Welcome to the Ladyboy Cabaret

We've all heard of the famous Thai ladyboys. I never quite understood what the fuss was about until you actually see a few of these fascinating creatures. My first exposure was in a touristy strip of an island, Koh Samui, where as a solo male traveler walking around, the harassment was fairly constant. Many of them would be quite beautiful women, but a British dude provided me the sage advice "always remember....no Thai woman should be above 5'6".

A family friendly element of the Ladyboy experience is the Ladyboy Cabaret. I attended them in both Koh Samui and Koh Tao with the safety of female friends, as the idea of heading into one of these solo would be a little nervewracking. The cabarets themselves were tremendously entertaining. Basically, the ladyboys perform a series of song and dance numbers, minus actual singing. They chroeograph fairly complex dance routines and costumes with music ranging from popular hip hop to Bollywood, to naturally, a ton of disco.



The dancing and costumes definitely ranged in qualty as the Koh Tao ladyboys were definitely minor leaguers compared to Koh Samui. Timing was off, dancers looked nervous, and man, some of those ladyboys really looked like kinda scary men (and lets not even start with the 'tuck jobs'). I am still curious to this day if there are any Frank Bruni or Rogert Ebert style "Ladyboy Cabaret Critics" as after two viewings I felt I could distinguish what was quality.

The highest quality moment came in the Koh Samui show, as a ladyboy came out in full ladyboy regalia to Frank Sinatra's "My Way". As heshe danced and lip-synced through the number, they removed articles of clothing and put on men's clothing. Towards the crescendo-laden finale of the song, they even wiped off their makeup and combed their real hair, and became a very regular looking Thai man in a suit. An example of the postmodern Ladyboy arthouse performance genre at its finest.

(I randomly found a clip on Youtube of the conclusion of I think the same performer)

The Koh Tao cabaret however did provide one interesting twist. With about 100 people in the audience, at the conclusion they needed just a few 'volunteers' (or victims more accurately). I was sitting kind of near the front and as one of the manlier ones scanned the audience with those Thai ladyboy eyes, heshe locked in on me and walked over and tapped me on the shoulder. I provided the obligatory hesitation, but as most of you who know me well would know, I figured I could handle whatever was in store. They picked me, two British guys, and I think an Aussie and took us back to the dressing room. We were provided costumes involving, with mine involving a purple wig, long purple skirt and some sort of bra top. We were brought out behind the curtain and told to stand there as a familiar disco beat found its way through the speakers. Yes, the curtain opened to the words "young man" and it was our time to walk out and dance to YMCA with the ladyboys.


We rocked it.