"The boys watch the girls while the girls watch the boys who watch the girls go by."

Asia » Thailand » Central Thailand » Bangkok
May 20th 2006

Published: November 3rd 2006

Finally, after sixteen months of toil and hardship, acts of bravery and endurance, cowardice and betrayal, itching and scratching, life and death; finally we had reached our goal - the heart of an impenetrable darkness, the source of all Backpackers. Khao San Road. Bangkok.

"It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it—the suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages—could comprehend. And why not?”

It was not long before I found my first Mr Kurtz. Actually, he found me. I had quickly realised the rooved ceremonial huts charged more for beer, and that I should make our expedition's base on the makeshift pavement cafes where life was cheap and the activities of the natives could be observed freely. He was a retired executive from Royal Dutch Shell. He could no longer escape the jungle. He didn't want to.

We talked for some hours. As the Harlequin says of Kurtz - "You don’t talk with that man—you listen to him." Unlike Marlow I found this somewhat frustrating, but then I guess Conrad's novel would be somewhat less of a classic if Marlow had continually interrupted Kurtz with the likes of

"Ooh, it's hot here. It's not so much the heat, but the humidity. And the mosquitoes! How do you cope? Do you know they shot at us on the way here. Savages."

But what did I learn? Only his parting comment, as he hurried late to his nightly visit to "The horror! The horror!" blues club - that the vast vast majority of prostitute clients in Thailand are Asian, not Western. In fact most are Thai.

I didn't believe it at first. I thought it was just an excuse for his mad soul - justifying the searing revelations of his personal journey to the Company Agent who cannot understand.

Stuck in the hot city jungle for a week we decided to look into it. We found that Mr Kurtz was right.

Where better to start our research than vaguely remembered but as yet unread articles on travelblog. I had read Aspiring Nomad with an envy that had once led me to consider parody, a Beerbohm to his Conrad, but, unlike many in this city, I could never quite pull it off. His Interview with the Sex Tourist gives a well-written and balanced portrayal of the dull illusions many in the comfortable West live under. Harder hitting and to the point, Jenni Jen, whose photographs I admire, expresses her well-informed outrage in Sex and the Countryside - this after she has calmed somewhat from her disappointment on finally reaching Bangkok: Who Stole My Thailand?.

I picked up a battered copy of Sex Slaves by Louise Brown and sought to learn more ….

Whilst both western and asian media would portray otherwise, the vast majority of visits to prostitutes in Asia, including child prostitutes, are by Asian, not Western men.
The vast majority of Asian prostitutes are essentially bound slaves. Many start their careers as children. Some die (very young) of diseases and/or poor conditions. Very few enter prostitution voluntarily and very few make a good living.
Human trafficking is endemic in Asia. Girls are taken from poor countries (Cambodia, Nepal, Bangladesh) to hubs (Thailand and India). Some go onto richer countries e.g. Japan, South Korea.
Prostitution and slavery are big business, controlled by a heady mix of organised crime, police and governments.
Studies over the last 100 years or so have shown that as 'immorality' i.e. emancipation of women, has increased in the West, so prostitute usage by men has dropped, running at something like 10% currently (very roughly), down from figures quoted as high as 80%!i(MISSING)n more morally restrictive Victorian times.
In South Asian societies (India/Pakistan) a woman needs to be a wife to survive comfortably. To be a wife she must be chaste. Hence prostitute usage is very high, as it is the only way for men to satisfy their desires.
Pakistan is unique in that the trade in young boys for sex is significant compared with that of young girls.
When I last visited Thailand, in 1992, I read Pira Sudham's heartbreaking tales of starvation and crop failure in rural Thailand forcing villagers to sell their daughters into the sex trade. This trade continues, but often simply to obtain commodities - new TVs, white goods etc.
Whilst clients are almost always men, as are those who control the trade, the procurers at often women. After all, who else would a young girl trust?
In the West men tend to seek dominant women who are effectively in control of the process - experience generally commands more than innocence. The opposite is the case in Asia: the man must be dominant.
Young virgins demand a high premium both for cultural reasons and for security against HIV.
Growth of the modern sex industry has continued steadily since the Second World War. However it was the availability of servicemen in the Vietnam war that moved it from a 'cottage' industry to a dynamo helping significantly to power the economies of the area.

