that last only a few months, girls who don’t actually want to have sex, ladyboys who are not even girls but do want to have sex and an endless stream of beer that will pass through their bloated bodies in less than an hour.

At some point, the Patpong District will be torn down to make way for gleaming hi-rise offices and whatever Patpong is presently thought to be or actually was will gradually recede into the realm of mythic recollection, a moment in time between Bangkok’s murky Third World past and its bright First World future. Perhaps one day, the portraits in this blog will be all that’s left……….

Welcome to Thailand Soi Dog Nana Plaza

Welcome to Thailand Soi Dog Nana Plaza - Chris Coles

...........always smiling, never losing his chi, every night he guards the entrance to Nana Plaza in exchange for scraps from the food carts..............

Arab Sex Tourist at Grace Hotel Bangkok

Arab Sex Tourist Grace Hotel Bangkok - Chris Coles

......the Arab Sex Tourists in and around the Grace Hotel in Bangkok come mainly from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf States, their pockets full of cash, their wives shrouded in black, consumed with shopping while these religiously Fundamentalist men drink whiskey-colas and work on resolving their Desire Deficit by partying down with Thai bargirls...........

Bangkok Ladyboy Obession Bar Nana Plaza

Bangkok Ladyboy Obession Bar Nana Plaza - Chris Coles

..........every night, night after night, she sits in Nana Plaza's Obession Bar, waiting for her clients, ongoing and unknown, a master of illusion and desire, ferocious, cunning, hauntingly beautiful, a victim of circumstance and mis-construed re-incarnation, open to the world and totally at risk, doomed, too many drugs and hormones, too much plastic surgery, a predator in the Bangkok Night, ready to accept the projections of others and her own complicated Karma.................

American CEO Swindler in Patpong

American CEO Swindler in Patpong - Chris Coles

..........often featured on the covers of mainstream business magazines, he's a well-known CEO who bilked his investors in LA out of hundreds of millions and now he's looking for a place to hide, finding the perfect spot in a short time hotel in Patpong, Bangkok's center of sleaze and delusion, where he feels free to live without pretense as to who he actually is and what he actually likes to do.................

Midnite Bar Soi Cowboy

Midnite Bar Soi Cowboy - Chris Coles

.....one of the oldest bars on Soi Cowboy, Midnite is friendly and funky with a raunchy overlay. The beers cost two dollars and the girls, mostly Lao from the part of Thailand called Isan, are easy-going, always looking for an excuse to be outrageous and have some fun. The guys, mostly Expats, some Japanese, think they're back in college, hanging out at a roadhouse bar for sex and rock 'n roll, the problems of their adult lives forgotten...........

Thai Rent Boy Bangkok Boys Town

Thai Rent Boy Bangkok Boys Town - Chris Coles

.....at the same time kind-hearted and mercenary, he works the gay Farangs who wander through Bangkok Boys Town, night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year, hoping to get lucky before he dies from Aids...........there are so many of them, not hundreds or thousands but hundreds of thousands, passing by for some fun on their way to oblivion..............luckily he is Buddhist and knows that if he treats the Farangs well, gives alms to the Monks and sends money to his family, his next life will be better...............