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Thailand's Reputation as a Sex Destination.

The Carter Perspective.

The Inside Story of the Thai Sex Industry.

This is the inside story of a very controversial topic. The writer has no affiliation with any newspaper groups or political parties and so can write freely without editorial or other pressure (to date) to "not mention that part please".

The writers opinion is just that - opinion. But remember, there are no facts in the world, just opinions and illusions and opinions (and statistics). Nobody is right - Nobody is wrong. This is the writers point of view.

This week read:-

The Official Stance.

Profile of Typical Sex Tourist

Description of Sex Venues

Last year, 1996, a Thai government representative stated "there is no prostitution in Thailand". That IS the official stance of the Thai government - there is no prostitution.

No, these guys are not blind. Well not in a physical sense in any case. The official stance is both absurd and an insult to humanity. There ARE prostitutes in Thailand and THEY NEED HELP!.

This head-in-the-sand attitude that has been adopted by the Thai government is killing people. I just don't get it. How come the same male brains that run our governments (not just Thailand's) are pretty much the same brains that pretend there is no issue to deal with are pretty much the same brains behind the dicks sloshing in and out of paid-pussy or paid-ass depending on their bent.

The rank & file women and men who work in the sex industry in Thailand AND the rest of the world need help. They ARE there. They are in every capital city. They need recognition. They work the oldest profession in the world.

My father once said to me, "son, it ain't the oldest profession in the world - it's the ONLY profession. Think about it. I sell my brain and my hands and my heart & soul to bosses as a computer technician. What is the real fundamental difference between my brain and hands and my dick and ass? Not much from where I am sitting. Just socio-cultural differences - it all seems flesh to me though.

Sorry guys, ignoring the problem won't make it go away. Saying "there is no prostitution" is absurd. These workers need a union. They need to shit-stir the whole freaking world.

The "pretending not to be" problem is far from unique in Thailand. I can speak with authority of the Australian government which by way of total hypocrisy combined with total lack of action says exactly the same thing - "there are no prostitutes in Australia".

God damn it! We are all, each and every one of us, whores. Let's get real. Let's get together on it. Start today by thinking of prostitutes as simply another professional person doing their duty. Only YOU can change the government's of the worlds perceptions. Because you ARE the governments of the world. YOU put them there. YOU can change them. Individual action.

Male, European decent, age range 18-80, strung-out, sexually abused by society (otherwise would not be here looking for pussy).

OK, that is all something of a generalisation. But not so far from accurate either.

The typical "sex tourist" that I meet is male. There are females, I've met them too, sometimes chasing after another girl, sometimes after a man.

Now here is a funny thing for you. And it is true too.

Many western women come to Thailand and say… "the Thai men really know how to treat a woman, Western men don't know how."

Many Thai women chase western men and say "western men really know how to treat a woman, Thai men don't know how".

I've met many Western men here who said "Thai women really know how to treat a man, Western women have lost it."

I've met many Thai men here who say "Western women really know how to treat a man, Thai women have no idea."

I've met many Western lesbians here who said to me "you know, these Thai babes really know how to love a woman".

I've met many Thai gays who say "only a Western man knows how to make another man happy".

I've me many Thai lesbians who told me "only these Western women understand what it means to love another woman".

I've met many Western gays who were quick to inform me that "only these Thai boys can really reach a mans heart."

You work it out. Looks to me like we all got hangups. Looks to me like there IS a typical sex tourist. It is called "a human".

Since the US Airforce bases in the north of Thailand in WWII there have been foreign customers for the sex trade. There have been foreign customers for the hotels, the bars, the beaches, the bungalows, the hire cars, etc, etc.

I don't see that the sex tourist has had any further or additional cultural effect here to the "other" tourists and visitors. They all have an effect. They all bring with them little injections of some other culture.

I see culture as something with no history. Culture is an illusion spurred on by irrational nationalistic feelings. Culture is dead. Humans have never had culture. Culture is an illusion we create to make ourselves feel superior to somebody else who does not have the same culture.

Sure the sex industry here (and tourism generally, and industry generally) has had an effect on culture. But culture by nature changes. Culture does not resist change and change is not always bad. It is only us that resists change. Culture is simply our perception of art, song, dance, society and so forth.