As a woman and as a human being Louise Brown is extremely angry with men for their use of prostitutes and their continued slavery and subjugation of women. As a man, this can sometimes be hard to take, even though it is obvious she is right. She points out that most intervention to stop the trade concentrates on the supply side, whereas perhaps it would be more effective to concentrate on the demand. She clearly understands the power of marketing and propaganda and my interpretation is that a sustained campaign similar to the anti drink-driving campaigns of the past years could be effective. Clearly in some societies this will not be enough - economic and subsequently social improvements in the position of women is clearly a pre-requisite. However she has a point. Whilst it is perhaps an extreme example, in Britain it is possible to imagine a stronger adverse reaction to attempting to drive after drinking but within the legal limit than to visiting a prostitute. Perhaps that shouldn't be the case.

We only saw one obviously child prostitute in Bangkok and the sight of her walking along holding the arm of someone twice her height made me feel sick. I can't say the same for the lines of bored poll-dancing girls in the bars of Pat Pong, who just made me feel sad - in the end how can this be entertaining? I'm not speaking morally, just about the quality of the experience. I guess we all have boundaries, but those boundaries can and do shift.

We stayed for one shift-change, which was perhaps the most illuminating part of it - twenty bored black-haired girls in black bikinis shuffled off and twenty more bored black-haired girls in black bikinis shuffled on. Along the short narrow tourist street the same thing was happening in some thirty to fifty bars. I remembered a tale from some friends from many years ago as to how two Cambridge graduates failed to beat a Thai bar girl at Connect Four, despite many attempts (the trick is to dominate the centre columns at all costs).

And as to romance tourism? One night on Khao San Road my investigations led me into the nightclub of the red lycra one-pieces - a devilish motif. Sitting at the bar I watched the customers, roughly 80%!A(MISSING)sian women to 20%!W(MISSING)estern women, and 60%!W(MISSING)estern men to 40%!A(MISSING)sian men, a similar mix to the expat bars we frequented in Hong Kong. At some point the waitress put her hand on my back. I ignored her. So she moved it down the back of my trousers. I wasn't quite sure I had felt this and turned round in disbelief - she smiling, extremely pretty, extremely friendly. I turned away without saying anything. When I left to go I turned round and saw at least ten pairs of eyes staring straight at me - the walls of the bar were coated in Thai women looking for the next sugar daddy. It was an uncomfortable feeling - I'd seen the same eyes staring at Kim in Hong Kong - I guess an insight into what can be like to be a girl in a bar full of men.

Whilst being known mostly as the 'world's brothel', Thailand has many great features and its progress towards modernity in the last fifteen years has been remarkable (this was written before the recent coup). But just as I hate the hypocrisy of the Western media, so the sanctimonious preaching of Asian governments about Western immorality gets under my skin - hence this concentration on yet another of life's many examples of the miseries of realpolitik.

We should add a plug for the excellent restaurant "Joy Luck Club", on the corner of A-Thit road between KSR and the river. It is only a small place and has no menu - they just cook you what was good in the market that day. Kim attended a cooking lesson with the owner for the price of our meal for two and really enjoyed it. Rather than following a recipe she was taught to add ingredients bit by bit and to understand how to taste what is needed next. It certainly worked - she has made many stunning Thai and Chinese dishes since we returned.

After our already documented visits to Malaysia and Cambodia, we returned to Bangkok for the final days of our 'holiday'. We spent the time with Uncle Adrian, at the end of one of his regular visits to relax in the air of Thailand’s beautiful beaches. This was very welcome, as in traditional Adrian style we were kept busy, entertained and guessing, when we could have been just kicking our heels waiting to get back to Britain, and for this and for so many other kindnesses both large and small, we must thank him greatly.

And so we boarded our plane, and for the last time on this trip, headed back to our homeland:

"'And this also", said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth"

"The boys watch the girls while the girls watch the boys who watch the girls go by."

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