Patong

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Patong is the kind of place i wouldn't really want to be unless i had a good reason to be there. Yet as it turned out i didn't have a reason to be here at all. I was here to meet Lou. She was stopping in nearby Phuket after diving in the world class Similan Islands, only she didn't stop in Phuket at all. And i was left to make sense of Patong

Patong is a seedy hole. By day it wants to be a beach paradise. And perhaps it is. But i didn't think so. Maybe it was the shadow of the slightly overcast sky. Maybe the countless sun loungers choking the beach. Maybe the lack of something spectactular. But Patong Bay seemed to me to be another beach. Patong's real attraction perhaps though is it's nightlife. By night it becomes a neon wilderness roamed by underdressed and under the influence package tourists, and prowled by overweight and overaged sex tourists. It's home to a large contingent of Kathoey (i.e Ladyboy) looking for customers. Prostitutes are a plenty. Sex doesn't just sell here. It screams at you. Loudly from every bar you walk past. Patong is the kind of place where people who used to go to Magaluf go to be more exotic and sex tourists go to be among kindred spirits.

(As an aside while people tell you some Kathoey are convincing and stunning, a hell of a lot aren't, and some simply scare the shit out of you).

So what did i do in Patong? To be honest, not a lot. I employed my ever improving bartering banter to secure a new t-shirt and necklace. I ate a real English style sausage for the first time in months (Thailand seems to prefer little frankfurter type things). I read. I wandered. I wondered. And i had a rather random little rendezvous with a thai girl.

Picture it, if you will. It's around 8pm on a warm pleasant evening. I've eaten a nice but not entirely satisfying pizza and am sat in an internet cafe contemplating the coming evening. I've haven't been in Patong long, and have yet to make any strong acquaintences. The dorm room i found failed to produce people, except 1 peculiar guy who seemingly sat in his bed listening to his headphones continuously. Whatever the hour of day. I accepted this as a mixed blessing. Some lively interesting people would have been good. But an empty dorm means more sleep and less suspicious nighttime noises. A fair trade i feel. I have no plans and am just killing time. I log into facebook, accept a friend request. I log into Hotmail, reply to some emails. I log into MSN, accept some new contacts. People pop up. I say hi and chew the fat for a while. Nothing remarkable. Killing an hour or two on the web is a regular part of my life.

So i continue chatting and it dawns on me i have absolutely no idea whom one of the people i'm chatting to is. So i ask. And they're coy. At first i think someone winding me up. They know i've got curly hair. They know my name. They know i'm in Thailand. They must know me right? They know i'm in Patong. Hang on, no-one knows Mr Wesley Hughes is in Patong except Lou, who's on a boat, and the Canadian guy at the hostel who photocopied my passport. Is it him? Can't be. They know i'm wearing red fisherman pants!! And so i realise i have some kind of quasi-stalker on my hands. A strange mix of emotions rise up upon me. A bit of nervous fear for my safety. A bit of confusion and confuddlement as how this person knew me. And a bit of amusement at this peculiar situation.

Eventually the facts were determined and these were thus. I had been in an internet cafe that morning. The girl working in the internet cafe had decided that Mr Wes looked rather dashing (and who am i to argue with her impeccable judgement). Had waited for me to leave. Pulled up the last sites i had visited and got my email address. I was then added to her MSN contacts and we get to where i started this little story.

Being the sensible sort of sole that i am i decided the best course of action was to meet my semi stalker. Well, i didn't really have anything else to do. Caution was exercised. A public meeting place was designated but as it turned out it wasn't really necessary. She was harmless, if anything damaged rather than potentially damaging. Her name was Mook and this is her story.

(Sidenote. Ash if you're reading this you have a Thai girls name tatooed on your arm - hahaha)

Mook lived in Bangkok with her family. Mother. Father. At least one brother. She worked and gave her wages to her mother who liked to indulge her brother and drink. This meant Mook, despite working, lead a meagre existence with little money to entertain herself. Feeling frustrated with her situation in life she decided to run away.