I see no degradation in socio-sexual attitudes here in Thailand. I see very little change in either direction in fact. Thai men have always been somewhat piggish toward their women from what I can see. They have always treated them very much as second class citizens bordering on furniture/possessions.

Thai culture is very much stolen from Tibetan/Burmese/Indian culture in any case and certain aspects of it simply suck (same as certain aspects of western culture). I don't see any need for concern about what/who/how/when regarding any cultural changes anywhere.

Culture is mostly a nationalistic thing. And I am a weirdo who really believes in Globalisation. So you can stick your cultures anyway.

Tourism provides Thailand with substantial income each year. Arrivals are in the millions. How many of those arrivals are "sex tourists"?. There are no official figures and no way to find the truth anyway. Some but very few "sex tourists" will admit that sex is the reason they are here.

The build up of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases here and in the rest of the world has caused something of a slowdown in the sex industry. Virtual sex, masturbation, mutual masturbation, these and variants are becoming more popular. The sex tourist arrivals have most certainly dropped off. Scared of the diseases, I guess a lot of them are sticking to a good porno mag, a jar of lube and a good old wank.

But the business still runs and it earns big money. Although the arrivals have dropped a little bit recently, there is whole new generation of sex tourists out there just busting to get into it so the business will keep running.

The economic impacts have been both positive and negative.

Positive: Many men and women from up-country earn additional income for their families and villages by working the trade in Bangkok or other urban centers. These earnings would be impossible outside the trade.

Positive: Although it is not a pretty idea - many Thai women are treated like simple shit by their husbands. The trade offers a way out. Sure it ain't a real nice way out - but you probably don't know what it is like to be furniture.

Positive: Police who only earn about 100 to 150 US Dollar a month can siphon off a bit of money from the trade and thereby afford to buy some shoes for their kids to wear to school.

Positive: Like it or lump it - the trade DOES bring arrivals and DOES contribute to the overall touro-dollar in the region.

Negative: People working the trade become lazy, the money is seen as "easy". They loose some of their work-ethos. This negatively impacts the economy in the long term as a small sector of the workforce becomes virtually disabled.

Negative: The big money is siphoned off by the big players - Government officials, senior police officers, organised crime. Too few get too much of a cut.

Negative: The economy becomes dependant on this partial source of income. The world's boundaries are breaking down. We are going global. This localised market will not last forever.

Negative: The trade inspires poor people from up-country to come to the city to make some "easy money". They don't all get into the trade but they hang out in the city waiting and wanting. Again, part of the old up-country workforce is disabled.

Generally speaking, the industry MAKES money. Thai business earn money from the trade. Thai government indirectly earns money from the trade on the legitimate level. Thai officialdom earns money directly from the trade.

Whether the economic effect is overall negative or positive is a matter of opinion. I say that when the rent is due and you need food in your belly - any money is good money.

Two small Sois (small street) between a couple of Bangkok's main roads and in the middle of the high-end hotel strips.

Patpong has been there forever. Since the Vietnam war at least, probably had it's origins even before then. The place is just two long strips of bars, go-go, disco, short-time hotels and massage parlours. There is even a "no hands" bar where you can sit and sip your drink and from a hole in the front of the bar below you the girl…….. yeah well, some folk appear to frequent the place.

Not a bad place for a night's visit. The street is also lined with market stalls and bargains are not rare. Usual bric-a-brac, t-shirts, copy watches…. The street is also lined with junkies, pimps, street-walkers (dangerous - stay right away!) and other assorted street life.

Watch out for the hucksters and touts. They will try to drag you into a bar. Patpong is notorious for hidden charges. You get dragged into a bar, you have one drink, you buy one drink for one girl then you find out there was a 2,000 baht admission fee they forgot to tell you about. And you had better pay it if you don't want to leak all the way home.

Patpong is full-on. Drop in for an hour, look at the market stalls. Go home.

Writer's Choice:

Not a bad place at all. Much more down-market and friendly than Patpong - by a long mile. Nana plaza is situated off Sukhumvit Road, a major commercial and shopping center of Bangkok.

Nana is a large courtyard with three levels. The central ground-level area has outdoor bars and several restaurants. The upper levels are mainly bars and go-go dancers.

