The city is located in Thailand's touristed south, sought out for its deluxe resorts and crystal-sand beaches. But few Westerners (or Thais for that matter) like to venture this far into the Thai-Malaysia borderlands — a region plagued by Southeast Asia's bloodiest insurgency.
Everything that makes Thailand infamous is available in Golok: cheap booze, late nights, rented female company.
But these parties just happen to be raging inside territory claimed by jihadis who pull off hundreds of bomb attacks each year.
The jihadis are hell-bent on turning this region into an Islamic breakaway state. Since 2004, their war against the Buddhist nation of Thailand has tallied more than 6,200 dead. That's more conflict deaths in the last 10 years than in the Gaza Strip.
And yet the tourists keep coming. Not from Europe or the United States but from Muslim-majority Malaysia just across the border. They are men escaping provinces where Islamic codes forbid booze and miniskirts.
"When the Muslim guys get here, they drink hard," says Tip, a brawny 33-year-old woman who manages Pin and several other women at the same bar. She has the look of an enforcer: camouflage pants, wallet chain, forearms raked by scar tissue.
Like many women on this strip, Tip has suffered from the attacks. She earned her scars right here, on the same strip, in a bombing several years back. For veterans of this city's sex trade, witnessing an attack is practically a rite of passage. "I just cleaned off the blood and brought out more beer," she says. "You have to get used to it."
Pin — a slight woman in jean shorts — is still drowning her worries in beer. She executes a sloppy pirouette, trips, and plops into the laps of two male customers. The men look nearly comatose-drunk, oblivious to the bombings. Pin cracks open another Heineken and charges it to their tab.
"Sorry, Pin usually doesn't misbehave. She's just scared," Tip says. "But we can't shut the bar every time there's an incident."
"Very un-Islamic"
Nightclub bombings are just another casualty in southern Thailand's guerrilla war, a conflict over land, power and religion.
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http://theweek.com/article/index/27...-insurgency-in-thailands-strangest-party-town
