Discover hour next holiday house in Phuket

Friends from Full Monty Bar

To start of with, I have to say that I have never been involved with the prostitution as a customer. As such, I will not be able to give you much detailed information from the customer's point of view. I can however assure you that discovering the Asian sex trade as an observer from the outside is a much more difficult task.
Anyway, I am sure your imagination can help you to get an idea on how it can be. In fact it can help you to have an idea but big are the chances that you will still be far from reality!
If I hadn’t spent time learning the Thai language to a certain level, I would have never had the possibility to enter the life of some bar girls and give them a chance to expose their "true" feelings, hopes and fears. I would have not been told all these stories that allow me to write today. It is very hard for these girls to open up and speak about themselves, especially with a man. However, once the contact and a relationship of mutual trust are established, all stories look alike or close.
Moreover, I have been living with a Thai woman for several years and married since 2006. I have been able to learn and understand a vast number of things from her who’s had to quit university and her accounting degree in order to help her family, still without choosing the path of prostitution.
So I will try to explain as good as possible what I have discovered from many different people through their personal stories and feelings.

The following pages have been created not to encourage people to give prostitution a reason to be but on the contrary, to explain the problem and reveal some realities too often hidden.
If these few pages can help you to better understand what is going on in Thailand and Asia in general and maybe modify a bit your perception of Thai women, they will have reached their aim.

Thai women are not all prostitutes:

Flower vendor - Patong Beach

Before anything, there is a point I want to make clear here: Even though prostitution is very developed in the touristy destination of Thailand, all Thai women are not prostitutes! It can seem to be an obvious thing if you are quietly installed at home or at work in front of your computer. But believe my experience, if you see the behaviors of some male tourists towards Thai women sometimes, you would then understand the full sense of what you are reading. Some people seem to think that all girls in this country are for “sale”!
If it is undisputable that Thai women are beautiful and tender, it is even more certain that any foreigner has no chances to start any kind of healthy relationship with a Thai girl the time of a holiday. When you are a western person in Thailand, building a relationship that is not based on money or a one sided profit is a venture that will take months if not years before you can reach a level of trust, understanding and communication similar to what would take much shorter in western countries.
We are touching here a first major difference between two cultures. Thai families still teach to their daughters that it is extremely important to keep her virginity for her husband. So how could we think it would be possible for a western tourist to have some kind of relationship with any girl apart from bar girls? Many people do not want to recognize that and we always hear comments like “even if I slept with my girlfriend the first night, she is different” or “she just arrived in Phuket (or Bangkok, Pataya...etc). In over four years of life in Thailand, I have to say that very few are the people I know who are living with a girl not coming from the bars. And amongst the people living with non bar girls, they have all been living for a certain number of years in Thailand. They had the time to learn the culture and better adapt themselves to a new way of life.
Having said that, I can very much understand that it is not easy, if at all possible, to understand for any new comer to Thailand. However, this is the way it is, even if most people keep trying to think wrongly that all Thai girls are easy.

How does it work?

Whatever your beliefs and thoughts are on the subject, the discovery of prostitution in Thailand is a shock it is very hard to be prepared for before end. For many people (especially males), all these girls seem to be waiting for them and longing to go to bed with anyone. The sex tourists will have arguments such as “but I am helping her to support her family in need of money”, thinking that they make them feel good by buying their bodies for the night.
Before we go any further, there is an extract from my journal explaining that in my own words from the times of my arrival in the country.

I think I can describe these girls as being many tempting sexy little friends of one night only! In fact, even though the principle is not much different, I can not speak about them as prostitutes. These little ladies of 18-30 years old have absolutely nothing of the vulgar and obscene side of the prostitutes we can see in dodgy streets in western countries.
However, the extent of the profession here exceeds imagination!
Is it possible to imagine towns full of bars, these same bars being full of girls with model like looking bodies? Well, this is basically what we find here (in appearance) every night!
But where it hurts whoever has some sentiments left in him is that these girls, as beautiful and caring they might be, they are only interested in one thing… the 1 to 2000 Thb (Thai money) whoever Farang (westerners nickname) will give to her to buy her little body for the night.

To resist the temptation is far from being easy and I think that any men who have been in Thailand will confirm my words unless they are shy to admit it.
This having been said, I sometimes wonder why I have never been interested in this business. Is it by fear of the diseases, the disgust to the idea of buying a human body, the dread of lack of any sentiments and love, the partaking in the destruction of someone’s life? I guess it is a bit of that all.
I have always been lucky enough to limit myself to friendly and verbal relationships with these queens of the night. This is the reason why today I am able to write in a detached manner while still knowing what is happening in those circles.

…Some queens of the night yes but some queens that we can sometimes see with fear in the eyes while thinking about what they have just done or what they will have to do…
Because of all that, I feel myself a bit uncomfortable while walking in some very touristy streets with some of my Thai female friends! It is a bit like if all in the sudden I was drawn into this massive glue formed by the sex tourism in Thailand…

Patong Beach Bars - Thailand

Even though there are bars with working girls all over Phket island (and everywhere in the country), Patong beach is probably the most active location on the west coast of Thailand.
Something to point out however is that compared with Europe, a vast majority (not all) of the girls are working for themselves and are not under control of any mafia. These girls are somewhat employees of the bar where they work and make people drink with the difference that they can be taken off work at anytime by the customers for the night. In order to do that, the man will have to pay a certain amount of money to the bar in order to take the girl away. This is called the “bar fine”. It will compensate the fact that the bar is loosing an employee. From there on, the girls are free to fix their own price, which they will keep for themselves totally.
As such, the prices vary a lot depending on the girl. Another particularity is that the girl will stay all night long with her client unless agreed otherwise.
Despite the nature of their job, these bar girls can be extremely jealous (as the rest of the Thai women by the way) to the point that they can even start fights when seeing one of their ex-customers taking another girl the next day.
I am absolutely serious when I say that and remember some friends showing up the next morning with high eel marks on the face…!

Everyone looses in that game:

Despite all the excuses the prostitution customers can find, these girls will never be "happy" with their money. I happened to hear that “taking a girl out in Europe was actually more expensive than paying for a prostitute in Asia, these Thai bar girls being more docile on top of it”. I have to say that these kind of macho comments in complete lack of any moral are just good to make me puke!
Anyway, there is some kind of justice in all that as everybody looses and sometimes even looses a lot. Since the Thai bar girls do not have any more to loose, I guess you see who is the biggest looser in the “game”.
Some men become just like little puppies in front of a bone and completely loose any common sense and politeness. I have sometimes spent time sitting in the corner of a bar, looking at the customers playing their game. I have to say that it is quite scary to see some adults and especially dirty old men acting like 15 yo children in front of these girls. I do not want to discriminate people because of their age or their physical appearance but I think that people should not come to Asia to do what they would not like to see being done to their own daughters in their home country.

Everyone is playing games

I have to say I have some admiration for these girls who despite the disgust they can resent for their customers, are still able to smile and make them believe that they love them and want to be with them so much. But admiration can also fade to become pity when I hear what they have to do with these sex tourists just arrived in Thailand to do what they will never have a chance to do in their home country.

Some people loose a lot. I have seen people loosing considerable fortunes going up to a brand new house they were planning to live in with their new “girlfriend”. But seriously, who in western countries could be so naïve to believe that a young Thai lady of 18-25 yo could become mad in love with a 45+ yo man she has just met, while barely speaking his language? As crazy as it can seem, this is unfortunately the case of most people and what most sex tourist think, not aware of the Thai culture and how wrong they can be about all this.