Bangkok seems to be famed for its gogo bars and sex shows, but I’ve always struggled to see what all the fuss is about. The only times I’ve ever really been to places like Nana and Patpong have been when friends from the UK have been visiting. I’m not sure why I do this but I always try and show them these places and pass them off as some sort of tourist attraction, when in reality there isn’t much to see and there is little that reflects anything about my life in Thailand.

Some people seem to spend most of their nocturnal lives in gogo bars. There are websites devoted to entirely that. What’s wrong with most of these people? I’m sure age is a factor, because truthfully I get more of a kick checking out the girls at RCA or Ratchada. The girls in the red light areas are not particularly alluring. It’s not that they look awful, but they seem to radiate feelings of mistrust and being slightly uncomfortable. It is less like a strip club and more like a zoo where you get to play with the animals.

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DJ Nakadia’s story is one told many times. She met a photographer on the internet by chance in 2001 and went to France to pursue a career in modeling. During her time in Europe she became interested in clubbing and the music she was hearing on the dance-floors of Germany. In 2002 she began DJing and has never looked back since.

“For the past 2 years I have been mostly playing in Europe and travelling to Thailand only for a holiday,” says Naka from Germany. “Europe feels like home now.”

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“Some people look at my pictures for a long time. I don’t know how to feel about this. They tell me that my pictures are too blurred and seem unfinished and lonely in appearance,” says Kornkrit Jianpinidnan, speaking about his photos. “For some people, my pictures are right, and for some of them, my pictures are wrong. When people see my work, I want them to make questions for me. I want them to ask themselves what is happening in that moment. They have to ask ‘why?’”

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One group of people for whom The Lost Boy has come to feel some sort of hypocritical resentment towards is backpackers. The Lost Boy was a backpacker for all of around ten days, but it was not a comfortable experience. From this feeling of uncomfortableness comes The Lost Boy’s own mixed feelings of pity and sorrow for the travellers who move in and out of Bangkok so fast you would think they actually had somewhere to go.

The plight of the eternal globetrotters

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Close to six months ago an article was published in Guru about models. The article was heavily edited in some parts. This is the original article, slightly edited to bring it up to speed with a few additional words.

Bangkok is, by conventional standards, one of the ugliest cities in the world, with vast numbers of slums, building sites, traffic jams and great monstrosities of shopping enhancements in the form of glimmering malls. These glimmering malls, such as Siam Paragon, are, apparently, the future of the city. They are ‘Lifestyle choices,’ as one leading Bangkok newspaper claimed.

With these lifestyle choices comes a demographic of people living in the city that has evoked irrational feelings of anger in The Lost Boy for some time now. Some choose to reserve a balanced judgment for these individuals, whilst others are more outspoken. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of the model.

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