Prostitution in Thailand
Red Light Districts, Brothels, and Sex Tourism
The women of the Red Light districts in Pattaya and Koh Samui ('Koh' meaning 'Island') in Thailand are helped in part by a foundation called Pro L.I.F.E., which has many centers around the country to assist orphaned children, families with HIV/AIDS, the poverty-stricken, and young girls who want to escape prostitution. Pro L.I.F.E operates the Tamar Center in Pattaya to assist the girls who want to leave the sex trade.
Many western men travel halfway around the world for sex tourism because "women in North America are too domineering and think about themselves more than they do their men. Back in the good old days the stay-home housewives depended on their men for everything. Now, they don't really have the need for someone to take care of them."
Thai girls who want to escape poverty and can't find Mr Right to rescue them and take them back to the promised land of America often end up committing suicide. When things don't turn out the way they planned, they become distraught or get violent, trying to hurt or kill the Falang (white tourist) they're with for his life insurance.
Child prostitution can begin as young as 10 - some are born into the lifestyle and start even earlier. In "Boy's Town" you’ll find boys and young men selling their bodies alongside the biker and drug scene in Thailand and bar girls who dance by day and give massages by night.
Joy, a bar girl in Pattaya, walks the street after she's worked her shift in the bar, not only as a waitress but as a prostitute. If the price is right, you can have her for the night or a few hours. Joy is 27, but looks 18 or 19. She has been in the business for seven years and started in Singapore before coming to Thailand.
Some of the men that ‘own’ these girls took them poor villages. Joy is a five-hour bus ride from her family, to whom she gives the money she makes. Some women come from small villages in Laos, Mynamar or Cambodia and since this trip costs their owners money, they have to work until it's paid.
The women keep only 1/3 of the money they earn and send most of it back to their families. As a former prostitute, I understood the tedious and stressful waiting for a catch. I knew what it was like to have men grab and paw at you. I knew what it was like going with someone you normally wouldn’t even speak to. I knew what it was like to share a drink or a fix with a fellow working girl to loosen up and bring in money.
A working girl will earn 1500-3000 Baht per trick (customer). The men are American Navy, Russians, Chinese, Filipinos, and Canadians. She tolerates them for the money. Joy wants to go to school and buy a home, but doesn't know how she'll be able to (to get ahead in Thailand, English is an asset). Joy made it clear that if she had the chance, she would go to school.
If Joy brings in 1500 Baht and 2/3 of that goes to the bar and to her family, it leaves her very little to live on or for school. After her shift in the bar, she will head down to the street to pick up guys there for more money. The competition is great; girls are lining up to get into the profession because they earn more selling sex than they would in any other business.
Joy said she couldn't quit because she'd get into big trouble; she'd get hurt if she left. Girls enter the sex trade and are owned until they pay off their debts; some are sold into the trade by their parents because they are so poor they feel they have no choice.
Go-go girls are in the same situation - dancing, swinging off poles, doing what it takes to bring in 2000 to 3000 Baht per customer, and, like Joy, a percentage goes to the bar and then to their families. One woman, Song, was 32 years old and had been in the business a decade.
She and the other bar girls only stop to have a drink from a straw in a small bucket filled with beer, whiskey, and ice. Some take ‘yaa baa’ or amphetamines. Others drink Red Bull to keep them going for hours or smoke from a hookah. Their shift isn't over for hours and the stream of Western men into the bar seems endless...
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Comments
Joy is from a small place near Saudia Arabia and after her shift in the bar she will strut her stuff down 'walking street' a section that is cut off from vehicles at night in Pattaya. Joy also confirmed by telling me that girls & women are brought from small villages like hers and put to work in the sex trade.
I asked Joy if she wanted to go to Sweden with her boyfriend and she said 'no' because it is too cold there for her. He will continue to come see her though.
Keep in mind when you have read this article that during this interview the madam wasn't too far away and we did get some evil eyes from her. Madams in Thailand speak better english than some of the girls and are usually older. Like in any prostitution when you age you're forced to find different work.
"Dii chan mai pan rai (dee chan my pan dry) means I don't worry or I worry not in english which you will find near the end of this story.
