Ritual at Bar in Nana Entertainment Plaza

Near where I live is the multi-storey, slightly sleazy Nana Entertainment Plaza, which has many licenced bars.

Almost all of the 30 or 35 bars or clubs have a standard bar with stools, bartender, and a mirror behind the bartender, just like any other bar in the world. They also have a carousel (some have two) in the centre of the floor, and three rows of bench-type seats, successively higher, more or less in a semi-circle around the central floor area with the carousel.

The carousel holds about 10 or 12 girls, who dance, mostly lethargically, occasionally energetically, to annoying music, as the carousel turns slowly. After 15 minutes or so, the DJ calls out something (probably "All change!") in Thai, and the girls on the carousel descend and put on a T-shirt and jeans, or a uniform peculiar to that bar, and another set of girls strips to their bikinis and gets up on the carousel.

Nudity is forbidden, the girls must wear bikinis, and they can't be too revealing.

One evening, I happened to be walking around Nana just before 7PM, which is when the bars and clubs open. At one bar, the interior lights had just been switched on, and there were a half dozen beautiful bar girls standing around chatting.

One girl took some jasmine necklace wreaths and a wooden bat, about the size and shape of a milk bottle (probably the wooden pestle used to make som tam, the spicy papaya salad), and rapped it twice on one of the vertical wooden poles holding up the floor above. She gave one wreath to one of the girl dancers. She rapped on two more poles, then moved to the doorway. She ran the bat up one side, across the top, and down the other side of the doorway. Then she rapped it twice on the floor inside in front of the doorway. She held a shiny metal pot filled with water, and poured water over the bat, then rapped it twice on the floor again. She put the pot aside. She hung a jasmine wreath on a hook by the door.

She moved back into the club, and walked around stopping often. She squatted down, rapped the bat twice on the floor, then stood up and moved on. She did this 6 or 7 times around the floor of the club. I couldn't see any particular difference in the floor at the spots where she rapped.

She then walked around the carousel and rapped each brass pole twice.

At the end, she gave her final wreath to another dancer.

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