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I sent an Email to a friend the other day asking if, during his forthcoming visit to Europe, he was going to stop over in Thailand on his way from Australia and visit me. If you could turn up your nose in Email - he would have done so.

He replied "I don't just want to hang out in bars with prostitutes you know, I want something interesting when I go for my holiday so I am sticking to Europe".

Yeah! - well!… No, I don't speak to him anymore. But his attitude is common. His total ignorance is common. Ask most Westerners what they know of Thailand and they will answer "lots of girls over there, lots of go-go bars and brothels, massage parlours, so on and so forth…"

Second thing that happened:-

I asked Rod, the publisher of Generator 21 Online if there were any particular stories he'd like me to write for the magazine. Rod said "yeah, why's Thailand always depicted as a sex destination by the media?" This came just a day after my friends Email. It all tied in.

What I want to do here is just hand over another perspective. I hope it is a more impartial and clearer view of why Thailand is depicted thusly - why Thailand kind of IS a place where you can "get laid" easily.

But there is far, far more to Thailand than fast and easy sex.

Ask most Westerners where the best sex destination is and they will tell you "Thailand of course".

Why do Westerners have this perception of Thailand being nothing much more than a place for cheap sex? Is the perception correct? Why have the media persisted in depicting Thailand in this manner? What effect has this perception on Thailand and it's people? These and other related questions are what I want to deal with in this series of articles. For starters let's get back to the beginning.

Long before Westerners (Farangs) came to Thailand the country and the culture embraced sex as simply another required bodily function. Sex was not "dirty" or "foul" or "shamefull". Yet this is what I was taught as a child in Australia. Have no doubt, I was taught literally that sex was a thing of horror, filthy, something to hide away behind locked doors. Sex was violence, blood, bad smells and big troubles.

In Thailand past and today, they do not teach that to children, they do not indoctrinate their population with creeds of sin and shame. More than 90% of Thailand's people are Buddhists. Buddhism is a philosophy of acceptance of life. Christianity is a socio-political control perversion.

Sex in Thailand is not something to be ashamed of. Sex is like eating, breathing, shitting and sleeping. It's just one of those things that your body has to do now and then. There are rules, there are social mores. But no Thai I've ever met has any perception of shame in sex.

Long before Farangs arrived here the houses of comfort were doing a good trade. Father's took their young sons to be educated about life and sex. Business people went to forget their worries. Workers saved their meagre wages and attended for fun or relief. The houses were attended by both male, female and cross-gender staff. These houses of comfort have existed in Thailand for hundreds of years.

And unlike Western countries, Thailand had no cultural mores that said "do that shit behind closed and locked doors". Oh no! Thailand's sex industry has always been right out front. On the street. Open. Visible. Accessible.

I feel that I can speak with some small authority. I have friends who work in the sex industry in Australia. Pornography shop workers, Prostitutes, Bouncers, Madams. My own mother ran several girls from a mining town hotel in the 50's when she got sick of being harrassed by horny miners in a no-girl town. I have worked the industry there myself redecorating and renovating one of Melbourne's more popular parlours. And yes, I have even taken some comfort in such houses when I was lost and lonely.

Although no research body (to my knowledge) has actually counted the amount of prostitutes per capita in Australia, the Americas or the EEC - I feel that I KNOW that there are as many if not more prostitutes per capita in Australia than in Thailand.

I think I can fairly assume that the same goes for the AMERICAS and EEC. More prostitution than Thailand and a cultural more that says "put it behind the door, lock the door, don't let anybody see that filthy shite!".

I worked for several years for Save The Children Fund in Melbourne, Australia. I took care of a large group of "turnkey" children (parents not home until late at night - kids left alone). Two of these kids, around age 12, worked as prostitutes to get money for their parents drug habits. I know their story from the street level. I met their friends, all involved in selling sex to old farts. I could not believe how many of them worked the streets. Large parks were their main venu, but some told me of clubs too. Fancy clubs with Mercs and Limos out front and dying old men inside.

