The pavement is dry – and higher – again outside the Hot Lips go-go bar on Soi Cowboy with not a drop of leaking sewage seen or smelled.
Management Tuesday night pointed at the smooth new concrete outside the steps of the new Soi Cowboy go-go bar, which was accused of being the source of nearly a year of sewage leaks that have turned the Neon Alley into Sewer Cowboy, contributing, according to rival bar managers, to a poor first month of high season.
Well after midnight Tuesday, at the same time sewage had pooled nightly since last week, the only thing on the pavement was a new Hot Lips spotlight. Management seemed to be saying “problem solved”.
Indeed, a stroll down Soi Cowboy Tuesday afternoon shed more light on the “fix” put in by Hot Lips. The concrete poured raises the soi’s level to the same height as that poured last week outside neighboring Moonshine Joint and Jungle Jim, which had suffered the most collateral damage from their neighbor’s leaking pipes.
The new concrete also has the added bonus of solving the pothole problem that Bangkok street-maintenance crews ignore until it can’t be ignored any longer.
Sewage Problem Fixed or Covered Up?
It’s easy to see how pouring more concrete would block sewage from leaking from under Hot Lips’ steps into the street. But the question no one has answered is whether the pipes are still backing up? If the previous exit is blocked, that sewage will have to go somewhere.
One only needed to be inside Nana Plaza’s Lollipop go-go bar a few years when a pipe backup resulted in a pool of yuck filling the back of that ground-floor bar.
Only time will tell of the pipes were fixed before the concrete was laid, or if the sewage problem was simply redirected and pops up in the toilets of Hot Lips, Spritz or Moonshine Joint.