Rather then running to nowhere Mook had a lifeline. Mook had somewhere to go. She had been speaking online to an Englishman in Patong for some weeks or months. He could get her a job. In fact he know of somewhere that was desperate for people. She would even get a month in a hotel and her trainfare free. She'd just have to pay upfront. But she'd soon get her money back. How incredibly fortuitous for her. Now i'm sure this all sounds as dubious to you as it sounds to me. But to Mook this sounded like an opportunity. An opportunity to change her life for the better. So, what could she dobut take it. And so she made her life worse.

Surprisingly on turning up in Patong there was a job waiting for her with didn't involve the, harder than it sounds, trade of laying down for money. But the job didn't pay well. And the hotel was full. But the nice English gentleman was there to be a knight in shining armour and could put her up in his place. I know what you're thinking but he was a gentleman and had a spare room she could have all to herself. What a nice guy. And it was just a coincidence when 2 days later the fan in his room broke down. These things happen. And the suggestion that he slept in her room was entirely innocent. It's hot out in Patong at this time of years. And us Brits really feel the heat, we're just used to it. No he wasn't being a dirty, pervy, lecherous, predator at all. Just an English gentleman trying to help a lost soul find her place in the world.

Lucky despite Mook's apparent naivety she wised up quickly and got herself out of the house, and most importantly, away from the English gentleman. However, having just arrived in Patong with no particular savings Mook had a problem with finding a room. Selling her laptop some resolved that and though she was pained to part with it there were certainly worse choices when it came to things she could sell. She switched jobs to get herself her present positon in the internet cafe i had visited. And this was the situation she now found herself in.

Alone in a town where she knew no-one. A town where an extremely high proportion of the local women work the bars. A town where a very high proportion of the men are falang (i.e. foreigners) wanting to feed their "yellow fever". A town where sex is bought and sold is freely. And openly. A town which, i suppose it can at least be said, doesn't pretend to be much other than what it is.

So Mook wanted to make friends, but how to start. She has little money to go out. Patong is expensive. So she had tried being friendly with some of the girls who came into her work. They appreciated Mook. She had good English skills. She could help them. They could write more detailed emails to their European boyfriends. They could express how grateful they were for the money that he had sent over in much more substance . They could really get across how happy they were that they didn't have to work in the bars anymore and how thankful they were. And once they were down with their email to their boyfriend they headed back out to the bars. Mook tried going out with them but found it frustrating when they keep disappearing promising to be back "within an hour".

And such is Mook's life. She is 24. She wants to make friends and be out enjoying herself. But i fear that Patong is the kind of place that corrupts people. Already she was talking of being able to earn money in the bars by just sitting around drinking with guys. The more they drink, the more she earns. But she doesn't really fancy the lecherous attentions that tends to accompany such an occupation. And who can blame it. It would also be a clear, and sad, step towards settling into the real business that Patong thrives on.

Mook didn't really understand the women who came into her internet cafe. They had wealthy European men who loved them and wanted to be with them. And these women manipulated them to get their money. She didn't understand why they acted like that. She would love to have a man. And a wealthy european one would be even better. Somewhere in her head it was all Pretty Woman and the reality that these guys had met these women over here because they were paying to meet them seemed to have slipped past her. Nope she would love to have one of these men paying her lots of attention and falling in love with her!

This kind of thinking worried me and sounded like the talk of someone who might up in an industry they be better off out of. I would hate to think that the end result of Mook getting lured to Patong is that she ends up as just another bar girl working the type of men who sucked her into that life in the first place. Somehow there's is something disgustingly ironic about that.

Our conversation left me feeling sad about the whole interaction between Falang men and Thai girls people in lots of parts of Thailand. People's naivety and/or ego's get played on across the board. It works both ways and in some way everyone seems to be playing everyone. I don't know, maybe i was being played and she was trying to butter me up to be her rich european boyfriend (hahaha!) but i don't really believe that at all. I believed what she said. And believed that she was having a really hard time of it. She still wasn't speaking to her family who didn't know where she was. She wasn't really speaking to many people at all. I really think she just wanted to talk. I just hope she meets more people who feel the same way.

And so ends possibly my longest blog soo far. Hope people are still reading!!! It appears the travelblog site are compiling a "best of 2007" set of blogs. So if anyone things anything i wrote last year (and it has to be last year) was amusing, entertaining or informative in anyway then if you've got 5 minutes while you had a nice cup of English tea and a digestive a nomination would be great.

Big love to all x x

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