The “P” word

(Note to those of you familiar with the author, and seriously, who would bother to read these diatribes that wasn't? Doesn't He remind you of one of those half healed scabs that are kind of fun to pick at until you aren't paying attention and the blood starts dripping out again?

Anyway, you shouldn't be terribly surprised by this article. I mean come on; this is me. You weren't expecting endless pictures of temples or a discussion about what the average rain fall in Chiang Mai is. Were you?)


The "P" word


As has been stated elsewhere in this blog, there may be something like 5000 bars in Pattaya. The term “bar” is a catch-all generic term. Most Americans think of a bar in terms of an Applebee’s or some variety of sports bar. There may be a few who picture a dark cave of a place filled with smoke and seedy characters. The latter picture is usually a composite based on movies or books, not actual experience. The closest thing to a go-go bar in America is a strip club, and outside of Storey and Lyon County Nevada, no strip club in the States could really be close at all.

While not every bar in Pattaya is go-go bar, it would be safe to say that at a large percentage of the bars, do have some type of bar girl. Definitions are important. Bar girls, are women of age, not pubescent gymnists.

("Girls" are fun. "Ladies" are proper. I'll take fun over proper every day. Just a side note about the term "girls" when referring to women. The best women I have known, have always no matter their age, maintained some energy, or essence of their "inner girl". It has nothing to do with innocence and everything to do with energy. It's part of what keeps the best women alive, passionate, fierce, funny, bawdy, bad and frequently makes me want to take them to bed.)

Bar girls are not necessarily prostitutes. Some are similar to groups of women to be found anywhere men and alcohol is being mixed. The mock whore will rub up against any sot young, dumb or horny enough to buy her drinks all night until it’s time to leave when suddenly she has to drive her friend home. While mock whores are reported to exist in Pattaya, no one I interviewed for this article had actually encountered one.

(Just in case any home land security whack jobs accidentally stumbled on to this screed, the term Ex-Pat simply means someone who no longer chooses to live in the country they were born in. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if Herr Bush und Goeri- I mean Chaney found some way to involve ex-pats in their search for a “final solution” in the “War of terror-ism”. Now that I have shamelessly digressed to poke a stick at my favorite political joke, back to the point. )

I recently attended a meeting of the Pattaya Ex-Pats Club. One of the guest speakers was an American writer who noted the typical response he gets whenever he mentions to anyone that he lives in Thailand. First people talk about Thai food. Then, rather sheepishly, they ask about the infamous sex trade that everyone knows goes on over here.

I did have a couple conversations like that when I started talking about coming back here. The assumption I felt was being made was that while sure, you can find whores in the big American cities, Asian prostitutes have that whole alternately “exotic mystique” mixed with racist stereotype caricatures such as “Me love you long time sailor. Make boom-boom”.

It is my opinion that American sexual mores are generally highly repressed and the source of much stress, frustration, confusion, guilt and pain. Much of this repression is indoctrinated through religious institutions and endorsed by hypocritical cowards in the pulpit, the pews and politics. Add this to the fact that many Americans have been spoiled and have never been without excessive trappings of rabid consumerism. Such a frame of reference lends itself to self-righteous indignation with respect to what other people or cultures may do as a matter of survival or choice.

I have been one of those spoiled Americans who have had the luxury of believing that certain things should always be free. My personal list includes love, affection, sex and good drink and good smoke. These should be free and freely exchanged.

I also enjoy believing in the possibility of a healthy, sane and sustainable romantic love, despite years of experience to the contrary. Then again, in the words of an enlightened friend of mine, “I am a crazy person”.

In Thailand the average person with what would be considered as being a good lower middle class job; waitress, retail clerk, hair salon manager, taxi driver, security guard, may make anywhere from around 4,000 to as high as 20,000 baht in a month. That’s about $120 to 600 US a month. If you’re reading my words, it’s unlikely that as an adult, you’ve ever had to live off of so little.

Granted, the cost of living is lower here. Though certainly a matter of relativity. Next month I’m moving into a brand new studio apartment for 5,000 baht a month (about $150 US). Though I also point out that what in the States I considered to be a paltry pension after 25 years of government larceny of my paychecks, here my pension is 2.5 to 3 times what a "well paid" worker may make.
(25 years! God's teeth! I'd start worrying about people thinking I was an old fart if not for everyone knowing I started working at age 5, right?)

There are all the modern conveniences and consumer products available here, though that may have more to do with the 50,000 odd foreigners who have made Thailand their home. Many Thai do with out.

