Thais come in fourth, after South Koreans, Russians and Filipinos, among 44 countries surveyed by Euromonitor. Four-1/2 shots a week on average. The link says South Koreans drink more than Russians, Americans and Britons combined. Considering just some of the Brits I’ve seen here in Thailand, that’s pretty darned impressive!
Thais do drink a lot, and I generally won’t drink with a Thai. They just never seem to stop. Binging is quite the sport here, and I learned early on that there was no sense in trying to keep up with a local drinker. My college days are long gone, and I just can’t drink like that anymore.
I have to say that I met some bar girls in your wonderful country of residence that are probably responsible for no small part of that statistic. They were knocking back tequila shots all night long like it was water, and I have no doubt that they kept that up for most of the week. It didn’t actually occur to me until now just how partly impressive, partly insane that was. They didn’t even seem all that worse for wear. I don’t drink at all anymore myself, and I spent my time in Thailand sipping on sodas, so I didn’t really think too much about the fact that everyone around me weren’t dropping dead from acute alcohol poisoning, although I now realize that it seems like they should have been.
Well, very good point. I don’t think it was all water, though, at least. There was certainly some visible intoxication going on.
Actually, I’d like to hear Siam Sam’s opinion on this. Hey, Sam, what are the chances that the bar girls were drinking water and pocketing the money the dumbass guys at the bar were buying them drinks with? To be honest, it’s starting to sound more likely the more I think about it.
The thing with that survey is that it specifically singled out spirits and measured by “shots” rather than by alcohol consumed. South Koreans drink a lot of spirits, but almost all of that consumption is in the form of soju, which is (generally) not particularly strong as far as spirits go. In total amount of alcohol consumed, South Korea is quite a ways behind Russia and several other countries in Eastern Europe.
Japan ranked pretty high on that list as well, no doubt for all the shochu they drink here. But it’s also only about 20% ABV. In total amount of alcohol consumed, Japan is pretty tame.
It is quite common for the bargirls to be drinking water on the sly. Many bars keep a special bottle just for the lady drinks. Sometimes they’ll mix just a small amount of the labeled liquor in with the water to give it the right aroma, then the bargirl can let the customer smell it to “prove” it’s real. If she doesn’t want the customer to taste it, than that’s a dead giveaway. The taste test is what really matters. I’m not unsympathetic to this practice, as the girls get a commission on every lady drink they sell, but indeed if they kept knocking these back all night every night, they’d have some problems.
A British friend of mine was roommates a few years ago with another Brit whose girlfriend was a bargirl. She lived in the roommate’s room with the roommate. She came home one night plastered from all the tequila she’d slammed back. Some customer had been buying rounds of shots for all the girls, and she did drink the real stuff, maybe a dozen shots from what they were able to piece together later. (Tequila is remarkably similar in taste to the moonshine rice liquor popular with so many Thais here, so they like it.) Even though she was the roommate’s girlfriend, it was my friend who discovered her dead later in the evening! Alcohol poisoning.
Also, the girls often have a quota of lady drinks to sell per month, but it doesn’t always have to be alcohol. Many of the girls are quite upfront about just wanting a cola, and the bar is certainly always happy to sell a small glass of cola for $3 or $4 (lady drinks in most bars are pricier than the customers’ drinks even if it’s just a cola). But sometimes the girls do want to drink alcohol, or the customer is insistent to show that he wants everyone to have a good time and insists on buying liquor for all.
But watering the girls’ drinks is not a universal practice. Many bars don’t do this. Some have a policy of charging one lower price for colas and juices and a higher one for real alcohol. I’ll also often ask a bargirl if she wants a beer. That’s not so easy to fake, but some bars restrict the range of lady drinks they sell, and this isn’t necessarily a giveaway. I was in Hillary 4 Bar last Saturday night, and they have a policy of requiring the bargirl to have a drink mixed with Hennessy, the real stuff, for her first one, then she can chill out with a beer after that. I bought one for a bargirl I know, because she wanted a beer but had to drink the Hennessy first, and she really doesn’t like Hennessy. I gallantly helped her drink it, heh.
A word on Hillary 4 Bar. It’s part of the Hillary Group of bars. In the wake of the Bill Clinton sex scandal in the 1990s, a new red-light area on lower Sukhumvit Road was named Clinton Plaza, and the first bar at the entrance was Monica’s. At the same time, the first Hillary Bar opened in Sukhumvit Soi 4, named after Mrs. Clinton herself. Clinton Plaza and with it Monica’s lasted a few years but was eventually torn down for a new luxury hotel, but similar to the real-life Mrs. Clinton, Hillary’s has thrived and expanded into an empire.
I’ve never heard of bargirls being forced to drink against her will. Colas are quite common as a “lady drink.” The problem is usually stopping them from drinking.