King's Cross in Sydney literally crawls with sub-teens. One of the world's biggest child-prostitution rings was run from the central computer of Melbourne University until they caught red-handed the creep running it. Then something odd happened. The news was suppressed - it never made the papers. The creep was not prosecuted. The information was removed by the police and nothing was ever heard about it again.

I met one of the police officers involved with the case. He informed me that on that computer system was a list of names. BIG names. Famous people, politicians, TV folk, judges and lawyers. Names of men and women involved in a world-wide distribution network/club for old farts with too much money who like to tamper with children.

A friend of mine is serving life in prison. He shot his girlfriend in the head with a shotgun, right in her office in front of her father. My friend had discovered that they were involved with the distribution of child pornography. He told her and her father to stop it. But they made a lot of money out of the business and did not want to stop it. He took some heavy drugs one day, freaked out, took his gun and killed her. He got life, nobody gets life for murder in Australia but he got life. The family's involvement in child pornography came out in court of course. The father was not prosecuted. Why not? And why did my friend get life? Because the judge was one of the family's best customers.

Child prostitution is accepted by the Australian authorities by way of their total lack of commitment to end this business. Child prostitution is backed up and supported by the same people who make the laws against it. It's just like the marijuana industry in Australia - do what we say, not what we do. Same people make the laws profit on the black market.

Thai government, people and culture do not now and have never supported child prostitution. Yes there are child prostitutes in Asia. In Thailand, The Phillipines, Japan and elsewhere. Yes it happens here too. But it is far more insidious and broad-spread in Western countries. Look, the kids ARE here in Thailand if you want them. The kids are all over the world. The customers are the problem - and the customers are not Thai. So how about the world cleaining up their own back yards before they point the finger at Thailand?

All I know is that if you ask me right now to take you to a place where you can tamper with kids, I'd have to send you to Melbourne or Sydney because after years of street-life here, I still don't know and have never heard of any central point for such activities in Thailand. But I can tell you EXACTLY where to go in Australia if you want to mess up a kids life.

Again, I think I can fairly assume that the situation is the same in the AMERICAS and EEC. What? You going to try to tell me there are no child prostitutes on the streets of New York, Amsterdam, Brazil? Are you serious? No way!

Sex and sexual issues are simply more acceptable in the culture and society of Thailand than in any Western countries that I know of. Gays, Cross-Dressers, Transvestites and others who deviate from the sexual norm walk proud and free of fear in Thailand.

A pretty gay boy is more likely to be worshipped than beaten in Thailand.

A pretty gay boy is most certainly going to wind up beaten to a bloody pulp in Australia by some homophobe. Homophobia is something I am yet to see in Thai people.

Up-country in the village, if a household has four boys and no girls and one of the boys displays even the slightest effeminate characteristics, he will be allowed to grow up as if a girl. This is also common in South Pacific cultures. Mum needs help around the house, all the kids are boys, so what? Bring one of the boys up as a girl and she can help mum out.

Thais simply DO NOT freak out about sex. Farangs simply DO freak out about sex. Herein lies a major point in the search for an answer as to why the world appears to think that Thailand is one big brothel.

I guess that from a Farang perspective Thailand is, in some ways, a great big brothel. "Disneyland for Grownups" I have heard said.

A society that does not besmirch the act of sexual congress with images of filth, dirt, horror, blood and foul stench is likely as not to be targeted by the more "hung-up" societies as a "country of perversion" or a "sex destination".

Even if all this was true, I would not care less. So what if it was true? It is NOT true, but what if it was? Are you really THAT strung out about sex?

What if I tell you here that people only go to restaurants to drink coffee and that coffee is a dangerous drug?

What if I told you that restaurants represent a threat to society as I perceive it should be. I should try to convince you that people only go to restaurants to drink coffee.

Never mind the food, the newspapers, the toilets, the people working there. Never mind meeting your fiends there for a quick meal and a chat.

The only thing that matters is that they are unethical houses of ill repute because THE ONLY THING THEY DO IS SELL COFFEE!

Same attitude. Same absurdity. Same ignorance.