I digress…

The prices charged by prostitutes in Pattaya vary.

So-called free-lancers may be women with the day off from their regular jobs as waitresses or massage workers. Spending the afternoon on the beach trying to pick up foreign men, they may charge as little as 500 baht ($15 U.S.) for an hour, along with taxi fare after.

(One interviewee reported that he had recently been on the beach and approached a free lancer who stated her short time rate as 3000 baht. He hastened to add that the woman in question "was one of those crazy Russian dancers down on Walking Street". There is reportedly one unusally expensive go-go bar that features women from Russia. I guess here some might consider white women exotic)

Bar girls may charge 700 to 1000 baht ($21 to 30) (a few bars were rumored to have bar girls in the 1500 to 3000 baht range) for an hour, plus a 300 to 500 baht ($9-$15) “bar-fine” that goes to bar owner. This is called “short time”. Many bars have one or more short time rooms for the girls and clients to use. When a customer goes up or back to the short time room with the girl, there is a shower and both the girl and the customer bathe. What passes for a shower some times is simply a hose coming out of a spigot beside the toilet or a clean garbage pail full of water and a large dipper. There is a bed in the room and rarely anything else.

Technically, “short time” is supposed to be 1 full hour. Apparently for some men, the excitement is over quickly and for reasons likely associated with guilt, buyer’s remorse or fear, they don’t stick around for the remaining 45 minutes.

Of course the opposite does happen as well and some customers have reported feeling “rushed” and put upon when soon after they had achieved their goal, the girl starts heading for the shower and/or asking them if they want to wash up before they leave.

It appeared quite clear to me that pointing out to over weight 40, 50 and 60 plus year old white guys the grotesque irony of their feeling cheated by a 20-something Thai woman who had just enjoyed (sic) their sexual prowess (sic) for less than fifty bucks would help no one.

For slightly more, anywhere from 500 to 1000 baht (that is an additional $15 to 30 above the short time price) the girl will spend the whole night (“long-time”). Usually a long term situation involves paying a higher bar fine (the girl is being taken out of circulation, thus potentially negatively impacting the bar owner’s receipts). Depending on the sophistication of the customer, the girl who accepts a long time invitation may be taken out for dinner before going back to the customer’s condo or hotel room.

In a long time situation, the customer may have “fallen in love” with the girl based on a previous short time encounter. Whether he is aware of it or willing to admit it, he cannot see the degree to which living in paradise has divorced him from reality.

The girl has made them feel so good, so vital, so much like what their 50, 60 or even 70 plus year old brains are choosing to remember how it felt to be in their 20s or 30s. Unfortunately this release of hormones and neuro-chemicals frequently triggers long forgotten personal mythos concerning idealized relationships and for lack of a better term, love. The fact that the girl has been paid to perform her part of catalyst is easily dismissed by most men.

Perhaps men appear to be more susceptible to romantic silliness because most of us have a higher capacity for self delusion than most women. Or maybe it is part of the matrix of being a creature of so much violence perpetrated by and against us; it is a salve we manufacture in our minds against the hurt and loneliness.

Most of the ex-pats now in Pattaya are upwards of 60 even though Thailand’s retirement visa starts at age 50. A large number of these men had previously been exposed to South East Asia during the 1960’s and 70’s, mostly while in the military, though a few with Peace Corps assignments.


The mid west teen who enlisted during the war in Vietnam. He survived with as much or more scar tissue inside his head as on his body. College after carnage. Trying and failing at one or more marriages. Professional success in insurance, law or some other white collar crime, err-I-meant career, that as nice as the money was (and thank god is now) doesn’t do anything to stop the increasing volume of that fucking clock. The ticking away of the minutes leading to mortality with a terror that somehow surprised him in a visceral way, like his last prostate exam, and is getting more difficult to laugh, work, fuck, drink or drug away from his conscious thoughts.

He vacillates in his resolute confusion about women. They are especially confusing to him when he has hired them as prostitutes to fulfill every kink in his psychosexual closet. He can’t understand why they aren’t more sensitive to his emotions and why, damn it; can’t he find one he can really trust?

