Fresh from backpacking across Asia, she took a teaching job she despised just to stick around. That’s when one of her condo neighbors, a casting agent, suggested she try modeling on the side.
“I never considered it before, but I didn’t have any money, and I didn’t have any friends,” Jessica said. “So it seemed like a good idea. I went to my first casting for a Japanese commercial.”
She didn’t get the job, but met a guy who invited her to one of Bangkok’s notorious “models nights” and her first dreamy taste of the expat “beautiful people” scene where skinny, statuesque eye-candy from Eastern Europe and South America bask in free stuff and can find themselves being groomed for prostitution.
“I have to say they were sort of like better-looking backpackers,” she remembers. “They all had three-month tourist visas and just wanted to have fun and party,” said Jessica, who didn’t want her name used because she is still working in Bangkok.
Back when she was the new girl in Bangkok, she started going five nights a week, but not for the pleasant company.
“A lot of time was spent talking about things like, ‘I want to go to Japan, but I need to lose weight,’” she recounted. Instead it was the ready supply of free food and booze – 10 drink tickets up front and free piles of king prawns and sashimi. There was a different bar or nightclub offering free goodies every night of the week, and this crowd loved to get wasted and blow lots of coke.
During that time, not much happened for Jessica’s professional modeling career. She got two jobs as a commercial extra. She wouldn’t have called herself a model, but hey – she had a “comp card” identifying her as such at bars and clubs.
“What defines a real model anyway?” said Jessica, who was 21 at the time and had just graduated from university with honors. “I guess some worked, but maybe just once every three months.”
A nightlife institution
The model scene has long held a warm and fuzzy spot in Bangkok’s nightlife, and so-called “Models Nights” remain a staple of the free-wheeling nightlife scene everywhere from low-rent discos to high-end eateries.
There are model nights almost every day of the week, and almost every upscale restaurant, bar or nightclub has advertised such parties, from Zuma and Limoncello to Maggie Choo’s. A decade after it was pioneered in Bangkok by Bed Supperclub, regular “models nights” can be found Tuesdays at Flix on RCA and Fridays at Circle on Soi Ruamrudee. That’s not to mention Fashion TV’s The Love F Bar in Mixx, which also offers 10 drinks and a free taxi for groups of three models on certain nights, and Koi is perhaps the most well-known model hangout.
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