Hi Pauline,
Thanks for the investigative story. I will be honest with you...if you are not Thai, you will not completely be told what really happens in Thailand. You seem to be going down the right path, but you are not told everything. I believe it has a little to do with pride and not being completely exploited by a foreigner and a stranger.
When I was ten, I spent the summer in Korat, Thailand with my family. Across the street, there was a brothel. There was a 12-year old girl there that would come out and play with me (it helped that she spoke fluent English). In the mornings and early afternoons, it was ok for her to come out and play, just as long as there were no customers.
Because it was well known that there was an American girl in the village, the madam sought to have me kidnapped. When my family heard of this, no one let me out of their sight. The one time they did, I was inside the brothel. I thought it was just a home for girls (thus, the innocent mind of a North American 10-year old). The girl showed me around the brothel, and the many rooms inside (there was only one customer in the brothel at the time). The door to the brothel had been left open and my uncle had come in screaming at the madam in Thai. He had brought in a weapon threatening her with it. The madam then screamed for me to get out.
After that moment, I was forbidden from seeing the girl again. My mother was afraid to tell me what prostitution meant, because in all honesty, her attempt to explain it to me had me asking more questions like, "WHY?" Her response was that she had to do it for her family. That was her work. Then the next question came, "But why does she have to work? She's only 12." My mother just shook her head and said, "She's bad. She's evil. Stay away from her, because she's trying to make you be just like her...an evil demon." That was enough to keep my distance from the girl and her friends.
It did not become clear to me what exactly a 'prostitute' was until a Friday afternoon when all the men in the village had descended upon the brothel and she was outside front flirting with them. I was on my cousin's bicycle, coming from my grandmother's house with one of my cousin's, on my way to my aunt's shop. She saw me and came running up to me in her beautiful silk robe. The sash had come undone as she ran towards me. I stopped, because I was afraid the mad demon was trying to get me. Her robe came flying open as she reached me and grabbed the handle bars. She started talking to me, completely drunk saying she wanted to introduce me to her friends.
At that time, my mother and my aunts had come out of the house and told me to come in. The girl stood looking at them, and then the cursing began between them. I never saw her again. Someone told me that the girl had been beaten up very badly that night. It was so bad she could not move. When I heard this, I knocked on the brothel door and asked to see her. The madam came to the door and denied me entrance and told me that she was never allowed to leave the house again.
One of the girls came to me a few days later while I sat in front of my aunt's soup stand. She told me that my friend had heard I had come by. She said that her message to me was that she was ok. Everything was fine. But the girl told me, "I think she's going to die soon, because she keeps beating her."
My family had nothing to do with the beating directly. A customer had done that to her, and because she could not make any money because of the state she was in, the mother of the house ("madam") beat her every single day she could not make money. She became a debt to the house.
That money you talk about...the 2/3...that goes to the ongoing expenses that the brothel must put out for her to stay there. She will always be in debt to the madams, brothels, bars, etc. They feed them, put a roof over their heads, clothe them, give them basic toiletries, etc. All of those things are added to the debts they owe. If the family requests more money, and the madam sends it (or doesn't send it...they could also be lying to the girls), then that gets added to the debts they already owe.
Their debts are an ongoing cycle. All the kids in Thailand that grew up in poverty talk about going to school, but it never happens. There are no jobs. They have to sell themselves into slavery just so they can eat. This is becoming their way of life. When my cousins call us asking for money and for help, they (especially the men) talk about there being no jobs and how someone had come to the village talking about jobs in Sweden or X, Y and Z country. When my mother calls me and tells me what was said to them, I tell her to call him up and tell him not to do it because this is a typical human trafficking scheme.
So many people are on that verge of looking at their impoverished situation and thinking that slavery (whether it is regular slavery or sex slavery) is the better option if they plan on surviving. Sometimes it's easier to sell a neighbor, a child, a family member, or even yourself...if that means you will live another day. That is the true state of poverty in Thailand and where prostitution and slavery come into the picture. It's not pretty any way you look at it.
And yes, the people do fear the Thai government. That's why they won't tell you everything.
Wow Michelle - that's an Orato.com story right there :) Thanks for sharing it with us within the context of Pauline's amazing investigative work.
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