The American Boomers who have made it to or back to Thailand, often resemble biological Rosetta Stones. Organic records of the last 40 plus years of American culture’s impact on the psychology and sociology of white men. Their contemporaries who remain in the States, in halls of power, behind the judicial bench, the pulpit, the board room are just as likely to be damaged goods, the smell maybe easier to pick up in contrast to pardise as opposed to the tragically continuing back draft of Obsession, pin stripe suits, freakishly and randomly intersperesed with that true scent of the undead; Polo.
Considering how much impact those bastards still appear to have on everybody else, it might be instructive to look a little bit at how and why so many of them are so twisted and miserable, frightened and confused.

Then again, it might be better to be watching the Hispanics and try to figure out the potential side-effects of a soon-could-be America where the political and social majority is made up of people who everyone used to call “beaners”.



Whew, I’m back, I think I must have been channeling Sigmund Fraud (sic). Everybody knows men are uncomplicated, simple animals (dogs or pigs, take your pick). Nearly seven paragraphs of ridiculous babbling. We were talking about prostitutes, weren’t we?

The bar girls are checked monthly by an EMT for STDs and other health concerns. The “freelancers” are not. Condoms are readily available and both the government and charity groups have some AIDS and STD awareness and education programs.

(Side note, there are a couple of restaurants in Pattaya and Bangkok called Cabbages and Condoms, which were built by the guy who was the first to be allowed to import condoms into the kingdom and made a mint.)

I don’t know about you. I have been told by women who had experiential credibility, that I seem to like sex more than most men (they knew). I’m old enough to be intellectually honest that while sex with some one I believe I’m in love with can be very nice, recreational sex; with out the double edged sword of personal love (often in my experience confused for possession, guilt or obligation) has always been pleasant to me and consistently less psychologically damaging.

I realize that the fact that I am Caucasian and have a penis which I enjoy using gives me a skewed frame of reference from which to make comparative comments. Having said that, if I thought someone I picked and offered myself to (like maybe Halle Berry or one or both of the Williams sisters? it could happen [in the perfect world in my mind]),would pay me for one hour of sex, money that it might otherwise take me a week to make doing things I didn’t enjoy as much, I’d have to seriously consider the option. I guess I might think of it as one of those hobbies you turn into a side income? For many reasons besides my visually disturbing appearance, I’m lucky not to have to put the theory to the test.

I believe that a woman (or man) has clear and undeniable rights with regard to their body. Whether it is the question of a woman’s right to choose to abort a fetus or any consenting adult to charge or pay for intimate services, to me the fundamental right of individual sovereignty is the same.

I will simply say that as long as no duress (physical or otherwise) is going on and all of the participants are informed adults, I feel that “prostitution” should be legalized and regulated; in the interest of the prostitutes, in the interest of the public good, for the health of those who will and do engage in such activities, regardless of the “law”. Not to mention the collateral damage to significant others who might be less at risk from diseases passed on by their philandering mates if the town brothel was a known entity under the over sight of the county health department. Additionally, the economic concerns; licensing, promotion, taxes. I think there would be enough local, state and federal money to convince the government to quit fucking with the Native Americans about their casino money and leave those damn people alone.



While a group of angry Ms Magazine subscribers gets ready to burn me in effigy, let me address another topic that seems to invariably come up when Thailand is mentioned.

Thailand tends to get a bad rep when it comes to child prostitution. Sadly, just as in Any Town, USA, pedophilia occurs every where. I’d also like to say a big friendly hello to all of my Catholic friends. How’s that Infallible Pope thing working out for you? I kid, I kid.

Based on what I have seen on local television news, the Thai people have perhaps a truer zero tolerance for this sick abuse than certain countries who like to claim moral superiority.

While I have been here there has been one farang (foreigner) who has been arrested and publicly accused of having sex with three teen age girls. The newscasts showed a German ex-pat sitting in the police station with the girls (their faces censored out) pointing at him.

I have no knowledge as to the conditions typical to a jail or prison in Thailand, though I would assume they aren’t as “pleasant” as the American counter part. While working as a corrections officer (prison hack) at a medium security prison, I observed first hand that even among the rapists, murderers and dope fiends, child abusers are universally despised and warrant special treatment by their fellow inmates. One can only imagine that being a foreigner in a Thai jail or prison for child abuse may approach being punishment worthy of the crime.



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Research regarding this article is certainly anecdotal. No actual names or records of interviews were kept to later be shredded when subpoenaed.

To quote Leonard Skynyrd, quoting Irish playwright Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies”.

My theories and conclusions are not intentionally highly questionable or heretical, though I do take comfort when they give that impression. If you understand, just sit back and smile. Trying to explain it to others only confuses and frightens them. They’ll figure it out on there own schedule.