The atmosphere at Nana is a lot less frenetic than Patonga's and the touts don't hassle you so much - and as a rule there are none of those "hidden-charge" tricks at Nana.

Nana is so neat you could bring the wife and kids here in the daytime and enjoy a good meal and a cold beer with them.

The ladies are genuinely friendly on the whole. I have many good friends down there in Nana.

Writer's Choice:

Ah, the old cowboy. Established before Nana plaza but now relegated to the lower ranks of destinations. Soi Cowboy has gone down hill in the last few years. Just three years ago it was a happily wild and crazy place. Something changed, nobody seems to know what.

Cowboy is still fun. Far more down market then Nana or Patpong, more gritty and dirty.

The people appear to have a happy-go-lucky attitude. But the place just lost a special feeling it used to have. A feeling/illusion of being a wild and free street, a cowboy town, a last resort, the end of the road. That is more or less gone now but still Cowboy offers a pretty safe view of life on the other side of the tracks.

A single street stretches out between two main roads coming off Sukhumvit Road, the Cowboy was established by Annie, a Thai lady who opened a bar named - "Cowboy". That is how the street got it's name.

Once a great place to go and see live rock'n'roll and blues. Apart from the Five Star Bar and it's Five Star Band - who by the way are excellent musicians well worth a trip to see on a Friday night - the music has more or less left the Cowboy now.

Cowboy can still be fun and I used to hang out there a lot just talking to the girls and guys down there. My girlfriend Phen used to manage one of the bands that used to play there. That is where we met. She once opened and ran "The Love Scene", a kind of weird, rustic restaurant that is still there today run by her uncle.

In fact, there are some very good restaurants which offer a wide choice of international and local meals and the beer is always cold. I used to get down there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and watch the dregs of the night before drag their woeful corpses up and down the street getting ready for another night of craziness.

Not far from Cowboy, Washington Square is the old folks home of the bar districts. Quite conservative and all indoors. Nothing hanging out on the street here, just a lot of neat looking restaurant/bars frequented by older, resident westerners.

The restaurants offer some of Bangkok's most excellent food, and the service is friendly, pretty and usually available for "extended duties".

There is a nearby cinema, so this is a place I'd go to now and then for a break from the city. Go catch a movie, then have a great meal and a few beers, talk to the staff, chat with the locals, get some hard-core attitude and "old China hand" stories.

What can I say except that this place has simply got to be the cesspool of the universe. Crawling with middle-eastern Muslim oil-workers who have quite forgotten their holy vows and are hanging out searching for cheap pussy or ass. Then they go home and stone their wife to death for thinking about another man. Nice folk for sure (not).

Pattaya is on the beach. It used to be beautiful. I went there in 1981, it was fantastic. Clean water, 1,000 bars, 20,000 girls, cheap accommodation on the beach. Now it is just condominiums and shit-in-the-water.

Last visit there in 1992 I sat at 3 AM and watched as they pumped pure sewage from tanker truck after tanker truck straight into their bay. The development was so rapid there, and the lack of planning so total that they simply do not have sewage treatment so they dump it on the beach each night. Go swimming at your own risk - beware the brown trouts.

Pattaya is a problem. Full of the most idiotic of Thailand's Farang community. It is where all the would-be "Mafia" hang out. Where a lot of the Farang conmen hang out. Pattaya appears to have developed a means by which to attract the lowest form of business life.

Pattaya has the highest crime rate of any district in Thailand. It has the highest rate of "disappearing Farangs" and "bagged bodies". There are a lot of junkies there, Thai and Farang. The place simply stinks.

Around the corner from Pattaya is Jomtiem Beach - not so bad at all. Quite nice in fact. And nearby Pattaya is Koh Samet (Samet Island) and Samet is excellent. So I guess you could drop by Pattaya on your way somewhere else just to see what happens when you combine rampant greed-driven development with a total and absolute lack of planning or foresight.

Pattaya is dying. It's days are numbered. Hotels burn down if they don't fall down. People die in Pattaya.

If you want bars go to Bangkok. If you want beaches go to Samui. If you want both go to Phuket. Don't bother with Pattaya, it is a shit pile.

Come back next week and read on. There are more bent attitudes in store, more warped perspectives. Read up! You just might learn something!